May 5th - May 8th (Week 33 of 33)

Important: It has come to my attention that there is a bug tied to the graphic settings (likely the game is too heavily reliant on frame-rate), you can press "Esc" to exit the game and "Backspace" to head to the game-over screen. This is somewhat depressing and is a fundamental flaw in my game. A temporary fix can be to set your game to a high graphics setting.

This is basically it for my project, I created a laz fence to make a more distinguishable obstacle and created a functional scoring system.

Here is a basic build I made shortly after...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_0YexF0jp4
Later I added the pick-ups and music.

I also worked on a taxi to add a bit of variety...

The run timer or "distance counter" had to be left out due to concerns it would create more bugs.
Unfortunatly with the final build of my game there seem to be lag spikes that cause the player's input to occasionally not register, this is problematic, I feel that much of this can be attributed to the amount of particle effects in scene (the glowy laser fences for instance).

This will be resolved for a more public build after submission and taking into account my position and what has been achieved I feel like enough is present to more than make up for the performance issues, solutions were not immediately obvious as this issue is relatively recent and unexpected. Despite being something I'd like to see on android the code is very unoptimised and will require a once over before showcasing.

As I've said before I was after testing my game and I've not always conveyed the amount of people who tried/tested/looked at my game...

Here is a basic overview of people that will be credited in the later builds for more public demonstration (adding a credit scene in game is not high on my agenda at the moment sadly)...

Alistair (student): Tried the game and thought the enemy projectiles were fired too often, I slowed the projectiles.
Joe (student): Tested the game and mentioned its viability on android devices.
James (friend): Tested export of the game and ran into consistently into a bug concerning the death not registering. This was rectified.
Richard (friend): Tested export of the game ran into issue with game pausing.
Ele (housemate): Ran into similar problems ^as above^.
Pijus (housemate): Ran into similar problems ^as above^.
Tom (friend): Tested the game on multiple occasions running into some of the early game breaking bugs and making some fairly good suggestions that would be nice to see in game given time.
Alan (Father): Had some problems distinguishing the obstacles from the platforms, this was in part resolved however not totally.
Taungy (tutor): Played the game and ran wanted shooting per-click.
Ewan (tutor): Pushed the addition of music, over further asset creation.
Kevin (tutor): Proposed using a shader that gave platforms a fake curvature, was very impressive and would like to look into further given more time.
Steve (tutor): Pushed for animations (death) earlier in the project's lifetime, the short hurt scream is a compromise as further animation could look silly depending on the context in which the player died and time was short.
Dan (guest speaker): Played the game an pushed the idea of a skybox alongside more bombastic effects and music.
As this is the last week here is my critical self assessment...

If I was to criticise my performance throughout this year I would say that, in short, I allowed myself to become too complacent, this caused my work-flow to be quite erratic, and meant what I achieved was not as much as I could have achieved had I been able to maintain focus. It can also mean that the work process can be unpleasant and stressful.

Alongside this, as someone who worked entirely by himself, I likely have comparatively produced little documentation. Frankly this is because posting a walk-through per asset would be a waste of time, and as a solo-artist my entire team is more than capable of working via my internal monologue. However I fully understand that to an extent the amount of work I've gone through must be conveyed as the effort required might not be as immediately apparent as I'd like.

I hope that this answers most, if not all, questions concerning my game, I realize that this was likely a very dry account, though hopefully a tad more informative.

And here is a summery of how the months were used...

From September 2013 to May 2014, I have been working solo on the creation of my endless-runner and shooter game “Neo-Cretaceous Britney”. It has been a hard project, but an interesting one that has yielded an end-product I feel would be hard to criticise given the time-frame and that I am but one person.

Within the month of September I decided on my mechanical direction, I created simple random generation mechanics and a great many concept pieces in both 3d and 2d. 

Within the month of October I decided on my theme and thus on how I envisioned the end-product. As a solo digital-artist planning to create an entire game, the mass creation of concept work, to more strongly communicate my thought process to others would have been objectively overindulgent and of no significant value. I instead worked further on the mechanics and started to create assets for my game. I had decided that I would seek to emulate the arcade action style of “Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon” and the general aesthetic of games like “The Wolf Among Us”.

Within the month of November thanks heavily to the assistance I received from Alistair I came up with a finalised system for my random generation, whereby I could instantiate and store my objects like ammunition, the random generation makes my platform generation system not unlike a traditional paintball gun fed a mixture of rounds. I also personally sought to create a locking system for my platforms to keep the track generating seamlessly.

This is an incredibly boring topic but I want to lull you into thinking that I am incredibly smart... The way in which my platforms generate is by utilizing two vectors at either end of each platform, we ask each platform where these vectors are located and thusly determine the length of the platform. We then take the platform length and divide it by two in order to find the platform's centre, we then ask for the previous objects end vector and attach our latest platform to its predecessor's end vector plus at the current platform's length divided by two.

As I described, each platform is basically a bullet with different varied properties, some platform's have enemy spawners or pick-up spawners, some possess obstacles and some do not. A lot of tweaking and adjusting was required to craft these mechanical variations but the basic level generation mechanics proved to be very robust. With more time available I believe myself fully capable of creating scripts to allow for literal turns in the track, however to nip the criticisms regarding this in the bud; creating a treadmill with segments of track deviating in direction is not something I can just whack in, it's a different more complicated machine that would require an investment of time I could not afford.


Within the month of December I created many of the assets present in the game alongside others that weren't quite good enough.

I also came to decisions about the style I wanted, in order to achieve this style I limit myself to a very magenta based colour scheme with highlights in contrasting lime-green. This is paired with a cartoony styalised aesthetic, that is achieved through the use of posterize effects and and painted on shading. Character design wise, I went for a very simple design that over exaggerates the head.

Overall I've received little else but positive feedback regarding this style, and it's defiantly praise that I feel I deserve, however I will admit that achieving a higher fidelity game would have been drastically more difficult and was one of the main reasons I decided to peruse this stylised look instead.

Within the month of January, though I should have focused on my dissertation, I decided to create; buildings, props and tweaks to the pre-existing base-platform. Shortly after the deadline I decided to work on the tally system, that I decided in order to function to an acceptable standard would need to have persistent scores that remained after the player had loaded his/her game, this was surprisingly simple, and the tally system that sorts through the score is very basic, but I think it adds to the game considerably and was well worth my time.

In future I would like to allow the player to attach his/her name to his/her score, however for the purposes of this submission this would be a waste of time, hopefully for the showcasing of my game I will be able to put aside the time required.

Within the Month of February I decided to basically re-evaluate the amount of time I had remaining, I created some basic drawings in an attempt to keep me rehearsed, my perspective drawing remains poor, but as quickly drawn concept work I tend to think it looks alright.

Using some sketches I made prior I drew out a Menu screen in the style of a News channel, this would later be refined though little would change overall. I also refined and textured my jet-pack shark model, I was particularly pleased with this as I think it looks quite cool, in-game it does feel a tad wasted though, as it's hard to make out the details from the player perspective.

I also adjusted the Britney asset, replacing teeth and forcing the mesh to read entirely from one texture map.

Within March I caught a cold, broke a tooth, turned 22, and decided to refine the concepts I had drawn prior.

I also begun to play around with animations and the skinning the player mesh, diversify track segments, and create new interesting assets, once again though I feel they go unappreciated due to the perspective.

Within April I played around with video and created an ad that I will show shortly, I also worked on my own death and jump animations as well as exaggerated the previous walk cycle, none of these animations are fantastic but they function well enough and I was quite pleased with my weighting of the verts. I had some crippling problems with the my rigged meshes importing inverted, but later thanks to assistance by Ewan I was able to resolve that and make greater progress.

James Brooksby, and Dan Lodge from Born Ready Games, were invited to speak at the university they checked out some of my progress and seemed pretty positive about it. Dan in particular had some relatively good suggestions concerning the game's aesthetic.

Around early mid-April I was contacted, alongside others, by a programmer (Richard) on another course looking to make a team for this year's Dare to be Digital, unfortunately the time before we had to submit the application was short and many members of our team were unable to commit and it felt most of the onus was on me to produce work, using old assets from unevaluated work (plus a few new bits and bobs) I drew some concept stuff, threw together a basic office space, modelled a spider, rigged it and animated it using some pre-existing stuff within 3dsmax, I then created a demo of sorts and a video I'm not proud of.

I also put in lego blocks because I liked the pun.

Within May I worked on a skybox (or rather a curved plain) as Dan Lodge had suggested, I also attempted to put clouds as he had suggested, but that made the game look a little too crowded and I felt that getting the clouds working as an element would take far too much time. Thus I've probably removed them.

Alongside this I put in a few little touches like a busted taxi, replaced some of the tank-block hedgehogs with lazer fences, however I've found them a bit too noisy in game so we'll see if I keep them.

Mechanics-wise I've created a score system whereby if a you pick-up some drops you gain points and if enemies die you likewise gain points. And I've fixed a great many bugs and issues people had with the exported files.

Before the deadline, that for me is tomorrow, I hope to have the “distance travelled” factored in to the score system, and hope to have made some minor tweaks to the platform designs.

However I'm unlikely to succeed in all aspects, there's a lot to do and a lot that could be done, but ultimately I feel that I have achieved all that I've set out to do, and will work on the project further for the showcasing. If the game is well received I will look to make further improvements before releasing the game on pc/mac + android devices.

In addition I feel I should remind the examiner that what's present in game is not everything, scripts, 3d Assets, Textures and the like all get removed and changed. The game itself is not a final product but hopefully showcases my ability to create content both technical and artistic, please also take into consideration the supporting art-work, and Dare to be Digital submission (for which we have made it past the initial stage of applications into an interview stage on the 16th of May).

Cheers for reading through this blog!