#xb1000

[myrgaeri]

Chapter 26: Resubmissions #2

The time has come my friends. 

Chapter 17: Hammer Girl [RESUBMISSION]

You don’t know how happy I am to finish this. For real. I have suffered the unimaginable with this project. No one knows how much exactly. And I could extend and talk about it for hours, but just thinking of explaining it makes me suffer even more. So I’ll just jump to the final results.

Just in case you don’t remember, here you have, a reminder about the history behind the gameplay (this is quite important as there are a lot of things that were impossible to implement so you will need to use your imagination hahahaha how sad is that?):

The player controls the daughter of the town’s blacksmith, known as the hammer girl. You are wondering around when you hear the pet of one of the villager’s, a magical racoon-dog, has gone missing around the ruins, so you decide to go search for it. However, the way to the ruins is blocked by a guard. Maybe if you could bribe him with some things from the village… he would let you pass. When you arrive there, you find the racoon being sorrounded by monsters. You frighten them enough until they flee. In order to avoid them, you decide to return to the village through another way, with the little animal following you. You finally get to your destination just to find the village has been plundered.

Seriously, this project is like a black staint in my record and memory... I need to try harder from now on.

Chapter 20: Pitch Doc Challenge [RESUBMISSION]

I didn’t make too many changes here. The most important one was changing the text typography because I was told it was not clear enough.

Apart from that, I added a couple more of mechanics to give the game more definition and versatility.

Chapter 22: Perspective & Comp. challenge   [RESUBMISSION]

Yet again, I ran out of time to draw (focusing on other resubs) so in the end I couldn’t draw as many details as I wanted. In fact, the ceiling ended up being totally white. No lights. But I drew at least a 500 books so I’m proud of myself and my perseverance.

Yeah, you heard right. I’m so clever I decided to draw a library. Woo!

Sadly enough, I couldn’t scan the drawing, so I only have some crappy photos I did with my mobile on panoramic mode, aaaand... because of that, my hand’s shadow is seen quite cut.

Well, better see it than explain it:

Maybe I’ll change this in the future. I’ll do a proper scan and everything.

Update: Here you go, proper scans! ;)

pd. Didn’t have a way to scan a 1m long paper so I had to scan it in parts and stick them together in photoshop, hence the weird lines. Also, the lines on the carpet floor were done with pencil so I had to mess with the levels and contrast of the image sto make them visible :( Not as pretty as it actually looks on paper but oh well...

And that’s all! I wanted to resub other projects, specially the character design one. I even started to do the resub of the Isometric level project but time didn’t permit so. 

Sad story.

Well, alea iacta est, as they say. All that’s left is wait for the results and rest my mind and soul to be on top form for next year. Thank you for following my journey this far! See you around! 

Have a nice summer! :D

[matthew-william-rimington-blog]

Unreal 4 project 04

This post is not designed to be some sort of woe is I sort of thing or in any way shape or form to try an “guilt” people into a better marking. I feel this is a necessary post to explain myself and lack of attendance and how this shaped my design. If this comes of as anything else I do apologise and will remove if requested. 

During my first attempt at this class back when Simran Whitham was in my first year class I was beginning my transitioning process and back then that was enough to stop me from carrying on with the course. I had hoped to take a year and a half to get it sorted and return with a clear mind. This however was not the case, I had returned with a mind full of problems that affected my concentration on my studies and my ability to provide a total and undivided attention. I feel this may give the impression of me being a lacking student and someone who cares very little about this degree and what it offers. I can assure you this is my dream and if I don’t pass this year I will keep coming and coming until I do. 

Unreal was the thing I was most exited about learning. I desire greatly to be a level designer and want to learn programming in as many shapes and forms as the world offers. Unfortunately when it came time for Andy to begin teaching I was at my lowest on multiple anti-depressants and waiting for my autism test. But the biggest issue was the Sheffield gender identity clinic refusing the assist me in my transition. I had a plan on how I wanted to do this and they disagreed and told me it was their way or the highway. I am not one to cave to pressure as I feel if I had followed the path they offered I would most certainly been pushed farther than my mind would allow. 

With all this extra stuff and a great deal of family issues I was at a point I couldn’t get our of bed to attend what I consider some of the most vital and exiting lectures. But with talking to Lorraine in student services and my Dr’s I was able to balance myself compared to simply retreating to what I knew was safe last time. This year is not Matthew William Rimington and I will better myself and my understanding of unreal in preparation for 2nd year. I am not content with passes and will strive purely for distinctions on the coming 2 years. 

Again I cannon stress enough how much I feel this is important to my work as it shapes who I am as a designer and the work I produce and I have no doubt if this were some sort of guilt trip it would not affect marking anyways. But I am just a open person who believes emotional struggles outside of university are important and are as much apart of what forges our work as much as the engine itself. 

If this is in anyway shape or form considered inappropriate please send me an email and I will replace it with something purely for unreal. I hope you enjoy my walking simulator and all have a nice day.

[matthew-william-rimington-blog]

Unreal project 03

Now I had my plan drawn out I could go into unreal 4 and begin the level. Going into unreal 4 without much of any knowledge was at first overwhelming and I had to watch a lot of tutorial videos to get a bare bones understanding. Using maya for 3 years now was very helpful as I was rather attuned to the controls of unreal and could adapt a few skills over. But with the plan drawn out I managed to build the box itself rather simply, the blueprints and making simple things like doors functional was not only time consuming, but overwhelming. 

Having no idea on how to use blueprints and matinees took an absurd amount of time and lead to many breaks to not stress myself out. I think I watched over 10 different videos to just understand blueprints and more to get specifics. With the whitebox finished I could invest all the time I needed to learn blueprints and how they interact with the map. I have a tremendous amount to still learn with blueprints, but I found I loved using them and figuring out how they function. With this done I had lighting around my map and doors opening and closing. While simple I am very happy with my progress and look forward to returning next year with plenty more experience. 

[matthew-william-rimington-blog]

Unreal project 02

Now I was committed to a walking simulator, I could begin the planning phase of my design. I got out the pen and paper to draw a basic outline of how I wanted my level to go. I was inspired by the design choices made by “Alien Isolation”. Very tight and compact hallways and a mixture of well lit areas leading to much darker ones. 

I had drawn out multiple lay outs. Many very amazing, large and extravagant. Also way too unrealistic. I have a tendency to over do it in the planning phase and take sometime to realise where I am skill/knowledge wise. Once I had accepted limitations I had drawn out a simple plan that has some simple vertical and functional lighting/doors. 

[matthew-william-rimington-blog]

Unreal project 01

This post will be a brief description on why I chose a simplistic walking simulator over a more extravagant project like I had originally planned. During the planning stages early on I had planned on being in lectures full time and with the assistance of Andy being able to produce something more advanced along the lines of a simple intro to my other project “Swarm Boarders”. I wanted the player to walk through a hall and enter the “arena” in which they would have been greeted by a bot to tell them to get on the board and enter the obstacle course. This thought very quickly vanished and was replaced by a more realistic target. Once I had decided to do a short walking simulator it was all about proving on my own I could learn the basics of unreal and being able to produce a functional level. 

[matthew-william-rimington-blog]

Unreal Project blog posts opening.

In the next 5 blog posts I will be giving brief descriptions on the design choices I made and struggles I had during development. I hope I will be forgiven for this, but I have decided 1 of the blog posts will be dedicated the my mental state and how that has affected me over the year. I believe it is important for my tutors to understand in-depth and honestly I feel students being open and honest about real life hardships that affect university work is also important as our work can very easily represent our real life sometimes. 

[nicolahynesart]

Games Design: XB1000 - Hammer Girl Brief

(6/#)

Creating floating text for NPCs

I will use NPCs speech to be able to add some form of story to the game and later on be able to create a new Blueprint for a Quest giving NPC.

I have included screenshots of the blueprints used to allow the Farmer NPC to talk when the player is in range, and for the NPC to then stop talking when the player leaves the range of the NPC.

I created a trigger box around the NPC which will be the range that the payer must be in to trigger the NPC to begin speech, alongside the speech animation.

[jamesdanielsuclan-blog]

Textures - Games Jam 2018

One of the other jobs I have been given during this Games Jam has been to texture the “Neon Urban” themed levels in our game. 

They’re low poly models, and we were aiming for a simple block-style colour system. This area has an 80s retro vibe hence the slightly tinted purples (which would match with the bright purple/pink skybox in the level.

Along with these textures, I also developed matching light-maps, as the blue strips on the models are meant to be neon lights.