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My Development Process
Weekly Development Blog for GAM 507 Assignment
This is where you'll see the development process and showcases of our new game called Sanctum Infernum that went from being a turn-based combat game to an Open Map RPG.
As an Environmental artist I have had a lot of ups and downs in creating the map, the assets, and overall making everything match and fit the style of the game. In this Blog I will show the good and bad parts of this development process and what I have learnt along the way for AAA standard.
Week 1
The process started with determining what the game is going to be/what is it about. The official game concept that got the most votes started with: A priest that got sent to hell and his goal is to get out while going through turn-based combat with different enemies. He would find that he is making his way out of a giant worm and he would have to kill all the small worm enemies with the help of an imp companion he found. To understand the game a bit more, I drew a concept of what the worm enemies would look like. This enemy would pop out of the ground and commence the combat scene for the player, with attacks that I planned to concept being a spit attack and a lunge attack. These "worms" would be like parasites that are inside the giant worm that the player is making there way through.
This Week Sprint
We all needed to sperate into our dedicated groups (In my case I would be in the art group) and altogether we discuss our roles and what we will be contributing to for this group assignment. As Aaron as the BRM (Birmingham) Art Lead and Dariia as the GLD (Guildford) Art Lead, they organised a meeting with the art group and we assigned specific roles for each other, which in my case I was assigned Environment with Ally. With this being a collaborative effort to work on the map, me and Ally discussed what parts of the game we would be doing the most on, which we both agreed on would be for me to work on structures and assets in the game, while she makes the terrain/the walls of the map.
Change of plans
During the week, the leads sent an announcement that the game will no longer have worm enemies or have the player be a giant worm, which instead will be replaced with a giant mansion/castle for the player to walk through from a dungeon to the main part of the castle. This meant I needed to change my concepts of the game, and the first structure I will focus on is the Castle, while Ally will be figuring out the terrain for the castle.
This weeks personal task: Moodboard Castles for the game. This means using the Miro board to come up with colour concepts and and castle silhouettes
Week 2
More mood boards were being made and I got started on concepting the Castle and getting more information on what the castle needed to look like along with its colour scheme. I did not complete the Miro board task as some people in the design department were given the same job. As this was a hiccup and gave nothing for the environment artists to do, I resorted to making drawings/concept art of the mansion/castle that the player will roam through.
Concepting
I started off with the idea of making a castle as it would make more sense of a castle being in the middle of nowhere of hell rather than a mansion. With that in mind, I got started on 4 different stages of making the castle: the line art, the colour scheme, any added surrounding (if needed), and then a colour scheme for that too. Using the designers Miro board concepts I came up with a castle drawing and asked for the approval from both POs (Product owners) so I can move on with getting started on the 3D modelling.
Final Concept
I got the approval from not only the leads but also the POs which means I can get started on the 3D modelling. One problem I had was that I did not have access to Maya as my license is still being sorted out, therefore I am resorting to using Blender as a substitute. Its not a major blocker as I have some experience with Blender so I could do basic modelling for the base of the castle. As for Ally who I am working on the environment with, she will be doing the volcano that I drew in the background, and once completed we will be combining our work together into a scene and seeing how they work together with art style and scaling. As I have already drawn a concept for the volcano, I posted it for all to see including herself so everyone knows what the scene will look like with both assets put in and everyone agreed, including all leads and both POs that this is what the official outside concept will be for the castle on the outside. Another thing that was brought up is that I will not be making this castle hollow, meaning the player is not actually inside it, and instead will teleport.
Week 3
Before I got started on work, a vote was made to make Ally the new art lead, which meant that I need to make sure I collaborate well enough with not only the environment, but communicate well with progress. First I got started on 3D modelling the Castle and while making the castle to the exact proportions to the drawing, however I began to make a few changes/modifications to the castle as I saw that it looked basic, knowing that texturing would make the castle pop out more but I wanted more. I began with adding crystals at the bottom of the castle and expressed my ideas to the team, which gave Ally the idea of adding crystals as a part of the game itself, which she added in her landscape concept art.
Final Concept
With the castle at its final stages and I am ready to push my Jira task to "Done" (I have worked on the Castle for 1 day) I decided to add something that I feel will push me to my limits and I asked the group if I could add a dragon statue on the castle to give the castle more of a "evil" look. With the idea being approved I got started using many tutorials and slowly sculpting a dragon model and figuring out how to make the dragon fit with the environment, what type of dragon it is, and how it will loop around the tower.
Dragon Continued (5th Oct)
I am still carrying on doing the dragon and its proving to be a long and lengthy task to do, and while doing this I find that I need to also work on doing the slum buildings for the game for next weeks sprint (week 4). Knowing what my task will be beforehand I carried on doing the dragon which I have now completed using the help of various tutorials and a lot of time and patience to create this, I can now get started on the slums, however I decided to give myself a personal task of completing the level layout for art. I would do this by using the level layout image that Kristen sent to me, and asking her if I could get started as we are running behind on this project already. As she agreed I inserted the image in Blender and putting my wall models on the layout (as shown below). I ended up completing the 3D model of the map on the 7th Oct (3 days to make a physical level) leaving 3 more days until the next sprint.
While waiting, I thought to have a go at making the slum models. At first I made them into brick houses as I knew the houses were planned to look run down and destroyed so I thought brick would be the best way to go. However after having the basic look of the house inspected by Ally (the New Guildford Art Lead now) she suggested that the slum houses to be more made out of wood and bark. With that in mind I quickly got started on making wooden houses and seeing what style everyone agreed on/wanted. Due to the slum houses required to be small and for there to be only 3 variants of them planned to be in the map, I made 3 different houses and surprisingly it was decided that all of them would work for the game. Due to the fact that I completed a task that doesn't exist just yet, James T put up a Jira task for me so I can show that I have already started creating building assets for Ally's terrain, which means I have completed all assets (untextured) for her map. I communicated to Ally that the buildings have been completed early and will be textured when possible, as I still have another map to 3D model and the assets within the map to create.
Week 3 Summary
All slum assets have been competed ready for texturing and the dungeon map has been completed ready for texturing.
Week 4
Due to the fact that I have a map ready to be tested with the player in it, I imported it into unity and added colliders on the walls and floor for the player to roam around in. However the player controller is yet to be made, so I took the time to use the player size as reference to make adjustments to the map and made sure the cells are the right size for the player. After making a few adjustments to the map I exported it back out of the scene a an FBX and imported it into Substance Painter and textured each part of the map. As I was doing this during the week 4 lesson, my new task got assigned as the slum huts were already created the map based off Kristen's Drawing layout. With a map that is fully textured it now needs assets to bring it to life, so I was assigned to make dungeon assets. This was not an easy task as I needed an asset list to make most assets, especially narrative-based assets. Some assets I could think of making was a torch, flame holder, bookcase, small and large table & chairs, and a small book. As I am awaiting for an asset list I get started on making all the assets that I could think of during the lesson.
Extra Work
Fast forward 2 days (Friday 10th Oct) I completed my basic assets and I decided to create FX for the game, starting with a flame. This is what will be going on the torch, flame holder, on the houses in the slums, and around the environment to create the feeling of hell. With this I got started researching different flame effects in unity and how to create one. As I assigned myself a mini task until I get my asset list from Adam (and approved by Aaron) I kept myself busy going through multiple tutorials to find a way to make a flame, and finally came across one and got started. I made a basic flame within 20 minutes and started spreading them across the dungeon map. I didn't put them on the slum houses however because there is not yet a slum scene in this project (which is also why I haven't imported any of the slum houses or castle). This was only a small blocker in the project and I expressed my concern with Ally and she reassured me the landscape is in progress and will create a scene for the landscape to be imported. Once placing all the flames around the scene I decided to start texturing some of my assets starting with the flame holder and torch to understand how monochrome the map should be (as POs decided to make the dungeon monochrome as well as the castle).
Working on Assets
I got started on the door first as I needed iron bars for he cells, closed doors for blocked off rooms and open door for the player to go through to other rooms. At first I made the doors so high poly that whenever the spectator camera for unity looks at them the frame rate goes down. This was a small problem with a very easy solution due to the fact that it's easy to reduce the poly count on the parts of the doors. I reimported the door model from 13.1M polys to only 500.
Note from 28th Nov - this problem comes back in future issues for the map
I carried on doing the assets while also receiving the Narrative Asset List ready to do the Narrative props of the Wardens Office equipment, human skulls, Portraits, and the Warden's Axe, and completed 3D modelling them within a week (in time for week 5) however I didn't have enough time to texture them all and put them all in the map, therefore showing half completed assets for next weeks sprint. This wasn't necessarily a problem as the game map was way more ahead, rather than on course with the rest of the project and everything else that has been implemented. My art lead communicated with me that I do need to slow down and stay on track with the rest of the team as it looks too much like I am going off on my own, which I did not want to be the case, however I see that me moving too fast can cause future issues if everyone isn't collaborating at the same speed. Therefore I was given extra time to think about more assets to add in the game to give myself something to do, while also not trailing off too far ahead, and of course ask my lead for approval of what will go in the game.
Week 5
I continued doing the assets from the pervious task, which would be to make sure everything has been textured and placed in the map for playtesting the environment. I updated Kristen on how the map is going and asked for any input and what specific rooms will be, and I was advised an armoury in one of the rooms and make the other rooms libraries. Due to the fact that I have completed enough assets for a library, but not an armoury, which became a massive obstacle for completing the map. It took me 3 days to texture everything after the week 5 sprint began, and once I confirmed I have completed it all on Jira I got started with placing everything down and filled up the map with all the assets I made. I decided to make 3 rooms libraries
and 4 extra rooms in the map as the map was too large to fill with assets. And finally I made the armoury towards the end of the map and the Wardens office in the largest room would be in the biggest part of the map, which I wanted to tun into a maze of bookcases due to the huge size of the room and it would just be a massive open space. Due to no prop placement layout or any guidance on what is needed, and even when asking both level designers what needs to go where I was left with doing this task solo however I got it done before the sprint ended and with positive feedback from leads. One flaw in my map props is that my Skull prop was too high poly and could not be added in the map, so I searched for a skull model to download and reference (because it's not my work) and credit the creator for the asset added in the map. I confirmed with my lead that this art asset isn't mine and I will still credit the original creator, and then I was given the green light that it was okay to do and I have officially finished all my tasks for the sprint.
Week 6
Its now the 25th Oct and we need a build at this point as it was half way through the project. As I completed the dungeon I communicated with Kristen to let her know that the map is completed, and she can get started on placing all the enemies in the map, I realise that Josh, another level designer has nothing to do for his part of the map and no Jira task either (from what I know of) and I felt that he was waiting for me to complete the art for his map. I asked Kristen if she is using the dungeon scene to know if I could make edits and I was given permission to make any changes, to which I decided to use the parts of the dungeon to make the castle. However it was still decided that the castle was going to be red, therefore I asked the POs and leads for some guidance on what the castle will look like as I am yet to get much information on that part of the game. Instead of telling me what was going to be in the map, I was told that the castle map was also going to be monochrome, making the game theme nearly entirely monochrome. As I was already using the same flooring from the dungeon map for the castle, I decided to use the rest of the assets for the castle to speed up the process, which I then made a complete replica of Josh's Whitebox as a full map. Once completed, I communicated with Josh that the castle part of the map has been completed, however he had the same problem as Kristen when I was looking at his Whitebox. As both level designers never scaled their maps, I took it upon myself to do so, which thankfully wasn't a huge obstacle. However the biggest problem was that the room sizes were over-sized and had way too much space in them for they were needed for. This setback made me redo the castle level a slight bit and I communicated with Josh how I've had to make a few edits as his level also wasn't scaled, or even scaled to Kristen's level. I expressed my importance of communicated and collaboration and continued to add the finishing touches until I let him know that the scene is ready for him to add any castle assets that are ready to be added in his level.
The next day
One other thing was that I had to rescale the whole dungeon level to the player height, as the baron was no longer going to be a boss in the game. This meant I also had to make sure the castle map was scaled to the player before handing it over to Josh (the level designer for the castle map). Afterwards, I alerted Josh about the Castle map being done and with that information he got started on placing down the assets in the map. I expressed if he needed any help in the map then please ask for my assistance when he can. The first hiccup when placing don my models that I made for the map was that none of them were made a prefab with assets applied and textured, which I then came to an easy solution of just copy and pasting the assets that he wants to use from the dungeon. This would involve the bookcases, barrels, tables and chairs (from my knowledge).
Week 7
At this point of the development, there were no problems running game with both levels in the scene. Therefore I went out to get in contact with all the leads and POs asking whether it is okay to combine to the levels together. I got confirmation from both POs, and my leads for art and they all gave me the green light to combine them both. With this I got started on combining and blending both levels together to fit each other, which the level layout made easy to do. With the levels put together I added a roof on top to officially finalise making the level. The roof was requested to be "dynamic" instead of a flat roof, which with the layout I saw as a bit of a struggle to do. However I did not give up instantly, instead I tried out different ways to make the roof dynamic and came up with making a curved roof. I got started in Blender and used one of my wall models and made it curved by distorting the shape. With that I have an easy curved roof model and I inserted it into unity and started placing them around the map with the same texture as the walls. Fast forward 3 days and I finally got all the roofing done and I then got started with my task for the week which was texturing the slum huts. I did this task second as I wouldn't need to spend as much time doing this as I would need doing the roofing for the level. As the description for the slum buildings were "run down" and "burnt" I added a burnt wood texture on the slum houses as they are already shown to be made out of wood from the way I modelled them and adding the premade Substance Painter texture for "burnt wood" on the model made this task a lot easier. While doing this, I made the models for the dungeon and castle (that I made) into prefabs to make the process for place more assets (if needed) a lot easier for the level designers.
Week 7 (continued)
After completing making the Slum house textures I exported them and imported them into Unity. As I am working with Dariia (one of the level designers) for this week, I needed to make sure that I do what I didn't do correctly for josh and Kristen, which was make the prop placement a lot smoother for them to avoid any complications. First I Scaled the assets to the right size so that they are in proportion to the player size. Next I added the textures on the models and made sure they are assigned to the correct ones. After doing this I made them all prefabs in the scene and made sure to communicate with Dariia that all the assets have been scaled and textured already, all she would need to do is place them in there designated spots. Once I completed this, I got started on the last thing that the slums area needed, which was the castle. The castle had been completed since week 3 but has never been textured, therefore to complete the slum terrain I got started on texturing the castle, which wasn't the best and I had to ask my art lead, Aaron for some assistance. After a whole day of figuring out problems with the castle and fixing the UVs and stretched parts of the model I thanked Aaron and was finally able to get started on texturing the castle. As the slums are supposed to be monochrome I made the castle different shades of Grey and added red roofs for the castle to stand out a bit more in the scene. I also textured the dragon on the side to be just made out of stone as it was meant to be a dragon statue.
Week 8
Carrying on from last week I finished off making the castle textures and imported them into unity. Instead of having Dariia place the castle, I thought it would be pointless as there is already a placeholder in the map to show where the castle is supposed to go along with its scale. With that information I placed the castle down with the textures applied and scaled it to the correct size to the player. When doing this, I am alerted that the scene with the dungeon and castle isn't very optimised, as the average frame rate is around 7FPS and that the game generate around 13 Million polys when simply playing, which meant that the game was nearly unplayable with an immense amount of lag. Knowing this, my art work was inspected by my Art Lead Aaron and to my surprise each wall that I placed down was around 14K ploys each, which is what we all speculated was the reason for the game lag being even worse. As a way to quickly fix this problem, Aaron made a wall model that is reduced to 12 polys and made sure that it would have the right kind of textures. By doing this he was also able to make a set of different types of walls and flooring for both the dungeon and castle, which took about 2 days to do and push to GitHub. I volunteered to remake the whole level alone instead of a group of people, which would make the process more smooth for me, and my lead agreed. Once I had access to the building tools for remaking the level, I got started and I was already seeing a difference in how the game performed with most of my wall and floor assets gone. This process also took about 2 and a half days to do which wasn't ideal as I noticed the level designers tasks were in "blocked" in Jira meaning they have been waiting for me, as they needed to place all the remodelled assets (that have reduced polys) in the map, however redoing the map was a lengthy process.
Week 8 (continued)
After redoing both the map walls, floors and roofing, I moved my Jira task to complete and communicated to both level designers that the map is completed for them to replace all of the high poly assets in the map. To help them out I took out all of the high poly assets in the map, and created a unity folder that is "New dungeon Assets" and added the one asset that none of the other artists were working on: the barrel. While knowing some other assets were being redone I decided to have a go at redoing them too just to make sure we still get the lowest poly of any type of asset that I have created. Therefore I got to work on the torch, flame holder, bucket, and bed. They were easy assets to fix so I decided to do quick fixes such as changing the shape subdivisions or editing the shapes on an object. Once I got the bed and flame holder done I imported them into Unity and I got started on placing the flame holder myself as I would have to place he flame effect on top too, which I have not taught the level designers to do. As for the bed, I left that for Kristen to do as she needs to complete her task and add it in the Game, which is confirmed to be called "Sanctum Infernum".
Week 9
With the new build published, I saw how making changes to the map improved the map completely, and with the assets being at a lower poly I could continue with making changes to the map, with one of the changes being the last 2 rooms in the map. These two rooms are the largest in the game and are too open that unless there are an immense amount of enemies placed, it is virtually empty. Therefore I needed to add to the end of the castle and give it a "finished" look, as if the player will know its coming to an end. This is why I volunteered to do the final part of the level. When my lead told me I have permission to do the end of the castle level, I labelled the castle parts as a throne room and entrance room. The entrance room would be where the castle starts but where the level ends for the player, which gave me the thought of making a grand hallway with a statue of the Warden model that Nathan made for the entrance room. Once I completed that I added 2 libraries in 2 random rooms on the sides and got started with the throne room which would have Antonio's throne model and some statues of Aarons enemy models are gargoyles. I would then begin to place some chairs along the sides, to make the sense of a royal court room, and some pillars along the sides.
Week 9 (continued)
At this point I was asking for more to do as I have completed both of the rooms needed for the level and pushed my changes. I asked my art lead whether the stairs would still be added in the game and he showed signs of confusion. I then asked my design lead (James) for input on the stairs and he wasn't too sure if stairs have been confirmed. I then asked Cian (GLD Design lead) for input and he said the stairs would make you teleport up. And I asked Lewis (Programming lead) for input and the stairs would teleport you to the castle as a new scene. at this point I am confused and asked Ally (GLD Art lead) and finally she gave me a different response (that I couldn't remember) and I could clearly tell there has been some sort of miscommunication, which quickly got resolved as I was told to just make working stairs for now and the teleport feature will be something design/programming will resolve. therefore I got started on the stairs and angling them in a way that gave the player an easy way of getting up using a slope and hopefully the player wont float too high up when they stop walking up.
Week 10
With our last build made, I used it as a reflection on what I have done well for the game, and what could be improved on. And also how my changes have improved the game.
As the build is now finalised as the last supervised build with the tutors, we could have a look at whether we will be carrying on making the game or we all disband and have the game submitted how it is. With that a poll was made and we all decided with whether we wanted to carry on making the game and when the final build is going to be made along with GitHub being locked afterwards so nobody can make further changes. I voted no more changes after week 11 and we finish the game as early as possible, which was conveniently the most popular choice. With this I ask my art lead what will I be doing for the week and all anyone from the art team will be doing is awaiting further orders after the leads meeting, and for not reflect and add any feedback from the game into a document, and include any possible improvements in the following week. As all the art for the game is done (except for the throne) nobody, including myself has anything to do except for adding art for the itch.io page, and that will finalise everything we need to do for making the game.
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