Week 30, Year 2 It is finally time

It was the week of the hand in for everything but off the map. So this week was mostly spent working on my reflective writing essay but I also had to get my blog updated and finish off my character re-submission. This was going to be a very hard week.

I had to write a reflective essay on my career aspiration. I was looking at being an environment artist when I leave and go and work for a small indie studio maybe. I started of my essay by making a simply plan, how I wanted to lay it out. Then went into each part and started making bullet points. On what I wanted to talk about within these area. Once I had all my points I just started writing about them more.

The problem I had was finding good references to use in my essay. We had to look for book and journals, not use the internet. I spent to long looking for references to use and should of found them before I started my essay. After sometime I finally went to the library to see it I could find anything I could use. I had found one book that could work but… when I found it. It was in a place where they put all of their gaming books. I had hit the jackpot of references. I ended up leaving with 6 books.

The essay took a lot longer than I had planned and left me with no time to work on my character. Thinking about it, it’s all to do with my time management. Something I talk about in my essay as an area I need to improve on. If I had not got so lazy over the Easter holydays and started my essay then. I could of maybe had it done sooner and could have had my character completed as well.

This week has been very hard and stressful. Looking back at it I feel like I’m back in my first year again and have not learnt from my mistakes. I need to make sure I follow my action plan that I made in my essay to improve all my skill for my 3^rd year because I cannot let something like that happen otherwise it may cost my future as environment artist.

All that is left now is off the map, only 2 weeks left.

Week 29, Year 2 I got a little lazy and I got a lot to do

Back from the Easter holydays and I think I got a little too lazy just chilling at home playing borderlands the pre sequel. I did do some work just for my character and I did some digital painting as well, other than that, did not do a lot.

So there is only 4 weeks left for off the map and 2 weeks for everything else. The mean thing this week is was the presentation. It could be done about anything. So I decide to do mine on game modding and how it has affected the games industry. It was 10 slides and each slid was 18 seconds, so 3 minutes in total. After the last presentation I did, I knew I needed to be more ready and have of practice a bit for. I knew this would really help me feel more conferment about doing it and not having a panic attack on the spot.

In the end my presentation went a lot better than last time. I was still very nervures and my legs did start to shake again but I got throw it and felt really good after would. A little sad that I missed on something’s I that I was meant to say but ran out of time.

Mostly for the rest of the week I was just working on texturing my assets. I have just started with the tea set and they are coming along nicely.  

Other things that happened this week I did, was go to the Richard the third museum in Leicester. It’s a little small but the first area starts of talking about his history and what he did for England. Then leads onto the battle of Bosworth, where he die. After that area it leads onto how they found the body and shows how they think he died in battle. It was a really nice place to go, so if you are ever in Leicester I would go if you have the chance.

Also GTA 5 finally came out on PC. I’ve not played it too much right now but still in love with it.

Week 25, Year 2 Practice makes progress, not perfect

This was the last week before the Easter break and I had a lot to do before going home. What I wanted to make sure I got done was all my assets were unwrapped and ready to texture. I also had to get the level streaming working on the level but the big thing that happened this week was that I got feedback on my work.

I’m very happy with the feedback I got. On the container city project, I was told that %50 of the work contribution. I don’t know if that means out of me and the other 3 people in my group or if it’s only focused on me. The character project I knew I had done really badly on this project and I was hoping I would get the chance to redo it. Luckily I do get that chance to do it but it mean I’m going to have to take some time off, the off the map (OTM) project because the hand in is for the 24^th April but good thing is that we got a 2 week extension for OTM.

For this week I was working on getting all my assets unwrap before I left so that they could be textured by someone else. I’m ok at UV unwrapping but it not that fun and can be a little tricky to do right.

A problem we have been having with the level is the frames per second (FPS). A good way to improve the FPS is to level stream. Level stream is breaking up the level into smaller parts. Then can have these parts of the level load in and out when you want to. This helps the FPS because the engine does not have to work as hard loading everything in the level. I also got it set up so that when you come to a door that needs to load the next room. The door will not open until it has loaded the next area. 

The problem with doing the level streaming now is that it has broken a lot of the level blueprints because when you make a new level it gives it its own level blueprint and any objects with its own blueprint can now only be reference in that level blueprint. That means all the door locking system and matinees are now not working and have to be put back together.

It did not take me to long to get it all done just a little sad I had to go all back throw all that work.

Week 24, Year 2 To fix all, break something else and then fix it… wait what?

So after last week, not completing the level. The main thing I really wanted to focus on was getting the level working from start to finish. All was left to do was to finish the puzzle in room 3, add an end room to each puzzle area with a chest that gives you part of a key to unlock the finial door, and to add a lock system so the player has to go to room 1 first and only after they completed it, room 2 will unlock

My teammate made a small room that I cloud import into the level and add a chest to it that when the player overlays on a trigger around the chest, it will open. What came out was a particles that showed the play back to the key. I just did this with a matinee. I also link this up with the door locking system. So now when the player finishes the puzzle they unlock the next one all the way to the end door.

Now all was left was getting the puzzle to work in room 3. I ask my team mate to do this part because he had already made part puzzle work. So he has a better understanding of what to do but when he was trying to make the shorter staircase move, it would just teleport to somewhere random on the level. So when he went on lunch he ask me to have a look at it. When I try to test it, it would not move. When I look at both blueprints I could not see anything wrong, only that one node action class was set to the wrong blueprint but when I switch it out everything broke. It was only when I replaced the for each loop node it fix everything and made all the stares work.

So we finally had a working level from the very start. At last, this took a bit longer than it should of but happy we got it done now. Now we can test lighting, add assets, and texture the level. I will need to look at remaking the cut scene at the start because I made a new storyboard that shows off the character off better.

Week 23, Year 2 To know and to know how

So this week was really the same as last week. I just did some touch ups on some of my models and started to unwrap them. It’s really handy now because with unreal 4.7 you can just grab the export of your model and then just drop and drop it into the contents folder in the UE 4 project folder. What has really help speed things up. So when someone has finished a model and puts it into the file, if I have the project open I can import it in for them. No more need for them to have to open the unreal project as well.

I big thing that my team needed to do was make the level work from start to finish. This is still something we have not got done yet. We have got are starting area to work but we still needed to get all the puzzles working and add an end to the level. Luckily we already had 2 puzzles working. We need to get the anamorphic puzzle to work and get the stairs puzzle to work. The problem with the stairs was that we need to make just a new model and make the collision like a wage. So the player think he is going up some stair but really it’s just a slope.

The real problem was the anamorphic puzzle. The idea is that, when the play is in the right place they could look around and when they look at the right place it would trigger a door to open. James (another member in my team) had already try to make it, he had got the trigger to work. So that when the player is in the right spot, the area you have to look at become active. If the player in not in the spot and looks at the area then it will not trigger. Sounds like an easy idea right… well sadly not because to make this work it need to be in 2 different blueprints and not in the level blueprint.

So the problem was that I need to tell the look at Activator, when the player was in the trigger or not. The trigger blueprint had a variable in it that told it if the player was in it or not. I had to find a way to get that variable into the Activator blueprint so it knew what to do but you can’t just copy a paste it, and that what I know in my head what I have to do, but to know how to do it I had no idea. I did come across this document on the unreal engine website 

(https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/UserGuide/BlueprintComms/index.html) 

It talks about how to get to blueprints to communicate between each other. I knew that I had found what I was looking for but I found it hard to understand how it works. After many tries by me and James we could not get it to work and really that’s all because we only knew how it should work but we did not have the knowhow to make it work. Lucky for us we knew someone that had the know and the know how to make it work for us.

To know how something should work is one thing but to then know how to make it work is something very different and this really goes for unreal blueprints. There are many tutorials that can show you how to do thing and from them you get the know-how but some of these tutorials will miss out, the how it works. So if you try and try and make something new you may not know what to do because you don’t have the know how it should work. This is the problem I had but the other way round, I knew how it should work but I did not have the know-how to make it work in the blueprints.

What I do know now is that I need to learn more about the different nodes in the blueprints and how they all work with each other. So I can get the know-how.

Week 22, Year 2 I’m losing ideas for title names now

So this week was reading week, so there were no lessons but there was still a lot of work to get on with. I and my group final got an assets list together and unreal 4.7 came out. All I really had in to model were just little thing that can be done very quickly, what is what I like to do most because they are just little things that can be modeled very quickly. I also help move are level from 4.6 to 4.7

As for unreal update and I’m so happy with it, they have cleaned up the UI in a really nice way and just to me it feels more professional now than it did before and the new big thing that I and my group are really looking forward to is the new animation editing system. This new system allows you to edit animation within unreal and you can now create an animation from physics. I’ll have to look in to that more because that could really help with the rabbit hole falling and landing parts.

I’m pretty happy with how things are looking right now and that are level is coming along very nicely. Also this week I've been watching Fullmetal alchemist and I think I’m already very close to the end of it. I just can’t stop watching it, it’s just too amazing.

Week 21, Year 2 Finally my time to shine

This week I was tasked with doing more concepts but for riddle room this time. I also made a quick storyboard for the rabbit hole cut scene but what I’m most happy about was finally got some time to do some engine work.

So this time I try to go a little bit bigger and try and work faster. Again I’m happy with what I have done but again feel like I’m taking too long and I think it’s because I’m trying to hard when I need to be a little more relax. 

After that last one I tried to work a lot fast with the story boards but I think with something like this I should have done it with pen and paper first. Feel I bit like I rush into digital drawing to fast when I need more parties.

What I’m really happy about was getting to do some engine work. What I was looking into was how to make a player be in a fix spot and only could move there head a bit and not all the way around. I spent a long time just try to work it out and looking at all the unreal documents but not finding anything helpful. The only part I had working was just the player in one spot and can look around but had no limit to it. I did get lucky after some time looking on the internet. The way to do it was to just set up your own game mode, you can then edit the max and min of the Yaw.