GUI Reflection

I created my own Graphical User Interface (GUI) by first of sketching up four concept ideas, I used professional examples of Interfaces to use as inspiration as I knew what Interfaces in which games are popular and easy to use. As our game trailer is of the adventure/rpg genre, I went with this approach when choosing suitable inspiration. However I also took other inspiration from First Person Shooters like Call Of Duty and Battlefield as their interfaces are very well designed. When sketching up my concept ideas I also took into consideration the fact of what I was going to put into my GUI, our trailer being of the rpg genre as I discussed earlier, I followed along the lines of what is included in these sort of interfaces, this being a simple map almost like a radar but slightly different, they also include, some type of inventory, quest list and furthermore a health, magicka and stamina bar which is usually in the middle of the screen, either top or bottom depending on where the map is sat. The professional GUI's are very well set out, as everything is placed in a convenient space, nothing interferes with any other aspect of the design and so they are very well managed when interacting in-game consequences.

On My GUI I decided to follow the approach of what Skyrim did for their Interface, I created my Interface firstly in Photoshop by drawing my design onto a screenshot of my environment, I was then able to see what it would look like and choose my final design. I created an inventory at the bottom of the screen which had an opacity of approximately 60%, I changed the colour to a dark orangey brown, to suit the atmosphere of my environment, and included other aspects of my Interface using various shapes. After I had created my Interface and I was pleased with what I had produced, I decided to take the same screenshot into Adobe Flash and produce it with several animation which would make the buttons do certain tasks such as scroll-down lists. To make these aspects I firstly drew a shape for example a rectangle, I then right-clicked and pressed convert to symbol, button. This converted the rectangle into a button which I could now add effects to. When I double clicked the button it came up with an editing menu, which is how I applied these various effects. I inserted a blank keyframe, and pasted in the same button but instead this time, changed the colour to a dark blue, I then exited the editing menu and pressed Ctrl + Enter, this brought up the Flash version of what I currently made and when the mouse hovered over the rectangle it changed colour and brought up a drop-down menu which included the quest information.

I didn't really struggle with anything while making my Interface because I am already used to using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash I had much simplicity with creating most of my Interface, it was very simple to create my concept GUI using Photoshop, however I struggled slightly with the Flash aspect of the task. The main part I struggled with was how to add effects to the objects, but when I looked at a tutorial it was very simple to do.

Comparing my Interface to a professional example, there are similarities to do with the design and layout of the actual interface, however, I wouldn't say it compares to an Interface from Skyrim because of the fact its a                    simple design, I didn't overcomplicate anything in my design, whereas professional GUI's are complicated but not to the point where there not understandable.

If I was to make my Interface again I would possibly go with another strategy or genre for my design, I think that I would possibly go for more of a FPS (First Person Shooter) design, as I would like my game to have weapons such as guns and also other weapons which are from different genres.

3D Environment Reflection

For My part of the game trailer, my job was to model and texture a tomb environment in 3Ds Max. When it came to my research for what I was going to be creating I had a couple of images that were in-game screenshots from popular professional games, that most contained some-sort of tomb environment or catacombs. My inspiration came from Skyrim because it is one of my favourite games and so I know alot about what the tombs and models look like in the game, I also chose this game as the models that they have created are to an excellent standard and are very professional. There is one particular tomb in the game which is called "Bleak Falls Barrow" and my inspiration for my tomb environment came from this. In my environment there are several rooms each of which portraying a different image and atmosphere. I started off on my first room which is the main room in my environment, it contains a platform with an abandoned fountain and another platform which is a shrine to Titus Salt. To make this environment it was simply less than 20 objects. The first platform which the fountain is sat on is one box with many polygons added to make all the different shapes. I started off with a box with 1 length, height and width segment and converted it to an editable poly, this mode allows you to make your own vertices by connecting edges. I connected two sides to make four vertices and the beveled this created polygons upwards to make a step platform. For the stairs I did exactly the same on the front side of the box and extruded each polygon separately and moved each step inwards slightly to create the curve on the steps. To make the fountain which sat upon the platform I first made a cylinder with 2 height segments and roughly 20 sides to make it very spherical. I also converted it to an editable poly and extruded the sides of the cylinder to make an extruded step onto the fountain, after that I extruded the top polygon inwards and then beveled that polygon upwards to make the stand. I went into my material editor and chose a raytrace and then changed the diffuse and raytrace materials to my created water texture, but i wanted to give it an abandoned feel so I messed around with the colour untill the reflected water turned dark and murky. In my other rooms in my environment i used the same technique to add my vertices and polygons wherever i pleased, this was a much quicker and easier way to model because I didn't end up with unwanted vertices that weren't needed. Also in my environment were many torches and firepits to light up my environment, to make the firepit I modelled a box and extruded the top polygon inwards, then i textured the polygon with a coal texture and placed a target spotlight inside the box. The torches were created by using particle effects, I created a sphere gizmo and placed a fire effect ontop and messed with the effects untill i was happy with the intensity of the fire.

Well compared to my original intentions, I had some sort of idea I wanted to create. I wanted to make a big open environment with a shrine at the end and on the sides I wanted to have altar stands which would each hold individual valued items that weren't known to man. As i have now finished my environment I would say that it is a different version to my original intention but if I had have also included my created environment with my intentional idea, then I think that my environment would have been much better and made more sense.

I think I managed my time well, as it took most of the time we had to finish our modelling, I didn't rush anything in particular, I took my time in the modelling process as it took me most of the time to finish the modelling I had about a week to texturise everything in my environment, I could have however,managed my time more efficiently by spending more time on my texture's as they weren't perfectly placed on my models, so some of the models quality were reduced because the materials didn't tessellate properly.

What I struggled with while making my environment was some of the effects and also the materializing, as I briefly mentioned above, when I had finished making my texture's in adobe photoshop they looked very good almost to a professional standard, however when I placed them onto my models which had different sized polygons, the materials stretched and changed shape which made my models look worse than they actually were, if I was to have someone from industry place textures onto my models they would look alot better and professional than when I placed mine. The most point of making a model look good is how good the textures are and this was where my environment was flawed.

On the other hand though, what I found easy was the modelling, I really enjoy making a good model in 3D max and this project was a good experience to see how I will fair if i get into university later on this year. As I discovered a simple way of modelling it cuts out all the complications of unneeded vertices, i had much ease modifying the boxes and cylinders into the shapes I desired.

Comparing my environment to a professional environment, there are two ways I would view this, the first is that my modelling is almost to a professional standard and I would be able to see it included in a companies game without the textures, however if I was to compare my environment to a professional version with my textures placed, I would say that my environment belongs in a very basic game as I don't think my textures are amazing but more of an average or beginner standard. As I used Skyrim as my inspiration I will compare my tomb environment to a tomb environment in Skyrim. My tomb environment is good but not professional, I will need much more experience and need to watch more tutorials in-order to get a close standard, My materials have flaws which deminish the creativeness of my environment. I wouldn't say its anywhere near close to the standard of skyrim but instead is closer to one of their older games like Arena or daggerfall.

I received good feedback about my environment even though my materials weren't perfect, the reason why my environment got a good grade was because of the effects I used, the lighting I used I had never used before and decided to experiment with, and they actually worked, I had people telling me that my lighting was good and it redeemed the quality of my environment, but I also got bad feedback (which I expected) because of my materials which I have explained already.

What I could improve on is definitely my textures and how I apply materials to my models, this effects overall how good the model looks because without textures, models look good, but they lack and atmosphere or emotion, also I think I will look at more effects as I succeeded on making a fire effect and it looked pretty decent, there are many effects that I haven't learnt about yet so I will look into these at a later time.

If I was to make my environment again, I would spend a lot more time on my concepts, sketch up a couple of different ideas and possibly try to model and outside environment, as my environment was inside, there were very limited effects I could use, because it wouldn't look right, for example if I was to use fog inside my tomb it wouldn't look right because where would the fog have come from, also I would spend definitely more time on my materials, I would figure out how to make the perfect texture so it tesselllated properly and looked more professional, and possibly research more effects that could be used because my fire effect could have been made better if I had known how to animate the fire to make it look much better. As I had used my imagination to make my environment, I would try to model something from real-life as most people on the other teams modelled a place from Saltaire, I would definitely choose that option.

I have very much enjoyed doing this project as I have improved my modelling skill by using a different technique that I didn't know about last year, i learnt how to raytrace a material to make a reflection, how to edit textures in Adobe Photoshop (although I need more experience on this aspect) and then apply them to a model. I learnt how to create a fire effect that also provided it's own light source and different types of lights that change and edit the mood or atmosphere

Reflection Questions

For my part of the soundtrack I made a complicated dubstep music track using Cubase 5. This dubstep track contained various sounds such as modulated basslines, a synth lead and a looped drum track. To make the drum beat I used a simple kick and snare pattern and then added some high hats and cymbals to fill in the gaps in between. I then also duplicated the drum loop and changed the sound from a drum track to a bass track, so far in the music was a simple drum loop with bass that kicked in to boost the intensity of the music. To make the synth lead I used a midi keyboard with a preset synth keyboard loaded, I then made a simple 4 bar melody which silently followed the drum beat and the bassline.

My final audio mostly matches my original intentions of what I was trying to produce, as I had acheived a Dubstep music track I was pleasantly pleased with what I had produced, However I had one compromise which was being able to produce the wobble bass that is widely used in Dubstep, as I had already created a modulated bassline I thought of adding another oscillator to try and make the "womp" sound that is recognised in the bass drops, I came close to achieving the perfect bass wobble but I occured a problem which was when this wobble was placed into my drum loop it didn't fit right and made the music sound even worse so I decided to scrap the bass drop in my music and focused on a more liquidy Dubstep tune.

I think that my time management was good but could have been better, as in the first two weeks of production, I sat working on cubase mainly focusing on creating the wobble bass for the bass drop in the song, this wasted some time and I realised that if i kept trying to create this wobble, then my production time would slowly decrease more and more untill i had no time at all to create the rest of the music, so I decided in the third week to totally scrap the wobble idea and I began creating my drum track. I had a few versions of this drum track but my third version was the one that was used in the music track, as I didn't quite know what to put in my drum loop, i played around with a few kick and snare patterns untill i created the one that I was very content with.

I had quite a few struggles while creating my music track, I have already highlighted one point which was the wobble bass that I was going to create, this failed because of my lack of experience in the program, if i was more skilled with cubase I could have created the bass with some ease, but as I am only a novice in the program I had a vague idea of what Vst's and effects to use. As I knew that basslines contained oscillator's and modifiers and reverbs, I played around with a couple of these, the oscillator was the best option though, but I struggled when I turned the Lfo speed up it didn't create the sound I was looking for. My second struggle was with the sound's. As there was lots of different, drum, bass and synth sounds, during the first two weeks when I was attempting to create the perfect bass I was guessing on which sound's to use, I attempted to use a house drum beat which didn't sound anything like I was expecting, but I eventually found the drum track which was the Drum and bass drumkit.

What I found easy when creating my music track was using the Midi keyboard, as it was a very simplistic design, I grasped it's concept almost instantly, and also when I had found my chosen drum and bass sounds, it was very simple to create the drum beat as I knew that all Dubstep uses a simple kick and snare pattern with high hats and cymbals in between the bars, so it took me minutes to create the drum track when i had experimented with different patterns.

Comparing my finished audio to a professional example of music featured in a game trailer, well my music is very different as I am a fan of the electro music I thought that an electro track like my Dubstep soundtrack would fit in well with the environments we had created, in a professional trailer the music is very well almostly perfectly chosen to match the game, I wouldn't say my music perfectly matched our game trailer, because the bass I created wasn't heavy enough and so it didn't sound perfect, but in my opinion compared to a professional trailer I think it was very close.

When our trailer was launched my music soundtrack received mixed opinions, the majority of people disliked my music as it was not to their taste and said it was too loud and drowned out the voice-over in the soundtrack, however they applauded my effort and said I had done a good job in creating the music, they also thought that the music got repetitive, I agree with the comments about the repetitiveness, because my music track was merely a looped track, it eventually got repetitive at the end of the trailer, whereas if I had been able to create the wobble bass, then my music track would have sounded much better because of the fact that the drum beat builds up at about the usual time of 50s. In most Dubstep there is a huge brutal bass drops which stops the song from being repetitive because as the song progresses there are more and more bass drops which increase the ingeniuty of the song keeping it from getting repetitive.

I think if I was to produce this music track again, it would be alot better as my skills in cubase have improved since making the music for our game trailer. For a start I would make my drum track not repetitive, because the music had no bass drop, the drum loop started to ger repetitive around the end of the trailer. To change the drum track I would add more high hats to remove the gaps in-between the bars, I would also take out some of the double snares because this was the point that was making the music repetitive. once I had taken out the double snares, i would tweak the kick drums by changing the pattern. Also if I had to make my music track again I would add a kick drum building up to the bass drop, I would then have made a brutal bass drop using oscillators and modifiers, and the drum beat would change to a simple kick and snare pattern, there would also be a modulated bassline sat underneath the bass wobbles to enhance the intensity of the music. These changes in my music would make it fit the trailer much better, and would stop the repetitiveness of the music, which would in the end product I would receive positive feedback about my music soundtrack.

Concept Gui's

Today we were asked to create a concept gui for our game trailer in photoshop, as my part of the trailer is based on the inspiration of skyrim i decided to follow that sort of approach, i designed a health bar, a simple radar/map and an objectives and inventory bar. here is my concept gui above,

Defining The Trailer

My environment consists of the tomb with a couple of different rooms, the first room is a dining room with a long table and chairs, it then leads into another room with two thrones and a firepit with a table and a sword and shield, it then continues into the tomb where the is a walkway and the camera pans underneath it down some stairs, and finally leads into the main area of the tomb. The sound I am doing for the trailer is the soundtrack, i have been busy creating a Dubstep soundtrack and have so far got the drumbeat set, i just need to create the wobbles in the bassline and then loop the track to the length of the trailer. My marketing i have made an a6 flyer for advertising our game trailer

Final Team T-shirt Design

So we have now voted on our final Team T-shirt design for our game trailer The Awoken : Guardians of Titus, Our final T-shirt design we have chosen is featured below, it was made by our team-mate Robert Briggs, and it is a simple t-shirt design with the team logo and a pixellation on the front.

Environment Modelling

Today in class we have been continuing with our modelling for our game trailers, so I was continuing to model my tomb in 3d max, the image displayed above is the current state of my tomb. In the back of the environment there is an ancient fountain sitting atop a platform, this is where I started to model my tomb, as i had previously built this fountain to test water materials by using a ray trace and it worked well so i decided to place it into my scene, to make it have more of an abandoned feel I changed the luminosity of the water texture so it looked more like dirty water. After I had modelled the fountain, I began to model the platform it sat upon, this looks like its many objects but is simply one box. To make the platform I simply added polygons where I needed them by connecting various edges together, this approach to my work has drastically improved my 3D Max skill as I no longer need to have those unneeded polygons and vertices. Once I had added the polygons needed I simply extruded and twisted it in for each extrusion to make the staircase. For the font in the middle of the platform I extruded the polygon inwards to create an alcove, I then made a sphere and changed the hemisphere value to about half-way. I then simply selected the top polygon, beveled it inside slightly, and then furthermore extruded it inwards to make the bowl shape inside of it. The stand for the bowl is a simple extrusion of the bottom of the hemisphere. Once I had made the platform with the fountain, I began to model the shrine where the coffin is sat, Once again I decided to model it out of one simple box, I made a quick sketch first of where I would need my polygons, and then I started to connect edges together and extrude and bevel the created polygons until I came out with the shrine/altar.

Also today we did some editing in Windows live movie maker, our teacher gave us 16 individual shots of movie clips which are from the same video, we then had to cut part of one clip to make it look better, and also put the clips in order to make the short film clip look correct. I found this very hard as there were many clips that looked similar, I understood part of the film and got a couple of clips fitting together correctly, the rest of the clips just seemed out of place and were very hard to find the correct order. Although I didn't get the  shots in order, It was still a good experience and showed me the difficulties of editing movie footage and the different kinds of effects you can create in movie maker