Approaches in Games Industry

The start of the design process in games is a very important stage and can affect the entire game when finished. There are various ways to begin the design process, such as using an existing IP. There is also a 'me too' element to design process, which sees game companies making similar products to successful companies. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with this, very good games have come out this way. Most new ideas come from mixing and matching existing ideas, there is nothing new under the sun after all.

Research and development is also important in game making. When an idea is formed it is important to research into this idea by searching for things similar to it and things related to it. You also need to think of the genre and feel of the game you are creating, are you making a horror game? Is it for adults or children? These are all things that need to be addressed early in the game making process.

When the idea and research has been all put together it is time to create concepts for the game. Most people think of art to give inspiration for certain scenes, but concepts can come in other forms as well. Basic cubed out levels, scripts for the story, sound prototypes, all of these help build the concept of the game and inspires the game makers.

Moral Kombat

During a session, we watched Moral Kombat, a feature length documentary about the history of violence in video games. The film goes at great length charting the history of violence in Games, giving a balanced view for each argument, though I personally believed that the film leaned against violence in videogames.

Violence in videogames has been discussed many times over its history, many people complaining that this violence causes real life violence in children. However, I disagree with this standpoint. In this day and age millions of children have been shown violence in video games, and barely any have repeated the actions in these games. I think that most children can differentiate violence in a video game
and real life violence and the idea that they can't comprehend the difference is a little insulting to their intelligence.

I believe the rare moments of history where video games have influence people to cause violence are in people who have other, deeper factors affecting them as well, it is foolish to assume that a video game alone could affect someones mind so radically. Much like movies and books, violence has always been around in our media, just because Video games are a new media doesn't make it suddenly much more dangerous.

Floating Island

Unity Web Player | Web version

« created with Unity »

Finished level

I have now textured the fence posts which means everything is now textured in my level.

Finally I have added a toon outline around the objects to fit with the light hearted cartoon style I was going for.

Particles and Textures

I have done a lot since my Crit. I have now replaced all of the boards with a textured white wood. I have also added some particle effects to make it look like magic is preventing you from falling off the edge, fitting with the Sceneography well.

I have also textured my house, adding windows a door and boards to it.

Finally I have added a tree texture and leaves to the trees. The other tree will soon have these new textures as well.

Final Crit

For the Final crit I managed to get the texture work for the roof/hat done. For the crit we walked around the room, testing everyone's games and writing out criticism for each game.

When we had finished I had gotten a lot of notes and suggestions for making my world better, the most prominent being that the wind sound effect is a but jarring with the rest of the levels mood. There were also some quick fixes that I needed to do, such as adding colliders to certain things.

I will try and implement these suggestions and improve my level as much as possible for when it is finally released.

Grass and Music

I have now added boards to all of the Fence posts, I have also added an invisible wall around the entire floating island to prevent players from falling out of the world.

I have also fixed the problems with my Big Crystal! I fixed this by triangulating the entire mesh and setting all of the normals to always face outwards, eliminating any backface culling.

I have now added a texture to the ground, I have emulated the texture style of Skyward Sword to get a nice cartoony style.

Finally I have added sound to the entire enviroment, with water sound when you get close to the pond and wind sound effect where ever you are.

Big Crystal

I have now replaced the large placeholder cube with the new crystal. However there are some problems with this, as the model is complicated, some faces have disappeared. I will have to make sure to fix this as soon as possible as the Crit is coming up.

Fence, Dock, Water

I have now added fence posts around the island, I still need to add boards connecting all of the fence posts though, I also still need to texture them.

I have added water to the pond, I will need to add sound and texture on the ground to make it look more blue.

I have detailed out the dock to make it look more natural I still need to texture them though.

Floating Gorund In

I have now replaced the terrain with a Maja object, it is now rounded and seems like it's floating in the sky. I used the Boolean tool to create indents into a cylinder, creating a simple path and area for the pond.

Wizard Hats and Trees

I have made more progress on my Unity level. I have added a simple skybox to the scene, though I would like a customised one, I am not sure on how to make one.  I have modeled out the roof for the house and the trees around my path. I have also added my tutorial tree into the scene, though I will be editing it later. The trees and the roof are not textured yet, I am putting these in right now as a crit is coming up and I'd like everything I've done so far to be up for show.

I will also need to add leaves to my trees at some point.

Crystal Building and Prototype

I have started on my level, first building my enviroment using cubes and shapes in Unity. I am using the terrain tool to create the ground but I will eventually have to replace it with a Maya object as I can't create round terrain.

I created some simple crystal shapes in Maya and gave them a simple texture. I added a transparency filter in Maya but it wouldn't translate in Unity.

 
So Instead I used a unique shader for the crystals called FX glass. Not only did this make the crystals see through, but it also made it shiny and warp things when looked through it. I am very pleased with how this has turned out and will use it for the rest of my crystals.

Skyward Islands

A heavy influence to my concepts is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, specifically the floating islands of Skyloft. I really like the bright and colourful feel of the entire game, it is something that I would like to emulate for my own floating Island.

All of the textures in Skyward Sword are cartoon-y and painterly, I will have to make sure I choose similar textures for my own enviroment.

Avatar's Floating Islands

One of my first influences when looking into floating islands was the movie Avatar, which features massive floating mountains. These look fantastic, though I don't think I'd be able to recreate these. I am personally looking for a more cartoon-y style and look.

Final Concept and Floor Plan

I have produced a final concept for my floating island enviroment. After the tree tutorial I decided to make the trees have multicolored leaves as it makes the environment feel more magical and fit the feel I am going for.

I also produced a simple floor plan based on this concept to help the modelling process.

House designs

In my Sceneography I wrote about how a Wizard lived on the Island. However, I did not think that it would be obvious to the player that a Wizard lived there. I thought of an idea to combine a traditional wizards hat with the house.

I think this will help communicate with the player and set the mood of the enviroment a lot easier.

Floating Island Concepts and Sceneography

I developed my sketches a bit more and made a new concept for my Floating Island Environment. I used my Sceneography to also help develop my concepts.

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 SCENEOGRAPHY – REFINED BRIEF

Name : Ryan Lancaster

Project Brief:  UFO/ FAIRYTALE / KIRKSTALL ABBEY - ( delete as applicable )

Project Title: Floating Island

Broad Audience:  Child / Teen / Family / Mature  - (delete as applicable )

Mood / Atmosphere: Light, relaxing.

Scene Description

Time of Day: Midday/morning                INTERIOR / EXTERIOR / BOTH

Explanation / Backstory of Scene:

A man, travelling through the skys by airship, falls after encountering a turbulent storm. He awakes to find himself on a floating island, covered in grass and peppered with gigantic glowing crystals. The only signs of civilisation being a single house, owned by an eccentric wizard and a dock going out to the open sky. Smaller islands can be seen in the distance, with similar crystals on them.

The entire island is calm and relaxing. A small pocket of nature in the sky.

 
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I have taken some inspiration from games such as Skyward Sword and Crash Bandicoot, I would like to recreate the simple and lighthearted feel those games had.

Modelling and UV maps in Unity

We have been practicing modeling in Maya as well as UV maps. Here I have made a tree and imported it into unity.

Unity Web Player | Tree export enviroment

« created with Unity »

First I create the tree by manipulating a cylinder in Maya, once I did that I needed UV maps for the tree. I did this by anchoring one side of the trees vertexes and 'unfolding' it out, I did this for each individual branch to make things more simpler. I then covered the map with a tree texture in photoshop and attached it to the geometry.

For the branches and leaves I found a suitable texture on the internet and made the background transparent in Photoshop. I then placed these textures on a plane and placed them around the tree. I then exported the tree as a .FBX file so that I could use it in Unity.

Finally I added the shader 'Nature / Tree Soft Occlusion Leaves' in Unity. This would mean the leaves and branches will have transparency and visible from both sides.

This took quite a while to do so I'll have to make sure to have a lot of tome to create my game assets.

Floating Island sketches

I made some sketches for my Floating Island enviroment.

At the moment I'm still getting a feel for how I want the Island to look. I have decided I want to have a family friendly enviroment, one which is bright and colorful.

UFO B-movie scene

Here is some sketches for the B-movie UFO crash scene.

The scene would be set in a warehouse, with a section changed with a fake UFO and backdrops. There would also be film equipment and various other things. The area would be blocked off by warehouse walls.

I really like the twist in the UFO crash here, as I am using cliche UFO visuals, it should also be pretty easy to model.