Evaluation - Ronin Murton
For this assignment I was tasked with picking an area of game design that I would be interested in
specialising in. Even this task had it's problems for me as I'll explain later in the evaluation. The
goals of the assignment are decided by me and I have to think carefully about how much work I need
to produce in order to pass. The assignment should be a part of games design that you are interested
in or would like to specialise in.
Initial Proposal
The first task of the assignment was to create an initial proposal, this is meant to outline the idea and
what might be required of you to make it. My first idea was for a 3D animated scene set in a sci-fi
setting. I put a lot of thought into the design of the script and how many models i would need to
create, all to save time and make sure the quality of the animation is good. The issue that i had was
one of the first assignments that we did was creating animation sets using bones, this was hard for
me to understand and use at first. This led to me changing the subject specialism idea, looking back I
made a massive mistake. The reason I say this is because I found animating to be enjoyable near the
end of the animation assignment and I felt a lot more comfortable with doing it. I changed my idea to
creating two different rooms and adding some animation and sound to both.
The idea i mistakenly went with was about creating two different rooms, one in a fantasy setting and
the other would be a sci-fi apartment. It would have little animation and mainly be focused on
modeling and texturing, i have never been good at modeling and i don't like doing it so you could say
that it was a poor choice. After some changes I settled on this idea but with the addition of a 1-2
minute animation for the fantasy temple room, basically making it more difficult for myself. The reason
I added animation was because that's the only part I like doing with this whole project.
I think what I recorded in the evidence needed section and my aims on what I need to produce was
fair, it just didn't connect with me about how much work it actually is.
Research
I had already completed around 13 pages or research before I changed my idea and had to restart
the whole process again, I was warned not to change and well I'll add my ability to not listen to the list
of problems with the assignment. When I restarted the research I looked at different rooms in games
and how they went about designing them. It was interesting and it did give me some inspiration for
my concept art and layout of the room. Eventually my research moved onto videos that i looked at
that help me with my concept art or the little modeling that i did. I think that i did a reasonable amount
of pages and i covered a range of areas, if i didn't change my idea then i would have around 53
pages of research like i mentioned in my presentation.
I could have done a lot more with my research, I could have looked at more concept art tutorials and
the same for modeling tutorials. But that was down to a lack of interest in my part as i enjoyed talking
about animations as shown in my old research.
Concept Art and Level Maps
I don't like doing concept art, probably down to my lacking drawing skills but near the end of the
assignment I do have some fun with watercolors so that's a bonus. I knew concept art would be a big
part of the pre pre production for this assignment, I just didn't know that my computer issues would
force me to do this more than other tasks. I started this process by doing basic rough level maps of
both rooms and some very basic sketches. I did a bunch of rough level maps and that helped to
narrow down the design of both of the rooms, if i didn't do the sci-fi room then i feel like the fantasy
room would probably have had a better overall design with more detail.
I did some perspective drawings, normally i try to avoid them as i find 3d objects really hard to draw,
but i wanted to at least learn something new. I also tried some watercolour pencils and that was
interesting to use and try to figure out, I would definitely make that a bigger part of my pre production
in other assignments.
The photoshop level maps are very basic, i just didn't get around to adding any colour and in the case
of the sci-fi room, i just didn't even really finish it.
Storyboard and animatic
The storyboard was interesting, if i stayed with my original idea then i would have had to do a
storyboard anyway so i count run from this. The reason I hate doing storyboards is that they are
basically a large collection of perspective shots and I can't seem to draw them. I started by doing a
basic block out of the objects in each scene, I then left this part of the assignment go for an extended
period of time because it physically hurt to look at them for extended periods of time. I went back to
the storyboard frames when I started to do more concept art and that was when I felt more confident
with my ability to draw. I think the end result looked okay, i could have maybe added some more
frames but i have enough to get the basic animation across.
The animatic went well, i captured some new foley and also used some older stuff that i recorded
during the sound assignment in the finished product. I would have been better with some more
detailed sounds as i had all of that planned out in my pre production folder. I also wanted to put some
music that i found on youtube over the top as they state in the comment section on each video that it
is free to use, in the ned i don't because it's not my own work and i'm not going to put something that i
didn't create and try to pass it off as something i did myself.
Mind Map and Gnatt chart
The mindmap was easy to create, it just contained a bunch of images of different fantasy and sci-fi
rooms, it helped in the initial creation of model sheets and level maps but beyond that I don't really
use it. The Gnatt chart served as a good reminder of how much I did not do, but it kept me on track
for the first couple of months.
Temple
The temple room started off well, I had created the basic size of the room and started to add size
guides for all of the assets that will be placed in it. I worked on the archways in the middle of the
temple and I started to work on the walls as well. This is when i had some computer issues that were
minor at the start, this didn't really slow me down as i could still work on the project in college. In
college I managed to test some cloth simulations as all of the characters in the temple have some
form of cloth on their person. This was interesting and I kept a record of what I did and learnt from this
process.
When we were forced to stay at home, my computer sensed a weakness and decided to try and
destroy my work load and my willpower over the course of a couple of weeks. I couldn't do any work
on 3ds max because it would blue screen every 15 minutes, I had so many blue screens that i think i
had one that wasn't even registered on the Microsoft help website. Apart from my new discovery, I
was basically prevented from making any more models or doing anything on 3DS Max. This was
when I moved onto other non computer work, which helped me learn some new things. I eventually
managed to get my computer working at a full reset but for some reason 3DS Max won't install but
Mudbox will. This meant that I had to just start working on a character design in Mudbox, interesting
and enjoyable but not really helpful in the long run.
Earlier I tried to use my concept art to create some stencils for Mudbox, I recorded my progress and
what happened when I tried to use them. I did learn from this process but i couldn't put that new
found knowledge to the test on any of my models.
Sci-fi room
The sci-fi room was a big old mistake on my part, i thought that doing two different themed rooms was
a smart choice and given that this was a year long assignment it would be enough. It was definitely
too much and i regret it, on a good note it did some okay concept art for it. The idea of making it
unreal is a puzzle to even it's grand architect but i thought that it would make the lighting easier. It
didn't occur to me that it's not easy to get models into Unreal as you have to scale them correctly, not
that it was an issue as i only made two models and i couldn't even texture them or import them into the level.
I don't particularly know why i even packed the game and re coded gameplay footage, i guess i'm just
trying to make it seem like it wasn't a waste of my time. On the plus side I learnt a little bit more on
how to use lights in Unreal.
Presentation
The presentation went pretty well, i decided to use a screen capture software and just do a voice over
using a foley mic that i bought. I count access 3DS Max to show off the models but I took screenshots
of my progress and that showed the final version of them. I had a bluescreen 5 minutes into my first
recording, not a huge problem but it was pretty annoying. The only major issue I had was the time
limit . I count talk about everything I did as I do so many small things that the large portions of the
assignment took up most of the time. This would not have been a problem if i did my first idea as i
could just have the 5 minute animation play in the background as i talk over it. Furthermore, if i didn't
do the sci-fi room then i would have had more time to talk about the temple and my concept art.
Conclusion
In conclusion, i made a lot of bad choices with this assignment. The first was changing my idea
because i was unsure of my ability, the second was trying to do too much and not managing my time
properly. Obviously, my computer and the pandemic situation did not help in the last portion of the
assignment. The subject specialism assignment was so you could pick something to specialise in and
focus on, currently i feel like i did not focus on anything and i have no clue what i would say if
someone asked what part of games design i like or can effectively do. Now what did I enjoy? I liked
the couple of hours I spent on Mudbox and I liked writing the script and making the animatic.
There is a lot that i would do differently if i could do this assignment again but i don't know if i will get
another assignment like this again. In the end I gave it all I had until I just couldn't on certain aspects
of the assignment.
