Context & Research

What this is for:

This section is used in order to show the research that has been collected and written up from beginning to end of my project

Walking Simulator Review (Tacoma)

The study diamond is a four-step approach. Try to apply it to a walking simulator game (of your choosing) in the following way:

What effects does the game experience have on you? What does it make you feel or think about?
The game provides an eerie feeling as you slowly explore the ship to discover what happened and how the crew lived and worked, which all adds up to the story of the crew.
Which techniques are used by the developers? In this case, think about any narrative and any imagery used.
The developers allow the player to pick up most of the floating objects to look at and inspect them while always directing the player to where they need to go as they progress further and further into the space station. As you begin to enter you see how vast the station is and the part of space around you. Due to the sheer gigantic size of the space station it makes you feel rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things
Are there any aspects about the context that need to be considered? This could include who created the game, where it was created, when and under what circumstances, as well as your relationship with its context.
Fullbright are the team that developed Tacoma which announced at The Game Awards in December 2014 created in Portland, Oregon, US
Ask yourself about the meaning of the walking simulator – what you think the game is about, and whether it might be trying to convey any messages.
I think the game is truly about uncovering the secrets of the ship and past crew, I don't believe it has any extra messages behind the story it's trying to tell though

3 Initial Ideas:

1. Dungeon exploration, sent into a dungeon to explore and uncover the hidden treasures within the abandoned structure to learn about the past of this building.

2. Winter Fortress, you're the chief guard at a high security winter fort you must go around performing checks to make sure the area is maintained with the end goal of discovering the escaped convicts exit point.

3. Desert Shrine, you wander through a desert dehydrated, looking for water, shade and riches which after a while of wandering you come across a shrine hidden in the sand with a miniature water source. Explore the shrine and stay hydrated before returning to your village

Mind Map

This is a mind map of my game ideas in which I chose to go down the mechanic route in which I very much favoured the inventory system and the lantern system

The time period I wished to set my game in was the renaissance period due dungeons being more popular around the time being underneath and in castles in that time period

This is a Moodboard made for my Dungeon Walking Simulator game. which has given me ideas for how I want the dungeon to look and the way I can decorate the interior of my own

SWOT Analysis

Strengths:
Several paths to take
Time Management
Unreal engine Knowledge developing
3DS max Development

Neat presentation

Weaknesses:
Lack of Detail in evaluations
Lack of Detail in models
Creating Detail

Opportunities:
Develop blueprinting with UE4
Develop texturing abilities with 3DS Max

Threats:
Loss of work
Missing a Session
Unable to locate documents
Holidays

Contingency Plan

This is my Gantt chart for my final project which I'm planning on using as a reference to keep me on track throughout the project

Contextual & Theoretical Research

Dungeons were typically built underneath a castle for prisoners to increase the feeling of solidarity. It was typical for prisoners to be tortured in dungeons for a wide variety of reasons being common in medieval times but continued to be constructed into the renaissance. Mainly constructed between 1154 & 1485

1st Dungeon reference on Bibliography page

However not all dungeons were built underground some were built within the tallest, most secure tower within the castle

2nd Dungeon reference on Bibliography page

Dungeons are featured in several forms of media a key one being films with films being a big part in how people perceive dungeons. The Prison in Aladdin is very close to what a dungeon would typically be within a castle

Ideas Pitch Recording

This is the pitch for my Final project presentation in which I recapped a powerpoint and answered some questions about my project

Substance Painter Research

Adobe Substance 3D provides you with 4 choices being, Painter, Sampler, Designer, Stager.
Painter: Painter is used for texturing 3d models and very accessible for all creative professionals, painter helps you achieve the look you want, from product design to realistic games and add visual effects such as stylised animation granting full creative freedom with smart tools for the ability show realistic surface detail. The high tier viewport in painter shows the artistic decisions in real time. Add on to complex materials with advanced lighting and shadows.
Sampler: Sampler is used for transforming real world pictures into 3D materials to create seamless tileable materials from your captures. You're also able to combine multiple materials and add parametric filters to create advanced surfaces and access several thousands of materials on Substance 3D assets/Community assets
Designer: Designer is used across many industries and is the centre of most video game and vfx pipelines. You're able to send any of your created materials directly to Substance 3D Painter & Stager. The node-based workflow grants you the ability to use several approaches any step of the process can be tweaked later. Allowing you to try as many possibilities as you want.

Some of the key features/tools of Substance Painter consist of:

-Dynamic Brushes and projection tools/particles. That also support Photoshop brush presets.
-Smart Materials and Smart Masks, allows you to apply realistic textures/details from the most subtle detail to the extreme details
-Advanced Material creation. The ability to reproduce the real life subsurface scattering, sheen etc.

I would use substance painter to make my project look more realistic and if I was going to a go down a more graphical route and if I had more time to come to grips with it and fully understand how to use it efficiently

Peer Review Feedback

This is my feedback received from 3 of my peers. I forgot to publish my page before we did this therefore it looked as though lots was missing when in reality it was mostly there just unviewable. All points of feedback have been took onboard and therefore the homepage image rotation which I was unaware of has been removed and now it is much more simple and easy to get to my work and several more images have been added since the requests of them.

Effective Sound Design

Sound design is referred to as 50% of the final product with sound wanted to accompany what you're visualising for example, when walking on bricks the sound of the footsteps being on bricks rather than just walking on stone and being the noise as if they're walking on wood. The sound should accompany the visuals fluently and not create discord within the game.

Sound also helps create a sense of realism immersing you within the world you're in from ambient cave noises such as water droplets or echoing throughout or if you're in the woods you would have some ambience for animals and maybe slight wind involved in creating this immersive environment.

This is a Video Essay about the sound design within Fight Club, the sound within fight club basically helping the movie be as good as it was. Movie's and games are very similar in how their sound should work, David Lynch saying, 'films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual'.
Additionally in the same article says:
'Good sound design is meant to be paired so perfectly with the visuals that the sound often goes unnoticed.

Similar to what a cinematographer does, it’s all about creating an environment that viewers experience with their ears.' All of these connecting how sound monumentally improves upon the experience of both movies and games

The article: By Fiona Thomas

This is a video centred around why good sound in video games is important with how sounds make a game a good experience, if a game doesn't have immersive sound it can just feel like a cold void. And although the gameplay might be fun if you don't get the satisfaction of feeling like you're in an environment the game experience is typically lacklustre due to not having any punch behind their game. For example, landing off a semi high rooftop, you would expect to hear a form of thud which would bring the sense of realism and make it seem like a fun immersive experience