Creating Our Game
During the first week we got sorted in to our groups; unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it in due to transport issues but my team thankfully kept me up to date and sent me a link to the group chat to discuss our plans! They had already made a ‘Miro’ whiteboard with the ideas that they discussed in class.
We all wanted to research a bit more before week two – I wanted to look more into the games which we referenced as I wasn’t too sure what some of them were about!
I know for our group, we wanted the game to be a puzzle/ platform game with a story to be about a child who was experiencing abuse and was trying to find a way to escape reality; we decided to make it so he had some sort of magic crayon which allowed him to create portals that would lead him to the ‘imaginary’ version of each room which would include the puzzles.
After looking at some of the references and trying to understand the art style, I found another couple of games which were similar and decided to add it to the inspo board incase anyone else wanted to see it.
We had scheduled a call for Thursday; we wanted to talk about everything we wanted to include in our game. We already had some of the main aspects of our game however, some people were off when we initally met (including me) so it was easier to sit with everyone and discuss stuff in more detail.
I took some notes about what we discussed and sent them into the server that was made so we didn’t forget anything.
We first wanted to get down the props we needed and what rooms they would each be in. We then sorted which ones you would be able to interact with, which ones were going to be split between 2D and 3D, which ones would include a portal. After this, we tried to split up the roles in the group to who would be doing 2D/ 3D however, we kept in mind that this could change and we would all help each other out, so we weren’t just stuck into that one role. Joey was 3D, mainly environment, Sasha and Owen 2D, Jude would be scripting the game, Claire is the level designer and I would help out between 3D and 2D.
We then went through what each puzzle would be and made a section on what things would end up needing to be animated. Sasha gladly asked how comfortable I was with animating and I told her that I wasn’t very confident animating because I felt like I couldn’t get the in-between frames right and she said she would help me which was extremely nice of her and it made me feel a lot more comfortable!
For Week 2, we used the classwork that mike had provided us to do to help us with the art style; we decided to take a bunch of games that inspired us for our game and used the presentation slide to go into detail about the art style – we thought this would help us a lot more as we were struggling for a consistent look and we weren’t too sure on how we would achieve it. I focused on Little Misfortune, Past Within – Rusty Lake and Unforeseen Incident.
I noticed a lot of overlapping similarities in the games;
- The colour palette was kept to muted, earthy tones
- The lineart was kept sketchy – hand-drawn but somehow refined.
- Minimalistic designs
We had decided that for the presentation, we each wanted to do 3 concept designs to get a feel of the atmosphere and figure out how each room would look. This would include the room in the real world and in his imaginary world. I wanted to focus more on the style guide for colours, shading, highlights etc. I also drew a bunch of props and explained how I would like them to look. These are my slides I made for the presentation along with the presentation itself!
Here are my slides:
Some of the feedback I got included whether or not I wanted the furniture to look more ‘whimsical’ or more like the type of furniture you would find in ikea. Henry also mentioned about making the boxes look more wonky – In the end, I decided I wanted to go for more of an ikea type of furniture so I didn’t want to make the props too overly wonky. If any of the furniture was to be wonky, it would be the bigger props!
After the presentation, I began working on some 3D assets and texturing them – I remembered Henry mentioning about bringing grease pencil into unreal, and I wasn’t too sure how to do it so I tried to look on google and YouTube. It came up videos on how to make the textures look more hand-drawn while using blender using the normal maps. Whenever, I tried to make the normal maps look more painterly, it wasn’t really turning out the way I wanted especially with it already being textured so I googled some more. These were the videos I found:
I tried to recreate a painterly style using normals – I used the Monkey model from Blender and exported the normal png. I then went over randomly, adding brushstrokes near the edges. It was very subtle but it worked so I tried it on a model of my own and it didn’t look so good.
In the end nothing was really turning out the way I wanted to so I messaged Rachel and she and Henry really helped me!
https://www.fab.com/listings/ff0ac933-a621-4541-9efc-24f09c6a39e2
I was mainly placed between 3D and 2D, but with someone unfortunately leaving our group, I took on the role of designing the 2D assets. I really enjoy making them so I was happy with it! I also wanted Joey to focus more on the 3D ones because it’s what she wanted to do but I still kept the ones I made. Because the ones I made were already textured, I made a quick texture guide including everything I used in substance.
Using the Miro board, I just went room by room, designing each prop!
For our second presentation to check how we were getting on, someone from the games design course unfortunately wasn’t in our group anymore so it was a little bit more stressful, and for the hallway, we decided that there was going to be no level and the game was going to be kept left and right for a platform game. We thought we should all call to see what needed done and who would do it. Jude was extremely helpful learning me how to use GitHub and Joey explained a lot too! We spoke about other levels that we could add along with extra puzzles/ things the boy could do. The updated roles were: Jude on narrative and level designer and would work on the script. Joey was 3D design and narrative and then me and Sasha were obviously the animators however, I focused on the 2D assets and Sasha focused on 3D. Over the next couple of weeks, I focused on the 2D assets trying to complete them as soon as possible so that I could help out with the 3D props. We all also took a room to grey box so I done the bathroom, Sasha done the living room and Joey done the hallway and bedroom.
We also called with the sound designer Cian to go through the sounds that we’d need and showed him examples of what we wanted.
I made trim sheets for the walls in the house – I was a bit confused on them. I googled a lot of stuff and I found a website that was really helpful for me however, I wasn’t sure how to go about it so I messaged Rachel. She kindly sent me a video explaining how to go about it and it helped me a lot! These were the trim sheets I made. I made one for the hallway, kitchen and bathroom. I also made a backsplash for the kitchen tiles and bathroom that we could just duplicate and use! Joey tried out my trim sheet I first made and we encountered mistakes that I fixed and tested and finally got one that worked perfectly so I used it as a guide for the other trim sheets.
These are the 2D assets I made including a couple of 3D assets, along with the references that I used! I sorted each one out into where they would be found on my usb and in unreal. These were a few animations I also done quickly that we could include in our game:
I began doing a greybox for the imaginary world bathroom to see how the level would look – Sasha had already made one for the living room! Rachel had a good idea to include some assets that have already been made into the greybox and capture him roughly climbing up the level.
After the presentation, the biggest thing for feedback was to make the levels more fun instead of just jumping so we sat and wrote down other ideas. We called later on that week to speak more about and Sasha shared some really great ideas for the kitchen level. To make it more fun or to add other puzzles, I sent in a message in discord showing some ideas I had and examples. I also tried to think of ideas that we could incorporate to make the game more interactive instead of just pressing a button. This is what I came up with in the end:
After calling, we realised some of my stuff wasn’t doable so I went about rethinking what to add. We also went through each others levels and made notes about what needed fixed or changed.
In the meantime, I went about decorating the bathroom for the real world. After adding in all the models, I felt like it still looked bare so I added more!
I was really struggling with the levels – on Monday, Mathew came around and helped us a lot with the levels. I made a quick outline in Miro and added some notes for ideas we could include. We then called the next day to help each other out with the rest of the levels and I’m extremely grateful for the help I was given for mine! This is what my level was looking like when I showed it to Mathew:
These were the ideas I came up with:
After calling and rethinking the level design, this is what we came up with:
To be honest, I was very stressed with how much work I needed to do and I felt like I didn’t know what to do first so I made a to-do list for everyday and also what I should have done for the week and it really seemed to help me get on track! I began partially blocking it out in blender however, it was advised to start doing it in unreal rather than exporting the fiole from blender – we also needed to make all of our levels have the same scale so it wouldn’t look out of place or mess up the player! I began making more assets I needed for the bathroom. We did speak a couple of times about the level design – it was kind of hard but I’m happy I got the experience! The hallway design was really liked and I wrote down the feedback we got. After discussing it in class with Rachel and Mathew, we decided that it would be a good idea to cut down the work load and make the game about the little boy needing to collect paper. This would also mean the rooms for the ‘real world’ wouldn’t need to be a part of the game!
During the same week we also done playtesting – it was really fun getting to see everyone’s game and getting feedback for ours! I made a google doc for people to right in any feedback they’d like and this is what they said:
After getting the level done, I wanted to focus on animation for the last couple of weeks – me and Sasha had decided to split it up as I struggled with inbetweens so I drew the main poses, sent them over to her and then she would do the in-betweens! To get the poses correct for all the animations we needed done, I set up a little corner in miro with how I thought each should look, along with references just so we were all on the same page. I also asked Sasha for feedback (a lot) on whether or not my animations were looking good and used her animation guide to help me!
I made a OneDrive folder where I put in all the animations I had done so Sasha could easily get them! She then sent me over her files on WeTransfer and I coloured them in.
I went about doing the idle animation first as I thought it would be simple enough for me to do on my own. We also discussed the idea of having the lineart move and look sketchy. Sasha sent in a youtube link that was really helpful for this in after effects. I tried it and we liked it however because the game idea changed to him collecting paper, it wasn’t really necessary to add this detail!
We managed to get all of the animations done – I’m very appreciative of Sasha as she was extremely kind and helped me out a lot with animation! After all the animations were finished, I imported them in to unreal and made them sprites and set them to the right frames and make it so they wouldn’t loop:
After that I messaged Jude to let him know all the character animations were complete so that we could incorporate them into the game – I found this video which was really helpful for importing GIFS! In the end, I just imported each frame, made them into sprites and created a flipbook.
I also relooked over my level and noticed some parts that needed fixed such as the camera so I messaged Jude for him to help me sort it out – in the end I moved some of the objects so that they looked right with the spline!
This is how our miroboard looked at the end…
Jude added all the sounds and added the animations into the game mechanics and the game was finally made! Unfortunately after packaging the game, we weren’t able to play it as we were stuck on the homescreen however, this is the gameplay video of it all:
Reflection
Overall I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made over this module. I feel like it has made me more confident in my abilities and with sharing my art! It has also helped me a lot with working in teams and coming up with ideas and resolutions together. I feel like I’ve learnt a lot more about Unreal Engine and I’m also happy for the experience of making a level – as much as I was struggling with it at the start, I’m proud of how it turned out and happy that I was able to create one 🙂