CSG: 181 Capstone

So today is the last day of the semester and I am glad that it is. It has been a stressful semester, not just for me, but for all of us. So we need a well deserved break. Today is also retrospectives so I'm kinda nervous, but its retros so who wouldn't be? I think I actually did pretty good this semester. It was rough ride....a REALLY rough ride but I'm glad that I stuck through it. It helped me learn a lot of things, especially in different programs. I was able to learn how to use Substance Designer and create my own textures.

Today I put the last few touches on the death screen because I still felt that I could do better. And by that I meant rendering out an animation and having that as our death screen. I was a bit unsure if it was gonna work, or if it was going to turn out right, but after a few test renders, and a lot...A LOT of tweaking, I think I finally got something that I was happy with.

I put the sphinx on hold because the team wanted me to finish the death screen background as soon as possible. It wasn't as easy for me because I I didn't really know where to start. I had created a scene in 3DS max and tried using path constraints on the dice objects, but that didn't work. I tried creating a separate scene in unity, but that wasn't working for me either...so I went back to the 3ds max file and modified it a lot to try and get the result the that I felt like was good enough.

More progress was done today, which is always a good thing. I decided, along with Nick, to create the backgrounds for the game, such as the start, the lobby and the death screen. I got a good for the death screen, where we would have a pair of dice roll onscreen and land on snake eyes. While I was working on that I was also working on creating a sphinx for the museum level. I started off with a simple box model and I'll work my way up from there.

This week wasn't that eventful in my opinion. We had a normal deving day. I had gotten some feedback on my last pyramid rendition and they were telling me that it was better than the last one...but it had too much geometry so I had to redo it..again...I was getting kinda annoyed I had to redo it so many times, but  I get it, they wanted something that looked good. So I redid the thing and this time, I just used a simple pyramid, but extruded a chunk out of the middle for the entrance and exit, and added a bunch of geometry to the sides. I then took it into mudbox and sculpted on it.

So today I decided to redo the pyramid since I didn't like the first one. I tried to create this one with more detail so I created the sides to look as if it had steps, to have it closely resemble the real life version of it. I also had in mind a nice little entrance, but with the way I shaped it...it just looked weird. Still, I decided to go with it.  Since I was doing the pyramid, I also decided to create a limestone texture to put on it once it was finished. I'd say it turned out pretty well, a bit on the dark side, but pretty good. It was kind of difficult trying to create and replicate limestone, but I tried my best. I'm really glad how much I've progressed with my textures over the past few weeks. 

After I got done with the bar props that I had chosen, I decided to bring up to everyone if it was ok to use a zombie model that I had created for another class,and if we could use it for the game, during the Saturday meeting. Everyone was in agreement and said yes we could. So I worked on finishing up the retopolization of the mesh and created the UV's for it. Once I was done, I imported it into the drive for future use.  After that, one of our designers got the bright idea to have a pyramid as part of our Egyptian exhibit, which i though was a pretty good idea. So...I took it upon myself to create it. 

Today was a pretty solid day in my opinion. After the whole deal of midterms, we decided to get back to work, but not before we plan some stuff out. Some of the people on the art team continued to work on the props for the bar area, while others were working on re-topping characters and creating the animations for said character. I continued to work on a few of the props, and was able to finish a few of them.

Tomorrow is the day that most teams fear, especially beginners: Judgment Day, or how it's called normally, midterms. I'm slightly nervous, but then again, who isn't on midterms? It's a day where we evaluate how you have been up until that point. We set criteria for your teamwork, communication, leadership..etc and set a score for the total, from 5 to 1. No matter how many times we go through midterms, it always brings up some nervousness, especially since the entire team is giving you feedback on all of your work. We'll see how this day goes...hopefully well.

Well, I did say that there would always be problems in a company right? This week was no different. Even though we did resolve one problem, another one decided to pop up. This time, it was an argument to decide if we should go with feature teams or meta teams for our tasks. It was an argument that went for about half an hour to 40 min, and it went on 30 min longer than it needed to and it was getting on everyone's nerves. It was honestly ridiculous how we couldn't decide on how to work on tasks. In the end, Mike told Matt to choose one on the spot, and he picked feature teams. In my opinion, it was a better choice because it shapes each task and also promotes more communication through the different teams. Another factor to the fighting would also be that people are starting to get bored of the game and loosing morale. On the bright side, I was able to get some assets done for the game and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and glad i was able to get some feedbac...

It wasn't an easy day for the team as there was an argument, which isn't uncommon for companies or groups. The argument was pretty much a time management issue of the art team since we had a different pipeline than the rest of the team. And we also had a three day buffer to fix anything that could have been wrong. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with it in my opinion, but there can't always be peace in the world, so there was argument. But that's just how it is in life, nothing in life is ever easy, there's always going to be arguments, there's always going to be some tension, but we just have to get through them and keep moving forward. On the bright side, I was able to finish a decent wood texture for the floorboard/deck and a water texture so that's nice . I'm actually pretty proud of my work, it wan't easy to learn Substance Designer, especially on such short notice, but I'm happy with my results.

Today was a normal work day, just like last week. We had made some great progress as team in general. The Design team was planning out the starting level for the game, and some of the menu screen layouts. Programmers were working on different mechanics, such as bullet penetration and different player movements. The art team was working on the two main classes that we are going to implement this semester, the gunner and the tank. The design team and the art team actually worked together to create the characters and backstories. I chose the task of creating a few of the textures that we would need for the environment, like wood textures, concrete etc.

Today was our first "official" dev day where we would work on assets for the game. I chose the task of creating different environmental assets with Andy. He and I created a list of all of the different props and environmental textures we would need for the level. The props list includes things like tables, chairs, beds etc...the environmental list include things like a concrete texture, wood planks, plaster etc...There are also different versions of the wood texture to accommodate different parts of the level. Not only that but there would also be plaster textures for the walls and concrete for the outside. I had already started watching a few tutorials to get myself familiar with the interface and tools of substance designer, and watching a few more on how to create a wood texture. There's a lot of work that goes into it but I know it can be done.

Throughout the whole class today we discussed and planned the roadmap for the first part of the class. We decided that we would have 6 sprints throughout the semester, ending with sprint 6 as our olish sprint, cleaning up any bus that we have. For the artists though, it would be a slightly different story. Instead of two week sprints like the rest of the team, we would have three week sprints since we have more work to put into our assignments. For the artists, we would have to concept and design two characters for the game. But we also had to UV map it, rig it,animate it and polish it.

Today in Capstone we decided on the setting/environment of the game. Two huge abandoned cruise ships with a tropical environment surrounding it would be the setting. We were thinking about different games as well that we could compare our game to, our competitive analysis. A few of the examples were Killing Floor, Narcosis, The Last of Us and a few others. The art team decided to continue this in the Art Bible that we are putting together. All of the information on it ranges from the camera angle, to the textures, to the animation, to the competitive analysis. The competitive analysis section of the art bible talks about a few of the games that we could compare ours to by finding the pros and cons. It was a collaborative effort to find all the information and find pretty pictures to make it presentable.  Project Midnight Art Bible I also did a quick thumbnail of the setting we could use in the game.

Today was the first day of the Capstone class. During the first part of class, we all were given the task of thinking of a game for us to make during the semester.  Mike was really cool and I enjoyed everything that he had to say.  It was a little weird when he started writing my blog for me.  I thought it was pretty nice of him though. We all came up with a few interesting ideas, but ended up deciding on a horde-type game code-named Project Midnight. The name is a work in progress. We all broke into different groups and discussed different subjects, from the settings, to art style, to the types of enemies. We got most of the important things down. All of our contact information and availability times were given and written down. There was a huge discussion about our roles and what each one of us would do.