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This week I was able to finish the last bits of the game, finalize the website and finish writing up the evaluation. I packed final build, tested the download link and ensured that the main menu, level loading, character movement, animation and foliage were all working in the exported version of the game. On the game as a whole, the part that I am most technically proud of is the animation blueprint system. Rather than just having a standard animation that loops infinitely to

This week I finished implementing the foliage system and fixed two bugs encountered during play testing. The foliage tool in UE5 places instances of the meshes into the landscape where they should grow. I have painted large clusters of trees, flowers and ground cover using our own imported models on the entire landscape. The foliage tool bundles all trees of the same mesh into a single GPU draw call, rather than having the GPU draw each tree as a separate actor it draws all t

I had my first major technical difficulty of the project this week. I made the game map in Blender and then exported it as a set of individual mesh pieces in order to import them into UE5. The next step was to generate collision in UE5 - when the collision setting on the whole map was set to "Convex Collision", and the maximum detail was selected all mesh components were highlighted, and it seemed like it would run. However the collision generation was very time consuming and

This week I cut the building to only use the front face. This was due to issues I had had placing and scaling my node graphs when creating it. The node graphs had gotten too complex and I couldn't produce a full four-sided building with the given timeframe. I didn't want to have to get rid of the building completely and have an environment without any architectural points of reference so I kept the front face, which was already reasonably finished both graphically and with te

This week I started creating a key structural element for the game environment: the building in Blender using the geometry nodes system. The logic behind using the geometry nodes was that it would let me build the building parametrically: you define each architectural component in the form of a node and then instantiate it in repetition vertically up the side of the building without having to place it manually. This would let me define a flexible, adjustable building without

I completed the gathering of visual references for this week. I used Pinterest and collected many visual references for urban decay which included abandoned shopping centres, old derelict factories and plants taking over streets, growing through collapsed concrete. The underlying consistency I saw across the examples was a constant tension between solid, geometric forms and the smooth, organic shapes of nature. I was able to incorporate this tension into my environmental desi

This week I continued my secondary research in the commercial side of the games market. I researched Steam and Epic Games, as the two main distribution platforms on the PC market. Steam has a considerably larger established player base and discoverability due to its system of wishlists and reviews as well as an algorithm-based storefront page. Epic Games has a smaller player base and has previously had a better revenue share for developers and has managed to draw players in t

This week I started my secondary research. I'm using NieR: Automata and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as my two main games to reference. In the past, when I research games, I just played them and take notes as the games go along. However, this time I came at it with a bunch of specific questions about what colours choices the games make, why those choices are being made, what choices are being made in the enemy design, what the HUD looks like and what sort of direct

This week I created and posted out a primary research survey so that I would gain data from an actual audience. I used Microsoft Forms to make the survey, and asked a few questions about preferred game genre, preferred gaming platform, and preferred graphics style. I posted this around to classmates and got many responses back. The results of the survey took more time to analyse than I thought they would. The graphics section was difficult to understand as realism got the hig

At the start of the project, me and my team discussed and spoke about the project brief, we decided on three potential concepts that we were presented with before one was chosen as our main idea for the project. The three ideas that we have come up with are 1. 3D open world fantasy RPG, in which crystals were once whole and have been broken into pieces and the player needs to gather the crystal shards while fighting corrupted enemies within a fantasy world. 2. 2D side scrolli