Last week

Last week didn’t offer much to work on the 3D area of the game, as most of the assets that is needed for the game has been done. However the game was still missing certain effects that would be needed in order to make the player get the aesthetic feel we want them to feel.

For the water room, i created a waterfall that would simple just show a flow of water that hits a surface and water drops scatter. The cascade tool in Unreal Engine 4 offered a lot of help in order to make this, and the other effects seem realistic and functional.

For the wind room, i created a simple particle system representing dust that slowly accelerate with the wind. A very simple emitter that had a acceleration value, making the particles increase in speed on every update.

A summary of my workspace, displaying the waterfall, the wind particles and the new light particle.

The light needed a revisit and a change, as it still used the raytrace “laser” to display its direction, this gave a much tougher challange and couldn’t be completed this week. It will be finished last week and hopefully ready for the beta testing.

Week 6

During this week, i did not focus much of my time and attention on the graphical aspect of the game, as most of the game’s assets was already finished or in progress. Instead most of my time was spend on producer work, going through what we have left to do and plan ahead towards GGC, as we have only 12 work days to go once this week is finished.

I do find that being a producer has is up and downs, and that it is a role i like, and at the same time do not. I do enjoy being a groupleader and couch everyone to be positive and enjoy working.

We had meetings where we narrowly went through the current state of the game, and how we can further improve it, without making major changes or spending too much time on it. Mostly we want to make sure the game feels alive, and that the player is in a temple were people went to and lived. The next week the game will hopefully be complete, giving us time to test it with everything in place, and make minor tweaks to it so we can present it at it’s best on GGC.

Week 5

Most of this week has been to plan towards the open Alpha testing on friday. What graphical assets the game need in order to give the player feedback and directions.

I tasked myself early during the week to design the core lightning of the game, step by step progressing towards the aesthetic feeling of enclosed environment with fire as the main source of light. The torches had to go through several design processes and iteration until they became final. They began as a simple torch, however it did not the art style for the game. A quick redesign ended up with a oil lamp design, fitting the desert and temple enviroment.

At first the idea was to use the particle system in Unreal 4 to create a flickering light. However this proved to be more demanding on the system and i had to design two versions, one that is used for close encounters, where the player can clearly see the flame, and one using a blueprint together with a light source that is used for the torches that is far away from the player.

Doors & Entrences

 

Due to the redesign feedback given, the doors for our game had to be redesigned. Not having a high prio, i did take the opportunity to work on the Level doors (Doors opening for each level) and the final room door. Both featuring their own unique design, however keeping with the styleguide limits. The most interesting of them is the level door, as it gave me a new insight on the properties of smoothing groups within 3D modelling. Having a low poly structure, it still keeps a nice and smooth shape, giving the impression it was carved in one piece.

Friday 2/5 – Alpha Testing

The open alpha testing gave me much insight on the current status of the game, and how we need to prioritize the different assets in order to finish our production for GGC.

First of all we need to add assets to the game in order to give it more life. Even though the graphical artists has been working full on the assets important to the game, it has taken too much time.

I do see now that i need to push more into my producer role within the group. I need know exactly what people are doing, keep their sprint updated and frequently check in on everyone to know their status and how their assignment is going.

Week 4

This week has been interesting and slightly frustrating. I had to start prioritize the graphical assets so we could start getting the important assents into our game.

We got some feedback on our graphical assets, primarly the mirrors used in our game: They needed a redesign. The static and dynamic mirror looked so alike, that the player couldn’t distinguish them apart, which caused some confusion according to our testers. I took the task to redesign the static mirror, as well the receiver.

Reciver Redesign

By repeating a the overall design process and the general feel, i’ve been able to pump out more assets as a graphical artist.

As a Producer i started to assign task to people, rather then giving them freedom of choice.As previous weeks has shown, many of the important assets hasn’t been done or has taken to much time. Due to this i had to stop some assets and start to removing those that we won’t need in order for the final game to be finished. But by handing out tasks and giving deadlines, the production of the team has increased, which i am proud of.

Temple of Light

Temple of light, a first person puzzle game where the player use mirrors to direct light in order to finish the puzzles.

I, Charlie Claesson is the producer of Parhelion Entertainment, the group behind Temple of Light. I’m primarly a 3D artist as well, creating assets for the game when i have the time. Here’s a summary of the current 3 weeks that have past.

Week 1

Project start

I started to quickly create and design a SCRUM to use for our game development through Google Drive. Together as a group we could write down all the assets in order prioritize what needs to be done within certain deadlines. I allowed people to choose what they’re going to do as long it followed a certain set of rules, based on priority and if it’s for alpha, beta or release.

Much of the week i  spent trying to understand how unreal works parallel to making sure we keep the deadlines.

Week 2

I was not able to do much producer work this week as the group kept a good work structure, allowing me to work in 3ds Max to create different assets for the game.

Week 3 – Short week

Only able to work for three days, i did manage to create quite a few different assets for the game, focusing primarily on those that doesn’t necessary need a concept and can be done quickly.