Weekly reflections

Week 1

What have I done?

This week, I formally started the Where Am I project and I started by looking into grid based level design in Unreal Engine and also different tools in Maya, hair, pipe curves and using image planes to create size accurate models.

What have I learnt?

This week of the project, I have learnt about several new techniques both when it comes to 3D modelling and also the Unreal Engine, I have looked at creating a grid based level design in Unreal and using this as a template for all my maze levels in the project to ensure consistency in design across all the levels. In Maya I have looked at adding hair to two models, creating pipes and also using image planes to model my models off of more accurately than before.

What could have been improved or gone better?

I feel that this week has been successful in terms of my performance and workflow compared to previous weeks and I have finished the week with all of the tasks complete for this week, and so I feel that no improvements are required.

Any problems? If so, how will/have I resolve(d) them?

The only main problems that I encountered this week were related to 3D modelling, whilst I was creating my vase I was unable to successfully manipulate the edges of the sphere, I found out that I was using a different tool than what was required and I managed to resolve the issue successfully.

My targets for next week and the remainder of the project are:

Finish uploading my videos to YouTube for progression evidence
Continue to work to the timeframes given and also work at a continued high standard
Move onto implementing functionality to my maze in next weeks Unreal Sessions.

Week 2

What have I done?

This week, I moved onto the planning stage of the project, I created all of my planning documentation, finished the analysis and research report and also completed the Unreal Engine theory sessions. After this I moved onto developing my final outcome.

What have I learnt?

This week of the project, I have learnt about new mechanics, techniques and code in Unreal Engine 5, I have looked at using timelines to simulate animations and also learnt how to use collision boxes to detect the player and whether they have collected a key item in order to unlock a door in the maze. Stretching off from this I also learnt how to apply the same knowledge to a portal to allow the player to transport to the next level in the maze. I will be applying all of this knowledge to the development of my outcome and this has helped me greatly.

What could have been improved or gone better?

I feel that this week has been successful in terms of my performance and workflow compared to previous weeks and I have finished the week with all of the tasks needed, complete, and so I feel that no improvements are required in terms of my personal performance.

Any problems? If so, how will/have I resolve(d) them?

As this week has not be focused on a lot of practical experimentation I have run into little problem, the creation of my planning documents and also the written research report was carried out smoothly and with no issue. The Unreal sessions also ran smoothly thanks to my note taking, something that I vowed I would continue to use from my first week back.

My targets for next week and the remainder of the project are:

Add all of my evidence videos to my Wix site
Continue to work to the timeframes given and also work at a continued high standard
Continue to develop my final outcome, focusing on 3D models and also functionality in Unreal.

Final Evaluation - How I met the Brief

For this project I was asked to design and develop a maze game of a theme or genre of my choosing, more specifically a maze game that includes key pickups and also moving doors or objects. This project came with some specifications, for example, the maze had to include three levels, moving grass, unlockable doors and also use effective UX design.

This was the brief that we were given at the start of the project and I believe that I stuck to all of the points and exceeded the minimum requirements because, in my project I chose to create a fantasy, minimal horror maze, I included three playable levels and one win level that shows the completion of the win condition. In addition, I have been able to showcase a story visually throughout the maze because the objective is to collect the lanterns in the maze levels and then restore the Phoenix Flame which is presented to the player at the completion of the final level. Furthermore, I have stuck to UX design and implemented it in many ways into my maze game, I will go into further detail later in the evaluation, I have also met all other minimum requirements set out and also expanded upon them by adding more mechanics and features that I researched and experimented into.

Looking at the specific points of the brief, I believe that I have been able to help guide the player through my levels by adopting UX design. I have included several different implementations of UX design in my levels, for example, I have included lighting and particle effects on key objects in order to highlight their importance and also help the player to see the objects against the dark environment. I believe that this implementation of UX design has been successful as the objects stand out and are easily identifiable within the poorly lit forest environments.

Another implementation I adopted was landmarking, in my third level I used a method of UX design called landmarking, I created a tree asset that is positioned near the exit of the level and can be seen throughout all of the maze, this allows the player to get a sense of direction whilst exploring the maze and also helps them to identify the key area within the maze. I believe that this was successful because as you play through this level you are able to continuously see the tree and thus the exit.

The final piece of UX design that I implemented was leading lines, in my final level (the level in which concludes the maze and win condition), I adopted leading lines as the player teleports to the level they are presented with a corridor that leads to the Phoenix flame ahead of them, the walls lead the player toward this flame and thus the end of the maze.

Moving onto other areas of where I met the brief, I met all of the minimum requirements in my game, the player is able to move the character, collect lanterns, unlock moving doors, walk through moving grass and also the game follows a maze format level design. I believe that I was successful in completing these requirements because I have been able to build up my Unreal Engine programming and game design theories and techniques throughout my experimentation and previous project. I am pleased with the implementation of these features and I am happy that I was able to independently set up my character, I can see clear progress between the last project and this one.

This is the blueprint for my first level as you can see it follows a maze format for its level design.

This is the code of my character movement

This is the interactable Lantern that is placed on the pedestal to activate the moving gate - A video of this in action can be seen below.

Here is my moving grass, the foliage colour changes from level to level to adapt to the environment - A video of the moving grass and all of the brief requirements can be seen in action below.

Here is my win level once the player collects all of the lanterns in all of the levels. The win condition is to collect all of the lanterns and this is very clear in the levels as the lanterns are needed to progress.

In this video all of the mechanics can be seen in action and this showcases how I met the brief.

I also exceeded the brief by adding more mechanics and features, I added this as part of my research report and also I added other features such as UI text by experimenting with nodes and elements in Unreal Engine. The extra features that I added were particles, AI random roaming NPC and also lighting techniques. I added all of these features and mechanics to stretch my knowledge and also build the atmosphere and UX design in the game, I also wanted to exceed the brief and showcase my research and experimentation.

Final Evaluation -Personal Performance

Looking back over the three weeks of the Where Am I? project I feel that my performance continued to grow as the project progressed, I was able to continue my work performance from the last project and continued to work to a high standard, I feel that my performance in this project greatly outweighed that of the last project. I feel this because I was able to complete a more complex project to a high standard within the same timeframe we had to complete the last project, my research reports were more concise and to the point and also I carried out experimentation that set me up greatly for the project.

This project was set to us with a three week deadline and we were tasked with developing an interactive 3D maze game, independently, the game must have included key pickups and also moving doors or objects. This project also came with some specifications, for example, the maze had to include three levels, moving grass, unlockable doors and also use effective UX design.

Context

Looking back at the Context stage of this project which was very short for this project, I filled out a Project Proposal, this was an important document for this project and also previous projects because it allowed me to outline my skills that I previous have that would help me complete the project and how I acquired them, this was very helpful as I was able to evaluate my skills and built a concept based upon the skills that I had in order to create an ambitious project that would not be out of reach.

I then created my concept and displayed this on the project proposal, I was able to construct an ambitious concept that was open to change and improvement over the course of development. I was very pleased with the concept that I constructed as it met all of the brief requirements whilst also allowing me to research and experiment with new mechanics and techniques that would help me to expand my knowledge and showcase my ability to research a mechanic and then implement it into an Unreal Engine project.

I then wrote about how I would evaluate my work and then use the evaluations to improve my work ethic and performance. This was extremely important because without evaluations and reflections I would not be able to reflect upon my work flow and then improve upon this in future projects.

Overall, I have been completing Project Proposals since the first project in the first year and by now I have become used to how to fill this document out and thus I was able to complete this document with no faults and use it appropriately to plan my concept. I feel that I was consistent in this document and my performance allowed me to complete this document with no issue, I do not feel that this document would need improvement and my performance does not need to be improved.

Research

Moving onto the Research stage of the project, I carried out an Analysis Report and also a Research Report. The analysis report allowed me to playtest three existing maze games each of different design. I believe that this task was extremely helpful at allowing me to look at examples of mazes and how I should structure my maze levels to create challenge and to also breadcrumb the player, I believe that this task was important because I was able to evaluate the techniques that I could adopt and make a meaningful decision as to what elements I would adopt in my game and why.

I believe that I was consistent throughout my Analysis report and I was able to maintain a high working standard and performance, this helped me to move into my planning stages because I was able to see what worked effectively in a maze game and helped me to structure my level blueprints to create effective UX design. Furthermore, I do not feel that I need to improve my Analysis task as I was able to compare and contrast the games and I was able to effectively analyse and evaluate the mechanics and design to influence the layout and design of my game. My performance does not need to change either because I was able to complete the task with little issue and the evaluations made in this report set me up nicely for the research report and also the planning of my outcome.

Looking at the research report in this research session, throughout the research report, I independently identified, thorough and sustained research and carried out extensive investigation into a range of relevant sources that I used to create insightful interpretations on the varying methods and mechanics that I would include in my outcome to elevate the UX design, atmosphere and also my knowledge of Unreal Engine. I was able to compare and contrast my sources in order to draw independent conclusions based upon the mechanics that I researched, I then evaluated the sources thoroughly and stated what, how and why I was going to apply the research to my project, for example I compared the two sources talking about how to implement a random roaming AI NPC and found that both sources stated the same content and methods so I decided to adopt the methods from both sources just in case I was to fail in one area that was not stated in one of the sources.

Upon reflection of the research report, I found that no areas really stood out to me for improvement because my research was concise, consistent and also detailed enough to compare, contrast and draw conclusions from, so I do not feel that my report would need improving. My performance would also not need to be changed because I feel that this is my strongest report of this year so I have improved from the last project and thus my performance has been excellent during this research stage.

In addition, I was able to carry out experimentation from my research, something that I wanted to improve from last project, and I believe that this experimentation allowed me to significantly improve my outcome further.

Planning

Looking at the planning stage of the Where Am I? project, I feel that I was able to create detailed and effective planning documents thanks to the aid from my extensive research and playtest sessions. These sessions helped me to create these planning documents because I was able to already build an idea of what concept I wanted to plan for and what UX design features, Unreal Mechanics that I wanted to include in my game. Just like my previous projects I produced a time management document this was a Trello Board, I utilised this tool more than any other project, except the FMP, as I added all of my tasks to the document and continuously updated the document periodically throughout the project.

This document was very important because I was able to keep track of my time in this quick turn around project and I believe that this helped me to successfully complete the project on time.

This project required a larger amount of planning documents and I created a Pitch Document, Asset List and level blueprints. The first document that I created was a Pitch Document, this document explained my concept and detailed what the project would entail in terms of mechanics and theming and showed inspiration for my project. The pitch document was very important at helping me to plan my project and nail down the mechanics, theming and idea of my outcome to allow me to present the idea concept to a group, (we were unable to present the document to a group due to time constraints).

The pitch document was carried out to the highest standard and I believe that my performance was on par to that of the rest of the project and I believe that the document and my performance does not need to change, because my document was detailed and showcased the concept concisely.

Moving onto the asset list, I feel that this document is the most detailed planning document of this project, I included small details of the assets right down to materials and colours, because I wanted to produce an industry standard document and also to set me up for the best possible outcome, I feel that my performance throughout the planning stage was consistent and I was able to successfully use my planning documents and previous planning knowledge to produce my outcome to a high standard.

My blueprints were also detailed and highlighted my design choices, I wanted to highlight my UX design choices so that anyone looking a the document would be able to produce the same quality level just from looking at the document. I feel that my performance carried into the creation of this document, however, I feel that my blueprint could have been more detailed showing different foliage choices and smaller details so that I could smooth out the development process, other than that I feel that the planning stages were consistent and detailed.

Experimentation

Moving onto experimentation, although the large bulk of my experimentation was not based off research and instead based off of in class practical sessions, I feel that the level of quality and detailed applied to these experimentation tasks were key for the progression in the Where Am I? project and they played a large role in the building of my knowledge surrounding new mechanics and features, such as hair tools in Maya and also puzzle mechanics in Unreal Engine.

Throughout the experimentation stages I overcame issues and problems by applying resilience, perseverance and problem solving skills, many of this can be seen in my problem solving tab where I detail the problem that I encountered and evidenced how I was to go about resolving the issue, I attached video and photo evidence of the resolution so that I could reflect back upon the issues to improve my performance in future projects. The experimentation tasks saw me experiment with advanced features such as how to add hair and fur to models and modelling off of an image plane, these Maya experimentation tasks most of the time ran without any large problems effecting my progress, this was due to my previous knowledge and problem solving evidence, however, I did run into one issue with the image plane modelling, I was unable to select the edges of the model, I resolved this by looking at previous video evidence and found that I was using the incorrect tool.

Other experimentation sessions saw me experimenting with mechanics in Unreal Engine 5, these Unreal sessions always run without issue because I take notes and also we are guided by a tutor so I am able to learn the technique and then implement it there and then. I continue to record all of my development throughout experimentation and the development stages for later reflection in order to help me if I am to run into issues in later projects or I need to code in a mechanic from one of these sessions. These videos have helped me out in this project as I had to reflect back upon my previous project of setting up a character to be able to successfully set up the player character in this project.

In terms of improvements, I feel that if I was to carry out experimentation again I would look into more Unreal mechanics to further stretch my knowledge, however, as of this project I am happy with the quality of my experimentation and no improvements would be required to my performance and work ethic either, because I successfully completed the experimentation and it helped me to carry out techniques in Maya and Unreal correctly.

Outcomes

Moving onto my final outcome, I ensured that the development of my final outcome ran as smoothly as possible by making use of all of my knowledge and understanding, as well as planning and experimentation, and overall I was able to independently plan, design and develop a high quality final outcome that met the requirements of the brief set out at the start of the project. Overall, I am pleased with my performance throughout the development of this outcome because I was able to consistently work to a high standard and also I was able to stretch my knowledge by including extra criteria in my experience such as particles, AI NPC movement, expanded lighting techniques and also on-screen text.

I am extremely pleased with this project outcome because I was able to independently plan and develop a functioning 3D maze game something that I have done before, thanks to my planning, experimentation and also previous knowledge I have been able to successfully carry out this project to a very high standard on par with that of my FMP last year something that I had not done in my projects in the first year, I am now more concise and detailed with all aspects of my work and I am pleased that I have progressed this far.

However, if I was to highlight any improvements I would say that if I was to complete the development of my outcome again I would add additional levels increasing in difficulty and also add more smaller details to finish the world off. I would add more levels because the game feels short and also I feel that I need to include more levels in order to progress the difficulty more for the player. In terms of adding smaller details, I would add more environmental assets such as bushes trees and grass linked to my theme to create a more detailed atmosphere because the world seems bland, empty and lacking in variation. These are small changes that I would make if I was to be given the project again and do not really relate to the improvement of my performance because I am happy with my overall work ethic and I am confident that my work ethic will only grow from this point to become stronger than it already is.

In conclusion, going into my next projects I will aim to create more detailed and concise blueprint documents and also ensure that I am carrying out relevant experimentation based upon my research to iron out any problems before moving into development. Other than these two changes I will continue to work at my high standard and work ethic because I feel that my pace and detail has been consistent not only in this project but also previous projects, so no changes will be needed to my performance.

Here are a few examples of my particles and lighting systems in effect.

Here is the UI text that I added to give the player an overview of the controls as they start the first level.

Here is the random roaming AI NPC that I coded into the game, this NPC walks around a certain area of the third level. When the player looks at the NPC the screens exposure becomes darker for a seconds so the player can no longer see.