This week of 22nd September began my placement and freelance year at Ulster University.
FREELANCE WORK
This week, I began development on a Freelance Project on the conceptual stage. This was a complete remake of my Game Design project from first year, as while I liked the concept, I feel now I have the experience nessecary to make it into reality.
I first began with a Miro Board. I took core concepts of the old game and wrote them down to begin with, so I had a starting point to develop the new game around.
The biggest question I had to begin to decide with was in terms of Engine. I evaluated Unreal Engine, Unity and Godot. I took into account as to Unity's recent changes and the potential instability of choosing it, though this was before the statement they gave on Friday. I also researched into each Engine's documentation when it comes to rhythm related projects, I eventually came to the evaluation that I need to test out Godot through a Game Jam or YouTube tutorial, which I plan to do next week. I was satisfied to see that documentation for creating rhythm-based games exist for Godot, which made it slightly more tempting for Unreal Engine.
Additionally, I researched UI/UX styles to follow. I wanted to follow an unconventional funky style, and looked at Band posters, Album Covers, and other similar content, as well as games that had menus that presented options in an unconventional format, such as the Persona Series, while still having said options be easily readable and visual eye-candy for the player.
A big issue presented itself in the modelling department. In keeping with the extremely small scale of the game, modelling wouldn't be something I could afford to spend time on. I then researched programs involved in modelling, where I found Asset Forge by Kenney. I had previously used Kenney's Kenshape program that translated pixel art into models from over-the-summer research, so I was impressed by their programs in terms of accessability.
I first took a look at the program's character creation abilities. The program gives rather limited character model creation, and limits it to a blocky, Lego-inspired style. With the game I was making being planned to have a cartoony style, I decided to experiment anyway.
I got this from the base. I wasn't a fan of the eyes or mouth, which I then planned to modify in other programs. I then created a clothed version with hair and clothes, and T-posed it to experiment within Mixamo.
However, the model did not rig well for Mixamo. In wanting to have as much support as possible for animations through this game, I decided that while I would still experiment within Asset Forge for enviornment props, but look towards Blender for modelling in the coming week.
This week I was more occupied with Placement related studies, so I didn't get as far as I'd like in regards to this project, but in the coming week, I am looking towards finishing up my Miro Board so I can transition to the stage of working on a Game Design Document.
PLACEMENT WORK
I am not at liberty to discuss what I have done this week due to NDA, however, it did involve a research project which pulled from contemporary games of the past ten years. I then analysed these games around the element I was researching and identified key parts of what these games did right in this element, noticing both overlaps in the games I researched and the unique things identified from them.
Comments