CAGD 373 Blog

 CAGD 373 

Game Scene Final Project Post

Presentation

    For this game project we ended up making a scene based off of the game Splitgate. We were initially planning to do a level based on the level Oasis but when we realized another team was planning on doing their scene based on the Oasis level we decided to do a different level. We ended up making a scene based on the level Lavawell. Two of our team members, William and Alex, knew Splitgate pretty well which is why we chose Splitgate instead of the other games like Valorant or Mario. We chose Lavawell based off of the idea it was a pretty well self-contained level of Splitgate and we only did a portion of the level which was able to be well self contained. 

    We did not put a lot of thought into creating a specific mood or feel for our scene initially, largely basing our level just off the way Lavawell is in the actual game. The mood is somewhat dark and cold due to the large indoor space with all of the metal walls and walkways all around. On the other hand there was the warm element of the titular lava of Lavawell at the base of the level. The scene ends up being thematically related to many such scenes of blacksmith shops, foundries, and factories from various media. An example that comes to mind is Isengard and Barad Dur from the Lord of the Rings the titular two towers of the middle book as presented in the movies by Peter Jackson. Both of these imposing fortresses features forge levels full of fire and machinery deep in the bowels of these structures. Considering these thematic elements of our scene it makes me wonder what design elements went in to the actual original creation of this level, did the designers of Splitgate also consider similar thematic inspiration or did they draw inspiration from other sources? There may well be an answer to such questions out there but I do not know. As for story we had no particular ideas for story either as the original level is not particularly story heavy as far as I know and we did not decide to change that.

                                   

    We had a lot of challenges and triumphs working on this project throughout. One challenge we faced was dealing with Unity, though in reality this would be a multi-headed monster of a problem akin to a hydra, cut down one problem and two more arose. First I had to get Unity teams to work which unfortunately only allows three people to work together at a time which meant one team member had to be excluded from the Unity project creating issues as that would require using Google Drive and other such means to facilitate importing of that person's work into the final Unity scene. I had to figure out how to use the Unity teams system and eventually removed an old teammate from a past project from a different class and successfully added the two team members, Alex and John, to the project after accidentally trying to add Alex at the wrong part of the process. With that hurdle vanquished it soon lead to another as Alex pointed out to me that I was using the wrong unity version for the project. As it turns out I had been doing this a lot but had never noticed, assuming creating a new project using the launcher for a specific version would default to using that version for the project. But actually I was stuck using a wrong, old version. I tried to fix this but then it crashed several times and I had delete and re-download the correct version. After that I was able to create a new version of the Unity project and removed and then re-added my two teammates to it using Unity teams. At the end of the project we took longer getting ready with the Unity project than expected and a few things we wanted to do did not end up getting properly finished. Despite the setbacks we managed to complete the project and turn it in, and in my opinion the level looks beautiful, great work from the modelers. 

                                    

Sprint Review 3

This sprint I did not do as much work as I would have liked. I still managed to make a fair amount of progress but will need to improve my helping work with other team members. The main portions of what I did this sprint can be divided into two parts. The first part was fixing the problems around the unity version I made the scene in. It turns out I have been using the wrong unity version without realizing so I had to rectify this. The other thing I worked on was working on finishing the portal design. 

It turned out for quite a long time that I have been using the wrong unity version for unity. I did not realize quite how creating projects in different versions which led to this issue. I did fix this but first I had to re-download the correct unity version in order to create a new project in the correct version. I then had to re-add the other team members to the unity collab. I also had to re-import all of the scripts, assets, and such into the new scene. So far things have been working well.

I continued working on coding and adding the portal system to the unity scene. For a while I had a code issue where some of the code was highlighted red despite following a tutorial. The problem turned out to be that I slightly mistyped a portion of the code which made the whole thing wrong. I also added the portal assets into the project as well. 

The portal system is not quite finished but seeing it in game is really cool. Now to finish it and add in the other movement mechanics into the unity scene for the next sprint.

Sprint Review 2

 

 

https://trello.com/b/1WsW04n6/group-5 

In sprint 5* we assigned a total of 10 tasks and have completed 4 of them as well as 8 tasks from previous sprints with a total of 9 tasks in progress but not completed. Once these tasks are done we will move onto finalizing UVs, then texturing and moving the models into unity. Despite some slow sprints we have managed to end up pretty much on schedule or just a little behind which is pretty good considering we have been operating about 1/2 a sprint behind due to confusion on the start point of sprint 1.

I have completed some work this sprint but need to catch up a fair bit and I plan on doing that as well as helping out with texturing work over this week and possibly into break if necessary.

So far this sprint I got our Unity teams working as a major point of progress. While some kinks may need working out overall this is going well so far. I have added two team members to collaborate but only have this one screenshot for now after adding the first team member, I had to remove an old team member from last semester to add in a new team member after taking this screenshot.

I also worked on the big special movement element for our project, the portal system, I followed some tutorials and have made some progress but I need more time to fully implement and make sure they work as intended.

Sorry for the light-mode blinding whiteness in this screenshot. 

I also need to add in the jetpack sort of movement which may be easy or hard but that is a problem for future me to solve. 

Tower Project

This project was intended to create a series of tower for a tower defense themed micro-scene. I suffered throughout the project from a lack of direction and inspiration. I should have picked on some well known property to knock off of rather than trying to create my own original work. I also modeled the initial models fine but they had low poly counts. I was able to partially correct this. My worst initial modeling problem was modeling the props as I could not figure out what to make and all of my favorite ideas became bogged down by horrible UVs. I had to redesign most of my props several times to get functioning UVs for them. Texturing went ok overall but had some issues due to accidentally adding IDs to the low poly models. I also had issues with downscaling the terrain piece in Unity and ended up using the make holes in terrain tool to cut it down to size. This was a crude way of doing it but it worked fine for my purposes. 

The other big issue I ran into was figuring out how LODs worked. I unfortunately did not pay enough attention to how they worked until it was far too late. I did manage to make some but they had texturing issues and I did not have enough time to correct them for implementation initially. I also failed to study the material properly and missed a bunch of questions on the Level of Detail quiz which was entirely avoidable but I rushed it. I initially turned in the project file with unimplemented LODs but I did touch them up and re-do them before the deadline. I am unsure if I did something wrong with implementing the LODs as they appear not to work but at least I tried. They still have bad textures due to merely using the IDs for the high poly but it was something more than nothing.

Corridor Project

    This project was a doozy. Five weeks was one of the longest projects I have worked on and it was quite interesting to do. I had some ups and downs throughout but despite setbacks I managed to get most of it done and sent in. I only wish I had finished properly.

    In week 1 I largely focused on getting some inspiration for the project and coming up with some ideas. I got some inspiration images together and considered what to do next. I wish I had put the effort into starting modeling then.

    In week 2 I started modeling in earnest but ran into some hurdles from the get go. I had issues with UVing and such and started my first major mistake, making full models rather than just pieces which would modularize and obscure their flat nature. I got very little done in week 2.

    I started week 3 okay and managed to churn out all of my models by the end of it though I wish I had spent more time on quality assurance and making them fit better and have better UVs. I did manage to make some decent props with decent UVs which was nice. 

    Week 4 was a disaster. I meant to get a lot of texturing done but I procrastinated during the early part of the week and then spent the last part of the week traveling and being generally busy with family. A lot of trouble was had because of this both in and outside of school stuff though I did enjoy spending time with my family. I ended up not getting any texturing done because I was dumb and forgot how it worked. 

    Week 5 was an acceptable finish considering my wasted time but I could have made a fully complete project and ended up not completing a few things due to lack of time. I did manage to finish texturing but forgot how to make floaters work unfortunately. I then imported everything into Unity and started building my scene after various hassles with textures and the like. The scene took quite a while to build as I had not laid out my full maze in Maya and I did not get the snapping quite right. The Maze was largely ok but there was some missing ceiling bits. I did manage to make the animations but ran out of time setting up proper triggers so they just looped. I did not manage to get any sound effects finished in time. I also failed to add the correct lighting and did not make a video run through until now as I have not used OBS very much and ran out of time. If I had spent my time just a bit better this would have been at least technically complete but I am happy I managed to get most of it finished and working and turned in.