Now that the side scrolling game is finished I'm happy to say I'm be content with our levels final outcome. Our team worked really well together to which I would say our concept artist Georgina was the crucial key part of or team. With her amazing concepts she kept the style of the level consistent, and created a large amount of the designs which run through all the levels. It was a great experience to work with her as I could create assets directly based on her drawings and receive feedback quickly.
A stage however I personally struggled with was the beginning stage of concepting. At first I felt useful as I could help gather references and assist with coming up with the levels core theme. Yet as we began to better work out the levels design I had to wait for the concept artist to finalize the design and often felt as though I had nothing to do. But even in this time I tried to help by creating level designs for platforming sections or how we could change the layout. But I was glad when we had the basic level design as the environment part of the team could start on the white box stage.
We managed to complete the white box for our level quickly so I was able to start working on final assets almost immediately. I began by creating smaller assets like trees but then tried to assist with making the main base parts of our level the rocks. I honestly I have little knowledge of high poly modelling or using software like Zbrush and 3d Coat so I was automatically not suited to my role. My teammates were very useful however and showed me a rock creation plugin and by merging different ones together to create the shapes we needed and then editing them in Z brush we could create rocks easily. However I just ended up crumpling the mesh too much or not understanding how to morph the shape how I needed and ended up making the edges overlap. My teammates then moved me to work on the gears for the level. Even though we only had one person working on the rocks I think it was the best option as he managed to keep them all the same style and used a snow emitter on each one to create a unique snow covering. This was a big worry we had. What would be the best way to add snow to our level? We had consulted the lecturers and been told a variety of methods but by having snow meshes mixed with vertex painted snow it made a perfect snowy illusion.
At this point each of our team went off and created our designated assets whilst our concept artist worked on their designs. Domenico became in charge of placing the assets in engine when the engine team allowed us to edit our own levels. He created a snow brush to blend his snow blob meshes together and then was able to use this on other meshes which allowed us to avoid using snow in our diffuse as we could just add it in the engine. Later on however we had some engine issues as the files were saved on specific computers and we were unable to access them. This meant when we need to add the last few assets we were unable to, this then resulted in one of my lanterns being left out of the final version.
If I was to tackle a similar project I think more planning should have been taken with the engine files so they would have been accessible to all team members not just the one. However only one person can work on the file at once so it might have been unavoidable. We also had some platforming issues that hadn't been ironed out by the design phase so I think we should have possibly considered adding more interesting ways to traverse the level. By the end of the project we also began to run out of ideas and not knowing what to do. All the main assets had been made and we were left with little to do. During this time I created a variety of lanterns to fill the level but we could have possibly concentrated on the bottom section of the level and refined that instead of making these smaller assets.
To conclude I'm really happy with our outcome. I feel it fits the Cold theme perfectly and runs with the correct level theme to help tie it together with the other levels. It was a great experience to work with a concept artist and work from their designs. We could have spent longer placing assets in the level and finishing other areas of the level as we did have the time. I also would have liked to recreate the platforms into ones made from bamboo as I believe it would give a nice unique look. Yet I'm glad we were able to fully polish the top area of our level. This project has really inspired me to possibly try and make another side scrolling level in the future,
A stage however I personally struggled with was the beginning stage of concepting. At first I felt useful as I could help gather references and assist with coming up with the levels core theme. Yet as we began to better work out the levels design I had to wait for the concept artist to finalize the design and often felt as though I had nothing to do. But even in this time I tried to help by creating level designs for platforming sections or how we could change the layout. But I was glad when we had the basic level design as the environment part of the team could start on the white box stage.
We managed to complete the white box for our level quickly so I was able to start working on final assets almost immediately. I began by creating smaller assets like trees but then tried to assist with making the main base parts of our level the rocks. I honestly I have little knowledge of high poly modelling or using software like Zbrush and 3d Coat so I was automatically not suited to my role. My teammates were very useful however and showed me a rock creation plugin and by merging different ones together to create the shapes we needed and then editing them in Z brush we could create rocks easily. However I just ended up crumpling the mesh too much or not understanding how to morph the shape how I needed and ended up making the edges overlap. My teammates then moved me to work on the gears for the level. Even though we only had one person working on the rocks I think it was the best option as he managed to keep them all the same style and used a snow emitter on each one to create a unique snow covering. This was a big worry we had. What would be the best way to add snow to our level? We had consulted the lecturers and been told a variety of methods but by having snow meshes mixed with vertex painted snow it made a perfect snowy illusion.
At this point each of our team went off and created our designated assets whilst our concept artist worked on their designs. Domenico became in charge of placing the assets in engine when the engine team allowed us to edit our own levels. He created a snow brush to blend his snow blob meshes together and then was able to use this on other meshes which allowed us to avoid using snow in our diffuse as we could just add it in the engine. Later on however we had some engine issues as the files were saved on specific computers and we were unable to access them. This meant when we need to add the last few assets we were unable to, this then resulted in one of my lanterns being left out of the final version.
If I was to tackle a similar project I think more planning should have been taken with the engine files so they would have been accessible to all team members not just the one. However only one person can work on the file at once so it might have been unavoidable. We also had some platforming issues that hadn't been ironed out by the design phase so I think we should have possibly considered adding more interesting ways to traverse the level. By the end of the project we also began to run out of ideas and not knowing what to do. All the main assets had been made and we were left with little to do. During this time I created a variety of lanterns to fill the level but we could have possibly concentrated on the bottom section of the level and refined that instead of making these smaller assets.
To conclude I'm really happy with our outcome. I feel it fits the Cold theme perfectly and runs with the correct level theme to help tie it together with the other levels. It was a great experience to work with a concept artist and work from their designs. We could have spent longer placing assets in the level and finishing other areas of the level as we did have the time. I also would have liked to recreate the platforms into ones made from bamboo as I believe it would give a nice unique look. Yet I'm glad we were able to fully polish the top area of our level. This project has really inspired me to possibly try and make another side scrolling level in the future,
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