Christmas Update.

The Christmas break is here and I’ve been reflecting on my formative feedback and the term just passed.

I had a rough start at the beginning of this term, with a few mini crisis's about what I wanted to do with my life.

The deviation from game art at the start was mainly due to the fact that 2 weeks prior to starting back I had my back two molars removed and was on the absolute limit of painkillers that I could take. The withdrawal from being on these for so long caused some adverse side-effects which hit me for a number of weeks into the new term and caused a big impact on my work for that time, it was sloppy and not acceptable and it has shown in my formative assessment.

Over the break I have been told to redo most of my Visual design work thumbnails, finals and such, and no surprise, but I’m actually happy with this, I started the other day and already see massive improvements and what’s more I’m enjoying the work.

In Game production I faired much better, because of the longer time scale projects the period at the start had much less of an impact in 3D. So my work reflected this.

My only qualm about 3D was the fact in the blitz building project I did not assess the proper technical requirements for the brief, namely the tri budget. The surrounding buildings were at an average of 10-15k tri’s where as mine fell short -with the building showing this- at 6-7k tri’s. I really need to be very careful with this as faults like this would be unacceptable in industry, every asset has limitations to it’s tri count for a reason, and it is paramount that artists stick to them.

In lue of work that i have yet to screenshot/take photos of i will leave you with this meme:

Task 18: Elements of Game Technology, part one: game engines

‘Research the different kinds of engine, their advantages and disadvantages, market penetration, usability, technology features and what games they support.’

There are many different game engines for different purposes, platforms, genre, gameplay style and you cannot asses pros and cons of any until you are decided on those things.

Once you are, however you can begin to narrow down the choices. The main deciding factor will ultimately be does the engine give you tools that you will need/ use, in the case of the Frostbite 2 engine, well yes it does, but for more a shooter biased stand point. The engine focuses more on achieving fluid animations and physics along side map destructibility and map scale.

Where as engines like Unreal engine 3 and CryENGINE 3 are geared more towards advanced tessellation, minute details and displacement mapping.

(These are very limited overviews, each engine has it’s own focus, tools and unique capabilities.)

A small list of more popular engines:

FrostBite

Unreal

Unity

CryENGINE

Source

Blender

RPG Maker

BigWorld

Now usability, I would say that bottles down to the big three engines that have been made available for free download: Unreal Engine; Cry Engine; Unity engine. Now I cannot speak from personal experience about all three however I can about UDK. The Unreal Engine 3 is a complete game development framework for next-generation consoles, providing a vast array of core technologies, content creation tools, and support infrastructure required by top game developers. From personal experience it is more or less like learning 3Ds max, time consuming, daunting at first, however quick to pick up and remarkably powerful tools when you know how to use them.

Unity is a multiplatform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application, Unity just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars.

Unity supports a variety of platforms using a single editor. It supports advanced visual effects with shader material support.

Cry engine is Next-Gen ready with scalable computation and graphics technologies. CryENGINE 3 is the only game engine that provides multi-award winning graphics, state-of-the art lighting, physics and AI, out of the box.

Rather than me lengthily write the features I thought these videos would better explain:

Features of Unreal engine4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acR4n6lJEdQ

Features of CryENGINE3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWvgETOo5ek

Features of Unity4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpi4J11ZE1o

Finally I will list the most recognisable games made from these engines:

Unreal:

Batman Arkham City

BioShock Infinite

Dishonored

Borderlands 2

Gears of War Series

Cry Engine:

Sniper Ghost Warrior 2
Far Cry 3

Crysis series

Undead Labs - Class 3

Unity:

Kerbal Space Program

Call of Duty®: Strike Team

Deus Ex: The Fall

Guns of Icarus Online

External References From:

http://unity3d.com/

http://www.moddb.com/

http://www.unrealengine.com/

http://mycryengine.com/

http://haydizzle95.wordpress.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org

Task 16: Elements of game design, part eight: documentation

For this exercise, I’d like you to look at producing an outline and a technical

specification for a game.

Outline:

To create a third person, stylised fantasy action game with a linear storyline aimed towards a younger audience (7+).

The game will release across the console platforms of last gen (xbox 360 & PS3) and next gen (xbox one & PS4) hardware. It will feature 6 different ‘heroes’ or varying attributes and abilities that can be leveled along side 4 unlockable heroes through game progression. The main gameplay style will be one of a dungeon crawler in gameplay style, however inside a bright fantasy setting.

Software will include:

3ds max

Zbrush

ndo2

dDo.

Xnormal.

Aims:

Ability to produce, vibrant, stimulating environments for the younger audience.

To create an engaging, interesting story capable of being followed by the age group.

Use asset and environment budgets adequately and effectively for the best results, i.e.: mesh density, topology, clever use of maps for added detail, damage, wear and tare.

Make use of varying, interesting sound design throughout the game, varying area to area, don’t want the audience to tire of the level sound five minute in.

Imaginative upgrade/ perk system, no limits here, explosive radio controlled water bombs, fire auroras etc.

Technical specifications:

Heroes (main playable characters):

<12k Poly limit

LOD’s for 3rd person gameplay, battlegrounds and character/ upgrade selection.

<1024 main body diffuse, normal, specular, gloss (Max). (optional emissive map)

<256/ 512 added accessories.

Effective use of texture budget.

NPC:

<4k Poly limit

LOD’s for 3rd person gameplay and battlegrounds.

<1024 main body diffuse, normal, specular gloss (Max). (optional emissive map)

Effective use of texture budget.

Vehicles:

<10k Poly limit

LOD’s for 3rd person gameplay and battlegrounds.

<1024 main body diffuse, normal, specular, gloss (Max). (optional emissive map)

<256/ 512 added accessories/ decals.

Effective use of texture budget.

Environments:

<400k Poly Limit

LOD’s for displacement from player, 2 iterations.

<512 tillable textures, normal, specular, gloss. 1024 if absolutely necessary.

Decals and floating planes for breaking up textures.

Effective use of texture budget.

Props/ Scenery Objects:

<3k Poly limit

LOD’s for 3rd person gameplay and battlegrounds.

<512 main body diffuse, normal, specular gloss (Max). (optional emissive map)

Effective use of texture budget.

External References From:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=43975

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-564463.html

http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/threads/23520-Historical-Poly-Counts

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-472919.html

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122359&page=3