Practical Skills
Practical Production Update 1 - 24/3/22
This is the very start of my practical. When deciding what to do I went for a very systematic approach. I created a Trello page to help me keep track of what I'll be doing in the following weeks and sorted them from priority top to bottom so I had an order to follow up on.
The first thing I created for practical were the Models I needed for my game, this was a fairly easy process to create the assets inside of rooms.. However, the rooms themselves I decided to create modularly and based off of my map
design I needed multiple corridors, such as a T-Junction and corner pieces. As well as this, the larger rooms were going to be square instead of triangular like the corridors are, so I also had to make a modular piece that converts from triangular corridors to square ones as well as a door module so I can lock rooms behind progression.
After modelling a basic list of assets with little to no issues (that may increase based on needs as I get further into the project), I began to texture my assets. I started with the modular wall assets as they will be the most important to create to a high standard.
I went through a few designs before settling on a final one, I settled on a 'London Brick' texture with a golden tint and a lowered contrast to make them seem more like old sandstone, similar to that of a tomb.
The final thing I have textured so far is the Door, and while this design might change as time progresses, for now it is a slightly more golden door with Hieroglyphs and a gemstone encrusted on it.
Graybox Assets
Practical Production Update 2 - 4/4/22
The first thing I did was finishing the texturing of all of my assets, I did this with UVW unwraps and mapping with photoshop, I chose this approach as most of my assets were single colours or repeatable patterns that didn't require the precision of a longer process with a different program. Texturing is one of the more difficult aspects of the project for me so I took a lot of care with my models, spending more time that I would've hoped doing it, luckily, I can make up for lost time in the programming section of the project later in its development.
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After finally finishing the textures of all my assets and importing them into UE4 I edited the collision to be complex to allow player movement, then I started creating my level. I did the same design as my concept, only slightly adjusting it for convenience of the model's scale as well as creating a starting point for the player that introduces verticality.
I came across a few issues of my seamless texture not being seamless between other assets, however, its barely noticeable in its current state and will become even less noticeable as the lighting and other features progress.
After creating the level, I tested the player walking around the level before deciding to shrink the player down and reduce its width to make the tomb seem bigger and allow for more movement in the corridors.
As I progress with filling the rooms, I may decide to adjust the larger rooms in height, length or width to fit my needs, however the basic layout should stay fairly similar to what it is now for the rest of the project.
Practical Production Update 3 - 28/4/22
Since my last update the first thing I did was finish fully furnishing the rooms with the basic assets so that I could then replace certain assets with blueprints to fit my needs.
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For example I started by replacing all the Sarcophagus' with openable ones so that the player can walk or climb inside them and find more hidden things and coins, it took a few attempts to get the opening/closing speed to something I thought was acceptable.
I then replaced all the torches with flammable ones that the player could walk up to with a lit flame to ignite it, allowing the player to keep track of where they have been and light up the tomb, I did this simply by replicating the door code, removing the need to interact and making it activate when you walk inside a trigger box. I also made a variable to track if the player's torch was lit or not.
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and finally replacing gold piles with collectible ones to actually give the game its gameplay loop, making coins give random amounts each time and making high scores all that more challenging, doing this very simply to have 2 variables, one with the players total coins and another with the amount in the pile that randomises between 5 and 20 when the player collects it, then adding that value to the total.
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After building the lighting for the first time and making necessary adjustments the atmosphere of the game has greatly increased with it seeming more like an underground environment, throughout the project I would make more minor adjustments to lighting that made the game more atmospheric.
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As well as this I'm starting to implement UI elements such as the Main Menu, Pause Menu, Options Menu and Control Menu, using tutorials, however the widget code is always one of the more difficult aspects of the project.
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I'm getting very close to finishing my practical and only have a few things left to do, but the game is playable now.
Practical Production Update 4 - 3/5/22
Since the last practical update I have finished all my widgets and UI elements, the game looks visually appealing and is enjoyable, the tutorials I used mainly came from Matt Aspland as his tutorials are well made and clear as well as having separate tutorials for different menus that work with each other.
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The main thing I've done in this production update is audio. I have both the game music and menu music implemented and looping as well as sound effects. I also learnt how to use attenuation with my SFX to make things sound better when they are further away (e.g. a door opening on the other side of the tomb). Implementing game music and menu music is very easy and I could do it from memory and the attenuation was mainly trial and error on my own as the settings of it was very easy to change and implement, adjusting it slightly each time until I was happy with it.
The sound effects however, are always the most difficult part of audio production, I encountered a problem where sounds that play on any asset with an animation would repeat every frame creating a mess of sound. To fix this I used custom events, I learnt that custom events are a way of doing two parts of code at the same time, spanning from one like a branch, this allowed me to only play the sound once as the door opens. As well as this, with the Sarcophagus' the audio would be longer than the animation, therefore I had to change the start time to match the animation as increasing the animation time made it open too slowly for the player.
Practical Production Update 5 - 9/5/22
This might be the final practical update since the game itself is pretty much done.
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I started by making an opening cutscene as well as an ending screen with your 'Gold Collected' on screen, the cutscene was easy to implement as I had done it before on a previous project and the ending screen gold was easy as its just calling the existing variable.
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I then gave all my UI elements a visual overhaul to make them all appealing to a player, as before it was basic black text on a vanilla background and giving it a background more appealing to the theme would be important as it's the first thing you see.
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The next thing was recommended to me. I selected all my modular assets (e.g. the walls, floors, and ceilings) and merged them all together in a single asset so that the lighting would work per tile and be more natural, as in UE4 when working with modular assets, the lighting likes to change depending on the tile not the surface.
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When I reached a point I felt I was complete to a high standard, I asked some classmates to playtest my game and give me feedback I could implement and pick up on any bugs I didn't find myself. In which I discovered a bug that broke the game by pausing in a menu, which I quickly fixed (by making a check for being on a menu or in the game) as well as adding multiple smaller features they thought the game lacked and to improve the flow of gameplay, including a timer.
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The last thing I plan to do on my practical work for this project is check for and fix any remaining bugs as well as record gameplay for my 'Final Project & Evaluation' section of the website.
