373 Game Scene - Final Presentation

Here is the presentation my group had prepared for the final class session. It details the minutiae of the scene we had put together, highlighting who did what. At the end is a walkthrough video that shows everything in action.

Each part of the buildings is made with modular function in mind. The various parts, such as corners, doorways, and roofing, are individual sections that can be shifted around at will to create another building. The same is available for the outside walls and staircases; the walls are one generic asset that was duplicated and snapped together to form larger and longer sections.

The terrain, particle and environment effects, and placement of assets was handled by other group members. As I have detailed previously, I was given the task of creating a laundry list of small assets to flesh out the scenery. This includes furniture, containers, decorative items, gates and fences, and so on. In addition, I attempted to unwrap each model's UV data and arrange them in a way that would fit within the limited texture data we were allotted. In the end, my teammates took what I had created and textured and arranged my models how they saw fit.

Creating the models was not difficult. I was given ample polygon budgets, and while initially I attempted to keep my polycounts as low as possible, on later models I focused on providing more detail that the small textures could provide. My process involves a lot of extruding to slowly mold a model into a desired shape piece by piece, and also breaking something down into one specific part or half and mirroring it through the necessary axises when it's good enough to do so. The most difficult and time consuming part was unwrapping UVs. It was unfortunate that I spent so much of my resources on trying to intelligently place all the different UV spaces, when it so happened to be that my teammates found my UVs to be poorly cut and they ended up rearranging everything to fill out available space. It made me feel as though I had not contributed in a meaningful way.

Going forward, I would have liked to have a project of this scope with no other distractions to take up time and energy, so I could really make something fantastic. I imagine that, in the industry, people aren't constantly having to worry about other simultaneous projects that aren't directly related to their main field of work in a tangible manner. I found that my group seemed to have created more professional materials than I had provided, which again made me feel less than enthused in my work.

3D Level 2 Playtest

For the final project in my 270 course, we were given a set of assets in Unity and tasked with blocking out a full level. The theme was supposed to be a 3D stealth-platformer. Among the assets were some simple pickups, a variety of environmental detail, robot enemies that followed a set tracking path, and scripting for ending the level.

My level was initially based on a concept for a different assignment. I liked the idea of it enough that I reused some elements, namely the waterfall sequence and the underground parts. Some things were not able to be recreated in Unity due to my lack of programming knowledge.

I also didn't really know a way to make what I was given into what was assigned. I ended up just using the patrol robots as platforming obstacles and made a series of short courses that would be combined to create a semi cohesive level.

Players responded favorably to my level. They liked the use of robots as obstacles and the steadily ramping up challenge of the level. They appreciated how I split the level into sections that were completed individually to prevent them having to repeat parts they already got past. They were compelled to get past the challenge and did not find it to be unfair in most cases. 

A few players did not respond as favorably to the challenge, finding the player controller too unforgiving and ill-designed to use. Some players opted to skip levels after dying several times in order to see what the other levels offered, rather than wait to do so after completing what they were currently playing.

Players said that, in order to improve the level, I should change the lighting to make the level more pleasant to look at. They noted it was fairly dark in important areas and hard to see obstacles. Another way to make the level better would be to seamlessly transition between each segment as they are completed. This is possible to do in Unity, but requires me to do some scripting that I probably cannot do. Lastly, the platforming could be a bit tighter to account for the player controller's limited movement ability.

The biggest failure of the levels I created is that they don't exactly fit what was supposed to be, which was a stealth-focused platformer that encourages exploration. I just made a straight platforming challenge. At this point, with the feedback I received, I doubt I could add anything meaningful to the level besides tighten up what is already there.

In conclusion, more players enjoyed playing the level than those that did not. I hope it is seen as fun and interesting.

Yet Another 373 Final Project Update

All of my current models have been UV'd and are placed within the same UV texture spaces in preparation for texturing. This was very taxing. I also have centered everything at the origin, although the scale is considerably different for each model. It is a good thing that Unity allows models to be rescaled in-engine.

During the week, I will try to help my team get the models textured, as well as create some more models for them to utilize.