Link to game – Hard-Wired by BEANMOON (itch.io)

 

Reflection

I knew that this assignment would have its challenges, and I was correct. This ended up being both a very rewarding and interesting experience, and incredibly frustrating. From the beginning there were communication issues with the level designers in our group. In the end, only one person made the deadline and handed anything in, which did end up reflecting badly on us. We were stuck with an unclear direction, creating assets for general levels rather than specific ones. Even when we ironed out what the levels would be, there was no further communication from them up until the last few weeks, where only two out of three interacted with us at all. Furthermore, with more of a personal impact, the guy modelling the gun was hard to get a hold of, and only communicated when I messaged first, which ended up being frustrating because it led to mistakes and misunderstandings not once but twice.

Personally, I felt like I could’ve done more this assignment, I concepted, modelled, UV’d, rigged and animated the arms, and I concepted, rigged and animated the transforming gun. I initially agreed to work on D3 because I thought there’d be more to do for him, but unfortunately a lot of it was down to figuring out what could be done in engine, and any possible cutscenes or further animation would’ve been defined by the level designers and what was required to make a narrative work, which we had to remove because of time issues and the lack of reliability on their end. It ended up being a combination of being told it would be easier to do in engine, which is completely fine, and a lack of communication from key members of our group. In hindsight, I would’ve likely modelled the gun myself, and sorted an alternative to make sure we art students could still adequately work despite the inactivity of other members.

I’m proud of what I did produce, I recognise I made a lot of mistakes and I likely could’ve accomplished more if I managed my time better between all my assignments. However, I can say that I dedicated a ridiculous amount of time to this project, and I think my genuine care and willingness to apply feedback shows through the amount of iterations and tests I did. I rigged three guns total to ensure it would work, and problem-solved the blendshapes debacle quickly. I had plan A-Z on how to deal with it, and I’m proud of how I handled that situation. I also think I approached my roles with good understanding and communicativeness, I was one of the people who was constantly asking questions and was present for almost every team meeting. I feel like I pulled my weight in a team context, and I’m happy with the progress I’ve made as an artist this semester. I got to work on rigging, which was a skill I hadn’t had a lot of practice with, and I got to try modelling something humanoid. There’s a lot of areas for improvement, but I can acknowledge I made a lot of progress in various areas of the 3D pipeline, and I think I built better communication skills, I feel more confident communicating issues and advocating for what I think is a realistic goal.

I have a tendency to be too harsh on myself, so I want stress that I think I did a good job. This was so far outside of my comfort zone, I had no idea what would go into making a first person shooter, especially one where the main weapon is a transforming gun. At the beginning of this project, I had no idea how to even approach that. It took a lot of testing, trying new things, and even though it didn’t end up exactly how I envisioned, I did my part to the best of my ability. This was my first ever attempt at animating something robotic. I’m happy to learn from this experience and carry the skills I’ve developed into my next project. While I’m disappointed at some of the shortcomings, like the fact the gun doesn’t get bigger in the final prototype and that the gun didn’t have as much for me to play around with as I’d have liked, I also acknowledge that I had no say in those decisions ultimately, and those that did were stretched thin because of the lack of activity from important members of our group. I think despite this, we created a fun, fast paced fps.