beauty screenshots

I took a series of 8 screenshot of my level in udk to be put into my portfolio. these demonstrate how effectly i have used the lighting in udk and placed my modular assets in engine to create the environment. Their is also a landscape material and mesh placed under the level where have used heightmapping and 2 different materials to create the land mass.

maps and material editor in udk

I created various different maps for each of the modular assets withing my game. These included opacity, diffuse, specular and normal maps. I did however encounter a lot of problems with the opacity map on my windows. This was due to the opacity happening all over my assets and an error in my original max file that made all the assets act really strangely, I fixed this by re-doing all my modular assets ove rthe course of one day.

This is how i have set up my UDK material, showing each of the maps. The opacity map is in the alpha channel of the diffuse texture.

google sketch up map

This map shows the original map I had for my level design. This was too ambiscious as their were too many interiours and the map was too large to create in the time that I had.

Level walkthrough

This video demonstrates my level from start to finish, it is a lot shorter and smaller than i original anticipated but it still works and shows off what i was trying to do. This is due to time restrictions and have problems with modular meshes along the way.

gameplay Idea's

The idea behind the gameplay of my level is that the player aquires special powers to take down a bounty target.

The player can teleport in this example which i replicated by attaching a triger to the character and with key button press this teleports the player to the trigger. This works ok and is ok for prototyping but would more in depth programming for a finished standard.

I also looked at AI and HUD in udk to prototype both of these work really nicely but same as the teleport mechanic only for prototyping purposes.

I also was going to create a mechanic that when the player dies they become a ghost and leave their body before respawning at a "hellgate" giving them a slight tactical advantage over enemies, however because of how i had set up the teleport mechanic this was no longer do able.

I looked at the folowing sites for tutorials for guidence:

http://www.hourences.com/tutorials/
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/cat_udk.php

Level sketchs

I started this project by craete a small sketch sheet showing the buildings and how modular assets will create them. This helped me to understand what assets I will need to create.

To do this first I looked into both are's of the theme of my game. Here are some examples of my reasrch images and my sketch page.

inspirational people

Viktor Antanov, the art director on noticeable title such as Dishonored and  Half-Life 2. I really like Viktor's art style, i feel it is very stylized but still retains a high amount of detail giving it a unique feel.

Scoot Sinclair, the art director of the original bioshock has an amazing artist i find the strange yet kind of graphic look to his art style very interesting.

Jaime McNutty is part of the team at irrational is one of the environmental artists their. This is the career i would like to aspire for when leaving uni and maybe into a art director role later on in life

Environmental artist job role

A environmental artist is in charge of creating the environments of a game under the advisement and leadership of seniors and an Art director. The job position could compose of creating 3D assets that will create the world that the player will explore and placing them together in the engine.

An environmental artist earns an average salary of $46,000 (2011) for less than 3 years experience which less than a programming job. With more years experience and a promotion of an Art Director role can earn an average of $107,000 which is a big difference.

facts have been found in this article on the salaries of game devs: http://gamedeveloper.texterity.com/gamedeveloper/fall2011cg#pg27

This forum was also found useful:
http://eat3d.com/forums/general-chat/what-it-takes-be-environment-artist

My plans after uni

My plans after university are to hopefully start off at a UK company as a junior environmental, I have a strong interest in this subject and find it really entertaining creating the worlds the player will be exploring.

After working after i while i would like become a senior environmental artist and hopefully maybe even become a art director after a few years. I wish to work for irrational studios (well know for the bioshock series) as I find the art style and worlds that they create very unique and very interesting and think that the art style is nice chance to get creative while staying working for a large company.

Their are a few people in this field that i wish to aspire to such as Viktor Antanov, Scott Sinclair and Jamie McNutty.

Each of the areas discussed will have blog posts that go into more details following this.

My job role.

In my group I had to come up with the card designs and all the mechanics that go with them. I started with a few idea's and play tested each to see how they would actually work with our board game. This required a few different session to get a final idea on how the final game would work.

the final idea worked using a different set of cards with separate illustrations and comments demonstrating what each of the different cards worked, these were only used in combat against other monster such as the junk titan. Their were also environmental cards which did not work as well as intended as it got difficult to track when it had been 5 turns and events cards which could either help or hinder the player depending what card was chosen.

Final Models

(The images will not upload onto the blog for some reason but this images are printed in my portfolio)

These models are efficently all under 2,000 polys and the texture is nicely applied using a ambient occlusion the original plan was give these models a more borderlands 2 style which i researched into using the art borderlands 2 book but due to time restrants was not able to persue this.

Final turnarounds

Build of heavy model

 

The heavy model was the first I did so i took screenshots as I was creating it I managed to stay under the limit of 2,000 polys (without acessories) and this is my favourite of the models. This however did take the most time as I need to refresh my skills in character model and had to keep changing certian parts as shown above to make them look nicer the texture will make this model stand out more.

Final unwraps

These unwraps all efficently use ambient occlusion maps generated through 3ds max. I think this gives the shading a very team fortress 2 style.

Future Job role

When i finish university I aspire to be an environment artist. This job role requires a good understanding of 3d software to model assets to be levels but also requires strong 2D art skills for texturing, both hand painted and photographic. Look at a job in this role for an idustry stand would require a high end portfolio showing a range of skills using a selection of these software, primarily 3ds max and photoshop.

Aswell as these skills it would be nessesary to have a strong understanding of lighting within a scene to add depth to the environment.

An environment artist can develop upto even becoming the art director of a project.

"examples of Industry standard environment art"

 

Example of job advertisement for sony

http://www.gamesrecruit.co.uk/JobDetail.aspx?id=13948

combat idea's

These Idea's are for combat mechanics that could be used within our board game.

• Dice based attack and defend system

This sytem works with 2 dice, one die represents defence and the other attack. The difference is taken off the players health. This mechanic removes most of the skill and stratergy from the player, this will more than probably make the game quite repetative so another combat system will work better. this however could be usefull during the early prototyping stages.

• Equipment cards

The player will be given an equipment card everytime they spawn which is most times a weapon but always will be able to deal damage.

• Attachment cards

These attachment cards can be placed upon your current equipment to give the player different effects wether it be enhanced movement to increased attack range.

• Character HP

This is amount of health that the player has. When this deplieted the player has been killed. the player can only attack once per turn aslong as they are in range.

• player re spawn

When the player dies they miss a turn, lose their current equipment and if they are holding the artifact they lose it to the person who killed them.

• Event cards

The event cards can be played at any time after being picked up from certain place on the game board. These can either help your player with things like speed boosts or hinder the other players with things like alien attacks that kill them.

Zombies!!! research

Zombies!!! Is a board game that make players work together in the zombie apocalypse? This is another cooperative game where player’s work together using teamwork and strong communication, but this time the aim is to survive and escape the city.

The game uses figures for the survivors and zombies as game pieces. Zombies!!! Works using events/item card that the player can use at certain points to make or break the game. The effects of these cards can vary from tied shoe laces that tip up your opponents to get eaten, to doubling your ammunition. Playing these cards at certain points lead to interesting gameplay that can be a complete game changer for players.

"Zombies!!! cover art"

"The game's contents"

Gears of War board game research

The gears of war board game is a spin off the xbox video game of the same name. I am mainly going to look at how the combat is simulated from the video game. The game is completely a cooperatively experience where the aim is to defeat the locust using teamwork and real life communication.

The main emphasis of the game is replicating the standoff style fire fights of the video game. This is done using a mixture of cards, dice and player position. The player is able to roll a die that tells them their defence, if the player is positioned within cover they are able to use more dice, increasing their defence. The player is able to fight back against the locust using weapon cards that deal a certain amount of damage and have a number of ammo which resembles uses, also some of the weapons have special abilities that work off rolling dice so have a random chance of happening.

This combat seems fun as it gives the player strategy to which weapons to use as well as how to use them. However this seems like it could be a little difficult to keep track off with different weapons.

"Weapon cards"

"Board game in play"

Mulefa turnaround

This is the design turnaround for my mulefa. after finishing the model I think that the over all design could be better as the middle 2 legs dont really work together. To even imagine this animal was extremely difficult but after modelling it I think i will go back and re design it to improve both the blueprints and the model.

robot turnarounds

These are the turnarounds that I have created for my model. I original created this turnaround using block colour and straight line art. This doesnt look as nice as i was hoping for so i decided to give them a black and white sketch look.

I think that the sketch look turned out better but i will improve on this by adding more details and some annotions to give these blueprints a more professional look.

Breakdown of the rules of 21

Constitutive rules of 21

·         The player can only have 5 cards at once or the game will end

·         A game of 21 technical last one round unless agreed upon more

·         Dealer busts everyone wins

·         Played with a standard 52 card deck excluding jokers

·         If 2 or more players have same highest total player with the least amount of cards wins