Off the Map Master Post

(this is the same document as my report because they serve the same purpose)

Charlie Wallace Team BreakAway http://teambreakawaydmu.wix.com/midsummersdream Becky Green, Hannah Brown, Julie Thomas, Charlotte Watson, Brandon Welch, Charlie Wallace Midsummer Night’s Dream

In this project we were tasked with creating a short game based around one of three plays by William Shakespeare- Macbeth, The Tempest, or Midsummer Night’s Dream. We chose to adapt Midsummer Night’s Dream as a small 3D area. The purpose of the project was to create this area with our own artistic liberties and ideas, refining our ability to work as a group and create a working 3D environment, as well as enter the level itself into the Game City ‘Off the Map’ competition. The project was set over eleven weeks, in which time we would have to decide what direction to take the level, outline basic gameplay, set up a style guide and what look we would want for the environment and characters, manage a timeframe for all assets to be put in engine, and make sure the level works as one, cohesive piece and has kept one continuous style, look and ‘feel’ throughout. The challenge of the task is not only working in tandem as a group, but also creating an original take on one of Shakespeare’s timeless plays without sacrificing the essence of what made them so compelling in the first place.

Pre-production involved a large amount of bouncing ideas, debate, and organisation. First and foremost in terms of organisation we immediately set up a facebook group to make sure the group was in constant communication, and always able to receive feedback and information about their own work along with updates on the work of others and the state of the overall level, as well as a Google Drive dropbox so files could be shared and passed around easily. I personally feel this is one of the most important aspects of early organisation, alongside asset lists and small term deadlines. It was made sure that we were able to keep in contact at all times, especially considering that some team member lived further away from labs than others and may have had issues coming in every day. We quickly and efficiently organised weekly meetings every Wednesday, that quickly and somewhat unintentionally became Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

After two long brainstorms we settled on Midsummer Night’s Dream as the theme for the level (which I was happy with as it was the text I was most familiar with) and went through several meetings deciding what the game would be. While certain aspects like the level being set in a whimsical forest were obvious, we decided to take the level elsewhere tonally. While we were taking cues from artists like Tony Diterlizzi and Brian Froud to create a classic European semi-stylised fantasy look, we also wanted the level to play out like a comedy, as the tone of the original play was so inherently mischievous and genuinely funny. It seemed like such an obvious idea that not many other people would try, and would let us stand out from the crowd- a game that was in on the joke of itself being a game and not afraid to make fun of itself and the player, but still having fun, even pushing it as far as to include elements that would blur the lines between a real forest and a stage play, with wooden props and stage lights that would fall out of trees by accident. This also lead to the idea that the level would be broken into sections, similar to acts in a play, with each section echoing and referencing scenes from the original script and letting the player wander around. In order to further differentiate our level we included the idea that the fairy characters such as Puck, Titania and Oberon would take slight cues from India in their clothing style, to make them seem even more glamorous, sparkling and detailed, while using the warped European style to give them a slightly alien look.

My job was that of Character Artist and Level Designer, as those are my two biggest areas of interest in the industry. This role set me the tasks of populating the world with characters that gave the area more of a physical personality, working closely with Brandon Welch, and making sure the level worked for our needs as game artists and as a showcase of our talents and artistic and technical skills without getting needlessly complicated (or too simple) where I worked closely with Charlotte Watson. The character art side would allow me to explore and design a world and story I already have a passion for, and further improve my character design skills, as the last project left me feeling sour on the overall outcome, so I was excited to help create the literal ‘faces’ of the game itself- especially when we were focusing on the comedic/fanatastical tone of the original story. This would also count as my primary physical contribution to the level. The design side would require me to decide how the level would be played and put together. This was important to me, as I wanted something that wouldn’t be overly-ambitious in mechanics and design, but also wouldn’t be a complete walking simulator, so we could stand out a little bit. All this alongside making the level felt relevant to the source material. The idea was that I could fill these roles and then easily slip into other tasks such as object placement, creating matinees and script work without it being detrimental to my work.

When work began, I started work with Eva on the design of the level by creating a basic white box and then doing some basic sketches and paintovers to show not only what the level could possibly look like, but how the stages would be laid out and what would be in each area, with the level originally having four ‘acts’ and circling around on itself in a winding fashion, to create the feeling of being lost without actually being lost and following a linear path.

We decided what basic matinees and events we would want in the level (Eva did some basic trigger based physics to demonstrate how these would work) and I moved on to some character work. Unfortunately, throughout the weeks of working we slowly came to realize that, despite my best attempts, we had been incredibly ambitious with the scope and size of the level and eventually cut it down to two sections, leaving the map in a C-shape, with the player ending the level on a fade-to-black. Luckily, we were able to keep in one simple game mechanic, in which the player picks up a script for Puck, after which a stage prop falls over, allowing further progression. I also drew some basic storyboards for the first section of the level, trying to develop the basics of the script. The only speaking character in the game was going to be Puck, so I took some basic lines from the play and tried to incorporate them into his dialogue.

Due to my first couple of tasks, I got started on character work slightly later than I would have liked. I was tasked with creating the characters Titania and Oberon, the Queen and King of the faeries. I did some basic concepts for Oberon before we realised that the area he was going to inhabit was cut based on time constraints affecting our new level layout. Because of this, I moved immediately to Titania to make up for lost time.

Because I had neglected to do so in my last project, this was my first time baking a high-to-low-poly character. I made a basic base body in photoshop before making several dress and horn variations for the character and mixing and matching them until I found the version I liked. I looked at not just antlers, but branches for her horns. The dress was easily the most difficult aspect, as Titania is portrayed as otherworldly and ethereal, with her dresses being flamboyantly large and flowing, a design choice that I wanted to include but instead opted for a simple, still regal but ‘handmade’ look for the character to avoid clipping issues, thanks to feedback from the team.

Starting with a Zsphere base in Zbrush was something I hadn’t done before, but was interesting and, after some initial frustrations with it, very effective means of modelling. This also allowed me to sidestep a problem I had with a character from a previous project, as fingers are notoriously hard to model without the help of zspheres. I built up the model and added features using the low-to-high poly method, masking and extracting larger areas as I went for the more prominent features, such as the hair, horns and ears, which I would then sculpt in symmetry. Unfortunately I fell into a slight setback due to lack of experience using spheres, which ended up deleting the extracted areas, forcing me to model them again. Luckily not too much work was lost, but the simple mistake put me back roughly four or five days of work that I had to make up in two.

The dress, however, I tackled in marvellous designer, a software completely foreign to me. This in itself was an interesting and challenging aspect of the project as I had to learn this software in such a short time. The results of using it were, in the software itself, great. Both halves of the dress came together very well and fell on the model in a way I would have struggled to reproduce in Zbrush. I would love to explore the software more from here. However, the fabric of the dress did not dynamesh properly, creating holes and loose geometry on the tail ends. Trying to amend this manually resulted in the mesh having a strange, blocky texture around the sides which looks unnatural. It’s something I intend to go back and fix for the competition hand in.

Alongside Marvellous Designer, I also had another software to learn that I had previously only dipped my toe into- Substance Painter. This software cam in very useful for not just texturing the character but doing quick, efficient metalness, height and roughness maps. I found the software approachable and fairly enjoyable to use, despite frequent crashes. After the model was completed, I made some simple script pages and UI jpegs.

I made sure that the organisation of this project, like my last team based one, was set up strong from the very start. I made sure to set up the facebook and post frequent updates and questions, with Becky Green setting up the drop box and Charlotte Watson making asset lists very early on. We collaboratively decided on personal deadlines in the first days of the project, and kept each other strongly organised throughout the project. There is no doubt in my mind that this project was well organised from the beginning. My personal missteps (data loss, time spent on Oberon) can only be blamed on myself. That said, time management is something I have been striving to keep on top of since first year, hence my frantic organisation at the start of the project. Throughout the project, most of the team managed to keep strong communication, reporting problems and progress as we went. Thanks to Charlotte Watson, who pushed for three team meets a week rather than one (as well as an almost excessive number of colour-coded excel sheets) we were able to keep efficiency to a maximum, regardless of speedbumps or technical issues. My personal organisation has never been strong, which is why I am careful to get strong networks and methods of keeping track and keeping in contact set up very early in every project. I’m thankful to my team for managing to keep positive communication up throughout the project, and being consistently on board with the methods we set up very early on. As a final note, I am incredibly proud of my entire team and how the final level has come out. Our original vision is nowhere near intact- we had to cut so much due to over ambitious mechanics, ideas and areas being scrapped due to time constraints, technical limitations, and sometimes just looking back at our level and saying “yeah, that might not work”. As far as my contribution to the design of the level goes, I’m very happy what managed to stay intact. There’s so much more we wanted to include, but the fact that there is even music or voice acting in the game at all is still incredible to me. Some basic game mechanics I really pushed for were included in the end, including finding the script for Puck that triggers a stage prop to fall over (another thanks to Charlotte Watson for blueprinting the thing, as that might have taken me years to get my head around). The overall tone and feel that we wanted is still present, and it makes me excited for developing the level further. As for Titania, as proud as I am of her, it makes my overall contribution feel somewhat small. She was set up as a grand finale to the level that ended up being a little lacklustre due to me pulling back in several areas of her design. I sincerely regret not pushing the flowing fairy dress at this point, clipping or no. Her angelic otherworldliness is not conveyed as I would have liked it. This is to be expected, I still have a lot to learn, and this project has solidified my love for Zbrush and character art, however I can’t help but wish I’d created something with a little more spectacle. Again, I want to return to the character before the competition, and this is another learning experience, but I need to seriously start considering how to effectively study in the areas I want to pursue. That said, I’m immensely proud of the final level and my team for doing such an incredible job. I would gladly work with them all again if given the chance, and value the experience this project gave me to work on an adaptation of a text that I genuinely love.