Creative Industry Production

View the Final Product HERE:

I must produce an "artefact" meant to raise interest in Nottingham. This artefact is a Nottingham themed branded game that gives you an explorative trek through Nottingham where you hunt down geese loose across the city as the legendary Robin Hood, learning about the city as you go along. The game is a third person project built in the Unreal Engine, with art assets created in Autodesk Maya, Blender Modelling, Aseprite for pixel art, and Procreate for smooth hand-drawn art.

This production page expands upon the work made in the first Creative Industry Response section. The build file is version 14, Modded Patch 0.3, the same build that was packaged and used for the Itch.io Prototype page.

What appears in the game?

Four locations set in the city of Nottingham: Castle Gate, Market Square, Green's Windmill, (all real places) and a Hub Room location.
Pixel art renditions of real Nottingham places
2D characters in a 3D world
Educational rewards for playing through the game
and lots of geese to catch!

The player controls a 2D Robin Hood exploring a modern Nottingham rendered in a pixel art aesthetic, using third person shooter controls to throw nets and chase after geese. You can interact with Robin's Merry Men to get some educational facts, listen to some comedic quips, or get information about the game itself. You advance through the game by capturing geese, and the game is complete when you have caught every goose that is loose in every location.

I chose Robin Hood (and his Merry Men) for their historic relevance. The pixel art treatment of modern Nottingham is a nod to the Marketing Nottingham's slogan of "Looking towards the future, while being aware of the past". The "retro" pixel art aesthetic was also chosen to appeal to 16-29 year olds since this sort of look is currently popular across major gaming platforms like Steam and the Epic Game Store.

What exactly IS a branded game?

Branded games are custom made by or for a company to advertise or increase interest in their brand. When compared to "regular" advertisments, branded games can increase engagement. Rather than just looking at a still advertisment image, a game lets the potential audience actually interact with tta brand, often in clever or unexpected ways.

I found some examples of branded games that achieved varying levels of success. We can take a number of lessons from these titles when thinking about our own project.

Chex Quest:

A family friendly first person shooter themed around Chex cereal.

What was good about it?

It was a family friendly clone of the game Doom. This allowed it to reach a wider audience than the more mature prdecessor.
It was a well-made adaption of the Doom title, being a good game in it's own right, and also succeeded in its ulterior goal, causing a large boost in Chex cereal sales.
The game had good art and audio design, and as extra rewards inside the game, you were told recipies you could make using Chex cereal.

What was bad about it?

Most of the negative points around this game was related to how this game is a cloned and reskinned Doom, saying that the game was unoriginal and that it had little technical innovation. However, technical innovation was not the point of the game, so this criticism seems unfounded.

What could be taken from this?

A project can be a reskinned copy of a preexisting game, using uniquely made assets.
Having information that can be used outside the game is a good way to increase player investment.
Creating your project to be family friendly allows it to reach a wider audience.

I Love You Colonel Sanders!:

A dating simulator made for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

What was good about it?

The format of conversation-heavy dating simulator helps get people invested in the world the characters exist in.
It is a "dating simulator" game, which is very art and text heavy, and it has good settings, and dialog.
The developers know that the premise is ridiculous, and lean into the absurdity.

What is a negative part?

This game does have zaniness, but it overuses the comedy and doesn't have much of a grounded baseline in reality to offset the absurdity.
The game is a dating simulator, although a dating game might not fit quite well with an "explore Nottingham" game, at least for my version.
It is a text heavy game, which in a quick paced action game would bog down the time a player spends doing other actions in the game, and if a game revolves around that action, then slowing it down will be unwanted by the players.

What could be taken from this?

Having conversations to increase the interest players have in the game's characters is a good technique.
Games can use comedy, but overusing anything in a game can cause your project to feel uninteresting or stale.
Drowning players in an overabundance of dialog will get them annoyed and could make them lose attention in your game.

The games of Branded Business Games

This is a company that makes bespoke or prefabricated branded games for companies to use.
What is good about these games?

The games are reasonably well made, and are all functional.
All a client would have to do is provde art assets, and they build the game for you, helping you get it distributed as well.
The projects all work on multiple platforms for easy accessibility.

What is negative about this?

The projects all feel unoriginal becuase they're all based off of limited codebases.
The projects can be reskinned for any situation, but then it would rely on the people who are applying their own work onto it.

What can be taken from this?

Branded games can be built with a basic mechanics system, and then use any art asset. They're "easy" for the client, but aren't particularly original.
Projects that work on multiple platforms can reach a wider audience of people.
Games can have tolerable mechanics, with good art, or good mechanics, and tolerable art.

Asking for Prototype Feedback:

Getting feedback on my game's prototype before starting on development.

The link is here: https://forms.office.com/e/6tmSH1ny8

How do people feel about the PREMISE?

It is across the board liked and appreciated. People think running across Nottingham catching geese is a humorous idea and works well.

How do people like the ARTSTYLE?

The artstyle was liked, and it was stated by a few that it all fits nicely, but there was a point people made:

People thought the artstyle was clashing slightly.

While I was developing my prototype I used 2D pixel art environment and a 3D player with "realistic" textures. This is a very noticeable contrast in mediums that the players thought was too unexplained. To fix this contrast issue, I ended up spending more time making all the art a consistent pixel style.

How do people like the MECHANIC?

The mechanic was enjoyed by all. A few points given that I will modify are:

Walking back and forth into the box seems slow. To fix it, I will build a system to drop ALL your geese into the box at once.
People had no context on what was going on in the project. I can fix this with an introduction to the story via a dialouge system.
The prototype has no win state. I will make a goal to reach for every location, and have a little "you won!" system to visually reward the player.
I was advised to also make a better stunning effect for the geese. I implemented this on the Tuesday of Half Term.
The UI seems cluttered with the controls. I will modify this by having the menu ONLY contain the important thing: How many geese you're holding, and how many you captured. (I will have extra information like how many collectables gotten on level-opening screens and in the Hub Room.)

How do people like the EDUCATION?

Collectables, NPC's, and signposts to deliver info was all in all liked as an idea. People assume the game will have interactable UI, signposts to look at, and educational facts to learn throughout the city. This idea was inspired by Oceanhorn Chronos Dungeon for the collectables, and World Of Goo for the informational signs.

Where would you EXPLORE?

Most people said Market Square, and Nottingham Castle, as the Square is a very recognisable location, and the Castle is a Nottingham centric place. The other locations I plan on doing are the Nottingham Contempary, and Green's Windmill, along with a hub room.

THE BUILDING PLAN:

Castle Gate. It's the simplest, and the first one I planned to do.
Market Square. It is very recognizable as Nottingham, and it is relatively easy to make.
Green's Windmill. I have already been there, it is a rather small sized location, compared to Market Square, and it is a culturally interesting area.
Nottingham Contemporary. It is another interesting Nottingham location, and it would be interesting to model, despite being a fairy large area to create.
The Hub Room. It will just be a simple cubic room.

What is the WIN STATE?

I made a new form, "What kind of Victory?" to get this response.

The current idea would be this: You stuff geese into a tube, and when you have 100% got ALL the geese, there's a little particle effect, a happy melody plays, and the game says " ALL GEESE COLLECTED!" The game pulls up an animated screen that shows you being a goose collecting hero, with your stats up on the screen, and it telling you "Good Job!"

All of this is overall very good feedback, as most of the things I would need to modify are very easy to fix or implement. It's now time to have out WHAT TO DO AND WHEN!

What To Do and When:

Patch up the project based on most recently collected feedback.
Do development on a Nottingham level *If one area is completed, I should start on a new one.* (Model area from photos. Research facts. Develop collectibles. Check code accuracy of levels. Build Level Changers)
Polish level. (Place geese. Check models. Bug-test Level changers. work on Collectibles.
Get feedback.
Repeat.

This "What To Do and When" is a cyclical loop I should work on every week in order to get my project done at a good pace. Now that I have a moderately okay loop of what to do, I need to know what I am making.

ASSET LIST:

Level Layout.
Level Blueprints.
Level Buildings.
Scene changers. (Visual assets, variable unlockability depending on level completion, and scene changing animation.)
Signposts. (Models and researched information.)
Collectables. (Models and researched information)
Win Stage message on Geese-Pens.
Stun-Effect. Particle effect used for Goose stunning, and level completing.
Sound attenuator.
Music. Light chirpy stuff. Don't flood people with instruments and just use Piano, Guitar, Bass, maybe some whistles.

RISKS AND CONTINGENCIES:

Starting on Development: Making a Paraglider, and patching the Pen.

The first, and simpler part of this section is fixing the Goose-Pen. When people looked over my project, they stated that repeatedly moving back into the pen to drop geese was tedious. Here's how I fixed it, and for extra information, you can click on the images below!

This goose pen code used to just add 1 to your Captured Geese integer, and subtract 1 from your Morkey (held geese) count.
The goal of these changes is to allow rapid capturing of geese, and it took me three tries and lots of Miscalculating Values to get it right!
The final version, Image 4 (Patch 3) causes the GameMode to add your held geese to your captured geese number, then make your held geese number into 0. This causes the box to capture all the geese you were holding at once, instead of you needing to repeatedly interact with the box every time you wanted to capture a goose.

Section 2 is making the Paraglide. I made a video to show how it's done.

I decided to make a paraglide as the extra flair mechanic for this project. The inspiration for a paraglide activated by geese is a direct link to the Legend of Zelda series, specifically the game Breath of the Wild, where if you grab a chicken and jump off a high place, the fowl allows you to fall slowly and greatly extend your air time. It was a pretty easy mechanic to implement, and it only took two hours or so, but adding new mechanics will require you to do more bug testing. The largest issue I had to face while testing was an issue with the collisions.
When you jump, and then push the glide button as you're moving upwards, your overall jump height is increased. This increase meant you could jump over fences and thus do a large sequence break, or possible fall out of bounds if the fence was over the void. To fix this issue, I gave the wall's invisible collisions a drastic increase in height, making it 5421 units tall. (The regular height was 64 units tall.)

NOTE: This video shows a gravity reduction of 0.1. This is an extreme to show what changes. The newest
build of the project uses the lesser 0.3, which is a much softer, and more reasonable reduction.

This marks off the player's maximum possible jump boost.

The new invisible wall collision. The max wall height used to be the highlighted box's height.

This is how I described the patch change in the Microsoft Teams File-Backup chat.

Level Development:

What I need to work on:

The Floor Plans.
The Buildings
The Reference Pictures.
The 16 bit Pixel image textures.
The Scene Changing Node.
The level victory state and award visuals in the form of a Particle Effect.
The Stunning Goose particle Effect.
The Collectibles.
The Cooldown UI.
The Signposts. (This is just a Morko reskin)
The Audio.
Discuss copyright issues related to taking photos of Castle Gate and surrounding environs.

Win State.

This is a showing of the Winstate Patch 1. It contains
a textbox that says "GOOSE GET!" in green when you
catch a goose, and it says "ALL GEESE CAPTURED" in
white once you captured every goose in the area.
This is a very basic winstate, as all the winstate has to do
is increase your captured goose count.

This idea came from the form What Type Of Victory?
I also implemented the ideas from this form into later builds.

Built Weds 1.

Cooldown UI.

I plan to have a UI setup with two cooldown assets in the
top left corner, that show how much you have left on your
glide, and run abilities. The top right corner will contain
the captured geese and held geese you currently have.

To simplify my UI, I can just show the important info, (geese)
and let everything else be in the levels, or on the Player.

Geese Counters
Ability Cooldown

Started Weds 1.

BASIC primitive Nottingham Castle Gate..png

Primitive Castle Gate

This is my first model of Castle Gate. It is made from four
modular pieces. This was blocked off using Google Maps,
and the two photos of Castle Gate I had shown earlier on
the site. It will be textured with 16 bit indexed photos.

For making any complicated models, I have learned from
the term 1 3D Development Workload powerpoint that I
should make a copy of the model in Maya to represent
collision, label the copy as UCX_"file name" and when you
import into Unreal, select the static mesh collision to be
the fifth editor option of "Use Complex Collision As Simple"

Built Weds 1.

Castle Gate Error

The Castle Gate model has an unusual change to the
inner section of the castle. The walls of the hallway are
curved upwards at massive angles, even though the model
itself has a straight lined hallway. This seems to be awfully
similar to the impossible chair I made in the TinyRoom,
so I most likely missed out on a line in the model when making
the castle hallway.
I found the missing line in Maya and fixed the model.

End Thu 2-Fri 3.

Interjection on Overcomplicated Maya Modelling.

The Castle Gate model is one of the most complicated models I've made. It is also absolutely unneeded for this project, even though it will still be a bit useful for whiteboxing. Due to my project being a coding project, I will not be graded on this model. I have also been told by teachers (Martin, Mark, and Chris Walton) that because of this, I need to spend no unneeded effort on models. This advice thus gives me the all-correct required to let me follow my first level design plan without needing to stress on populating the level with well crafted models. I can just use primitive shapes for the entire project.

What I will get around WEEK 2/Weekend of Week 1: (Italic Notes written on 8th Feb. Wednesday 2023.)

Level Layout white-boxing COMPLETED ...50% (I made some for Green's Windmill)
Base Collectibles blueprint. (This is just the Goose code with different variables to use.)
Scene Changer. (On_Player_Begin_Overlap casts to Change Scene by Name: "The corresponding level"). COMPLETED. (Tuesday Week 4.)
Audio. (I already built an attenuation node. Now I just add it to Goose, and make a honk noise.). COMPLETED (Tuesday Week 5.)
Winstate. 80% COMPLETE. Mechanics are done. Art is not. (Weds Week 5.)
Updated UI. 80% COMPLETED
A few normalmapped Textures. COMPLETED (I made four with Aesprite, and used Christian Petry's Normalmap Online for normalmaps.) *as of Monday Week 4. (27th), I have ALL the realistic textures made!

Texture Notes.

I was rather unsure on how to make the layout for Castle Gate, as I don't have enough photogrammetry textures. I am now going to go through a Green's Windmill, as I DO have all the photogrammetry, or MOST of the photogrammetry textures for this one. However, I need to learn how to properly repeat small pixel textures. Doing semi-accurate pixel textures will also reduce the issues of legal copyright considerations.
*as of the day Monday 27th, I walked to Castle Gate and took a wide variety of textures. I now have WAY OVER enough images for Castle Gate.

Windmill Construction. (Week 1 End)

I have made a basic model of Green's Windmill, using my photographs taken on site as references. For scaling textures, I used this Youtube video, and for the normalmapping I used Christian Petry's Normalmap Online. I have a (inside less) Science centre, and a capsuled windmill with pixel art sails. To expand upon this, I will add way out of the Mill zone to new areas once I build the Scene Changer system. I plan to make the basic collectibles, Audio, updated winstate, UI, and hopefully have all this be made and feedback around the week 2 end mark. As of now, I recognise I was not managing to get much work done due to stress caused by my primitive art style plan. I will now just try to spend my time making everything on the lists I've made earlier, and only worry about what people think of it while I'm getting feedback.
The next additions to this area would be audio, Texturemapping the untouchable surroundings, Collectables, better geese placement, Winstates, the different geese classes, a new NPC, and the ability to head into other locations. If I am somehow unable to get all the mechanic work built and completed by the week 2 mark, I will work on it while also starting on the other four locations.

Updated UI: (Mon 6)

The Unreal Engine does not work with Paper2D flipbooks and Widgets. They do not connect together. How can I make an animated 2D object then?

Hardcode the animation using Delays and swapping between textures.
Link the UI with the Input the player does via a Custom Node call.

This will allow me to play the animation on the widget UI when the Player does the action.

1:

I make a custom node in the Widget UI that changes the
image material 4 times over 0.03 seconds.

2:

I call the custom node in the Player's run function.
This will cause the Widget to play it's animation when
I push the Run key.
(The NOTE is actually not a problem)

3:

I now took a screenshot showing my updated UI with it's first
cooldown visual! The top left is the run, and I'll add a
second one soon that is the glide timer. I also plan to
develop a particle effect when you push the glide button,
to give a visual indicator that you used it.
This was saved as build 24, "UI Build 1."

Beginning of Week 2/WEEK 2:

This begins with the development of a NEW LEVEL!
I have made a whitebox of Green's Windmill, a UI, a Paraglide, the ability to rapidly capture geese, and some textures. I need to get started on the rest of the project. I,e, Levels, photographic textures, and Scene changing. There will be, hopefully, five locations, but this is just my stretch goal. To reduce the scale of the locations in my game, I have decided to not allow the player to walk into the roads of the locations. This gives me a good guide of level border collision to follow.

Developing Market Square:

I have made a tolerable Green's Windmill, and I have no other places built yet. Market Square sounds like it would be quite easy, so I am constructing this one first. I first began with making a new level, and added in a 3.0 by 2.0 unit rectangle for the player to run around on, with invisible walls all around it. (I also modified the UI to be outlined, and so more clear to read.)

Basic Plane:

This is the bare minimum run around location.
I will need to expand upon this while also using my
primitive polygon blocks.
I also think that I could try to use the Unreal Texture
Landscape brush in order to help with overall height mapping.

An Internet Reference:

I have taken this image of Nottingham off the Internet's
wide roster of photos. I will use it to help map out the areas
of Market Square that I need to create. This location will
be interesting because of the objects placed around it, the image
textures on the outside to show the iconic location of the Market Square,
the collectables, and as always, there'll be lots of geese.

First MS Environ object.

I have created this basic staircase-esque object modelled loosely
off of the fountain in Market Square. The fountain is currently small,
but it will get remade later to more fit the real environ.
This small version is just to get the approximate shape made.
Besides remapping the object(s), I will also need to make new
textures matched off of the photos I have from C.I.R Pt 1, and
the image above. I will use Christian Petry's Normalmap Online.
for normalmapping textures.
This was saved as build 25, "MK Start"
I have a plan to try and use Mesh Painting/Blending to add on
extra texture overlays in my project.

Market Square Whiteboxed

I have now created a simple whitebox of the Market Square.
I need to next get feedback on these, and create new
textures for the floors/objects

The Market Square Feedback

Feedback taken from the form MS Feedback

6/9 people could tell they were in Market Square.
People wanted a more realistic floor. That was the most said response. Textures are overall liked though.
I should add more buildings. The goose catching pen should also look more obvious, clear, and noticeable. People also want a better win state.
The readers want music, and an explanative area that tells you controls and lore, like a tutorial, is advised by Joseph Thacker.

This means I need to make: (For both levels)

A surrounding Skybox!
A more obvious pen!
Particle effect on catching geese!
Collectables!
A HUB ROOM!
and MORE KINDS OF GEESE!
Music!
Geese sounds!
Something to happen when you catch all the geese. Allow level changing!

To-Do Lists and Preperation. (Week 2: 9 Feb.)

Am I using smart file techniques in this project?
... Not too well. My Unreal Folders are named clearly, with things like "Selfmade Environs" for my buildings, and "Materials" for my materials, but when I just use direct assets, they're not named the best. (Like MarketSquareHall_ver_1) For SAVING work, I do a nicer job. I save the work with a small sentence above it explaining the patch I did, and have a newly named file with a title related to what I did that day.

Do I manage my time well?

No. I don't think I do. For one thing, I haven't really been doing a chart of timed out work blocks. I've instead been working in a slightly more agile method where I write out around the start of the week a list of all the work I have to do, but it's not really the same. After I write up this list, I get started on development, and work on fufilling this list until I complete a goal on it. Whenever a goal is met, I take some photos of the changes, save it to my save chat, then spend the required time to make a writeup on the site. This is not a time chart however, which is a required thing I need to do explained in the brief.

Am I following my old plan well?

Yes, remarkably! I wasn't recognising that I should take breaks during the project, but once I realised that, I've been going at quite a good pace following my original "plan" loop of Level Polish, Mechanics Polish, Extras Polish, Repeat.
As of now, I started on my Market Square room, (Level), I got feedback on how to make it nicer which also brought to the center stage advice to make new textures and photogrammetry the area., (Level-Polish) I also was advised to make a winstate, and have geese run TOWARDS bread if they're near enough (Mechanic Polish) I got a reccomendation to apply music into the game (Geese honks and background audio)

What has happened in my project?
I started to work on the Market Square environ of my game, and made a Green's Windmill environ.

So what then? Why do I even need these?
These places are the Nottingham part of my Nottingham themed game. If you can tell where you are, you can recognise you are in Nottingham

HOW am I going to use this information in the future?
Just from this project, I was able to learn how to Normalmap items, make a collectible modified menu, and get better at overall planning and designing projects.

HALFTERM WORK:
I have taken the advice of the feedback given in the last few days before half term, and I decided to change the character model from a bread-headed person to a pixel art character. I have chosen to make this character based off of Robin Hood. The character was made in Aesprite as a 64 by 64 sprite. It was put into Unreal and animated via the Unreal Flipbook system I learned in the first term at Confetti, The coding of the character has the addition of "set Flipbook" nodes now, as the Unreal Engine does not passively allow 2D animations to play after hooking everything up with an animation file, like the 3D Unreal animation system.

For my baseline test, the player movers forwards, and has a jump and glide animation. To expand upon this I will make a side view animation for walking left and right, which will be rigged to the axis vales of the input axis function I have currently set up.

Setting Flipbooks:

I add a set flip book node onto the end, or in-between the functions
that I want the character to be animated in. This section shows on the
bottom half of the image the flip books for jumping, active on pushing
the jump button, and idling, which plays on the end of the falling animation

The New Player:

This is a screenshot showing my green garbed new player from a
frontal perspective. This is a picture taken by placing the character in
the chosen location, because in the actual game you would not be able
to have the player spirit rotate towards you, I will get feedback on the
billboarded character during testing in order to see how people like it,
and if there are any bugs.

Tuesday. Games Production:

In this "session" meant to follow my normal class system, I will be working on some mechanical aspects of my project, which includes three visual additions to the project. These additions will be:

Adding a left-right walking animation to my Player.
Creating an effect that appears on geese when you stun them.
An indicator of level completion using the Goose Pen.
and a changed asset for the thrown projectile.

New Goose Stun

This is a very simple solution to wanting a goose stun effect.
On hitting a goose, I change the asset to the red "!" marked
"trapped" goose. After a 10 second delay, I swap it back to the
normal goose asset. It took about two minutes to make.

... Now why in the world did I not do this earlier?

Thursday:

In this "session" meant to follow my normal class system, I have made a form to ask classmates what they want the Goose catching area to look like, and I also plan to head out into the city and take the photographs I need for Castle Gate, Market Square, and Green's Windmill.

Why did I not do work on Wednesday?

I have been facing some burnout in the project, so I decided it may be best to take a small break on Wednesday. I, although, did do some small "work" tasks on Wednesday, I just did not do work on the computer. What I did was:

Analyse my project, and realise that trying to make the Nottingham Contemporary was an idea that was too large scale for my assignment.
I sketched out designs of accurate (in some ways) vertical heights of my areas in order to make the player not have to run around a flat plane.
I drew some art of boxes to hold geese in, and designs for an NPC to replace Morko. (It's a Marian, as the new player is a little Robin.)

Friday: Updating Player Animations.

In this "session" my task went remarkably well. I was thinking over how to allow a player sprite to rotate left and right WITHOUT using direct "push left to go left" keystrokes (Action Buttons). My solution was to add a branch onto my MoveRight Axis key that says "Is the axis higher than, or 1? (Left) or is it -1 or less? (Right) then I said that if it is > 1, play the left animation, and if it is -1, play the right animation!

I tried to implement it today, and despite a few redo's to fix logic issues, such as "you can only run while falling == true" or "you can only idle as long as you're pushing a movement key", I eventually patched all these obnoxious bugs, and it now worked! You looked left whilst moving in that direction, and right in the other path! Here's a video to show what the project looks like now!

I just noticed a bit of an issue here.
(The Left and Right animations don't play.)
I'm going to have to research how to fix this.

Issue 2: As of Sunday, the Player Left/Right Run animation ART assets have broken, and the sprites had vanished from the face of the editor. I still had them in the files, so it was not a real problem to reimport them, as shown here with the 8 black sprites, it's just annoying to have to remake the animations again. I also reduced the file size to 969.4 MB, instead of 2 GB!

This build was saved on the last day of Halfterm, as the HalftermBuild_01.

This is the new Nottingham Center Square. The left/right corners, and the left side from the council hall are unmade as of writing. I also took a tree off off the internet, from Hanae Utamara.
I also have taken photographs of the Robin Hood Statue/Castle Gate location as well, and I will use this system of picture photogrammetry (take picture, straighten, pixel-ize, import) in order to create the Castle Gate stage as well.

Start of Week 4:

I have walked out into the city and took the photographs I need for Castle Gate, and Market Square. Green's Windmill is a rather obscure place in Nottingham, so I will just use pictures I took from the top of the Mill.

I edited the Market Square photos using Affinity Photo, slicing out the sky of the images, and pixel distorting the images. The images were then added into Unreal as two-faced-foliage planes, and positioned into the level. I am going to be back for my first new day of class off of Halfterm, where I plan to fix the 2D Player Animation issues, and develop the other mechanical assets of my project.

POSSIBLE RISKS I COULD FACE?

My game's files are unsaved and I will have to open up an old build.
My work is wiped, and I have to remake them.
The Unreal engine build I brought from home does not work at school.
I am unable to package my file. (too big, the computer breaks, etc.)

WEEK 4's Gannt Chart.

This week, I got feedback from teachers, and classmates on my project. The student feedback can be seen here:

This week, around Monday, I was given feedback from Caitlin, one of my teachers, and they pointed out for specific parts that I did not have in the first half of my site, namely:

I did not explain where my ideas came from. This was mostly because of the bread headed player character.
I did not analyse my feedback well enough in th firs half of my project and was supposed to give a wider scope of feedback.
I did not do much research into pre-existing video games. I hoped to fix this with my discussion of Branded Games higher up.
I did not show any time management in the form of a time-sheet, or a Gannt chart. To fix this, I am starting on development of a weekly Gannt chart that I will look over and assess the level of following that I did with it. My first chart can be opened below.

What I did over Week 4. (Implementing Feedback)
I spent some time making an updated Gantt chart, I created a multiple jump system that increases your jumps per geese you're holding, and slows you down after holding more than 2 geese. One other issue I was told to fix in Market Square was the too-reflective and looping floor of Market Square, which I turned into a pixel-filtered texture using the same technique as the Market Square borders.
Looking back onto Green's Windmill, I still needed to make the hill, borders, and Level changing for it. I started on the hill first, and I plan to do the scene changing and borders later in this week. I first tried to use the built in Unreal Landscape tool to make my hill, but it built a mysteriously shifting and warping hill of evil, so I instead built a cubist voxel "hill" to jump up. If I was to update the hill, I'd add ramps up it, as some parts of the surface cannot be easily jumped up. When I took breaks from making the hill, I also reduced the player encumbrance to 10 units of movement reduction per goose, instead of 50. This makes the change dramatically weaker, and it meant you could not get so many geese that you couldn't move. AS my files have been repeatedly reset back to earlier builds, I had to deal with the risk of coding files and art files multiple times over this week. To fix it, I would save my project more regularly, and open the project before and after saving to see if the files got reset. I do not know how the files were repeatedly wiped, but as of the fifth week, on Thursday the third of Febuary, I have not had to remake my code again after a wipe.

The file wiping was caused by me having two builds of my project in the same folder. The game was saving to the other build, and as soon as I opened up the second build I saw ALL of the assets I put into the game! To fix this, I will make sure to ONLY have one build actively used at any time.

Week 5: Getting feedback.
At the start of week 5, specifically on Tuesday 28th, I made a form to request feedback on my project as of this time.
The Form: https://forms.office.com/e/U2kA2pE3LS

The responses: Winstate_Responses

I sent out this form and came back with some very problematic issues. Namely, the issues that you can glitch yourself out of bounds with the Player Projectile, the basic scene changer system broke horribly, the encumbrance got so high you could never move, and you could trap geese in the air if you stunned them. Here's how I fixed the issues:

The projectile issue was easily patched when I made a custom collision on the projectile that ignores the player.
The scene changer glitch ONLY appears in that one specific build, and I remade the system.
As explained higher up, I reduced the encumbrance by 20%, thus making it unable to slow you to immobility,
The geese-are-permanently-stuck was fixed by setting ONE variable to true at the end of the is_goose_hit function: A little node called "Set Active" (This allow the goose to interact with physics.)

Am I getting enough feedback in my project?

I personally think that my weekly feedback in class as of the last two weeks is a good method, so I feel I am getting a tolerable amount of feedback for the project. I can also note that this means I am getting peer review for my development process, and if I want to try and get more constructive feedback, I can create more regular surveys on off days to send out a larger scope of surveys weekly. If I was going to say a section where I am falling short while making feedback surveys, it is that I sometimes ask too many questions, ot I ignore certain aspects of the project because I got used to them being there. (Like the Bread Headed Person)

How has my project changed? are the changed documented, is there a reason why, and did I explain why I changed the project with sources?

I made the HUD be in the bottom center of the screen, instead of the top right. This was to give the player reduced obstructions.
The removal of the Bread Headed person. It was random, and when people gave me feedback to change the character, I listened to it, and changed it into a 2D pixel art character that fit more into the graphical theme, and made it a Robin of Loxley to link it more to Nottingham. It is documented on the site under the 'HALFTERM WORK" section.
The removal of the goose paraglide, and Goose encumbrance. The removal of the goose glide was because when I had made a feedback form, and asked people in person, they said it was hard to jump, THEN push the right click button at the right time in order to do the jump. I changed it into a multiple jump system that people could more easily learn (what game player doesn't know a double jump?), and the encumbrance was added when people asked me to add a cost to holding multiple geese,
The maximum area section to explore is three. You can go through Market Square, Castle Gate, Green's Windmill, and there is a hub room as well. I removed Nottingham Contemporary from the list, because it is basically it's own artefact in of itself.

What to do on the Weekend of week 5:

During the fifth weekend, most of my time was spent trying to implement all the feedback I got during the class weeks 4 and 5 like less reflective textures, a better looking goose catching place, an indicator of captured geese in levels, making the Green's Windmill hill smoother to get up, and giving the player eyes.

As an extra thing to create over the Industry Week, (Week 6) is a visual indication of collecting educational documents. If you hit an achievement goal, then a paper drifts up over your head, then vanishes with a "poof", and it says “Page Get!”

I will also make the achievement plinths have visual unlockable effects, (dull, then glow.) and give an indicator if you’ve already read it. (it turns a new color.) To teach people that the plinths can actually DO something, I will have it be that if you look at it BEFORE unlocking it, it gives you a UI saying “This is not unlocked! Find this plinth’s page by: *QUEST”. Martin recommended trying to have an audio of someone reading the page, to add some extra flair, but this is a stretch goal (I think as my other stretch goal, I‘d also get public domain images, and create a time-lapse sketch out of designs and art of the locations.) I also need to add more large invisible walls in Green's Windmill

The only major problem with this list is that I can't easily do ALL OF THIS in a weekend. Instead, I aspire to try to get it all done over the next few weeks of the project

WEEK 5 WEEKEND:

I have good news, and bad news...

The good news is that I have completed the fourth cardinal direction of the Market Square, and I new need to start on the corner photos, after a short break.

The bad news is that my goose code, and the player code have been wiped. Again. For the fourth time.
This is a pretty bad thing, but I managed to very rapidly fix the issue, because if there's only ONE thing I learned from this project, it's how to rapidly move to broken files in the Unreal Engine. It's getting rather annoying to have to find out what may have broken, so I have the images of the most troublesome spots below, so I know what to look at first.

1: Is my projectile set with custom collision to NOT collide with
the Physicsbody? (Player)
If so, you will NOT be able to run into the net. This stops a glitch
found by Harry Rhodes that allows you to jump out of bounds by leaping
onto your net.

2: Is the goose impulses set to this six rand range generator,
AND are the values 900, -900, 1000, and -1000?
This gives a goose that is faster than you, slightly.

Also, is the jumping a random variable from 200 to 500?
Tis causes a minor variance of jumping. TO be funnier, do 200-1000.

The MOST important thing in this code is to set, upon hitting a goose,
"set Active" to false, then TRUE at the end of the cluster. This allows you
to actually STUN the goose.

3: Is the player encumbrance value (the x 10 chunk in the centre) set to 10?
This gives a very small encumbrance, but it also means the player will
not move so slow they cannot do ANYTHING.

This is the third incredibly important issue I have had to regularly fix.

4: My last direct cardinal face of MS. (yay! It's nearly done!)

ISSUE FIXED: I have been mentioning how I've had to regularly remake multiple parts of my project. This repeated reset is a really bad problem, so I had to fix it as FAST AS POSSIBLE. As it turns out, the issue was caused by having two versions of the same file, and the engine now knowing what to save to, and when I opened the other file all my work was in it.
To fix this issue, I will only have one active copy of my file being used at any time.

GETTING MUSIC DONE AND DOING SO BY FOLLOWING LEGAL METHODS:
I need some music done for the project, and I don't have much time for making a lot of audio on top of developing the rest of the game. So, using the powers of the Creative Commons, I am going to use Kevin Macleod's Folk Round audio as the music for my project. The audio will emenate from some little pixel art minstrels that will sit around the environment. The reasons behind using Kevin Macleod's work is threefold:

It's free to use, as long as I properly credit him.
I personally enjoy his music, as I've grown up listening to it.
It's faster to use a professional composer's tracks, and it also sounds much nicer than what I'd make.

The reasons I had behind having little minstrels in the game are also threefold:

The oldest recorded way the story of Robin Hood was told was via the ballad "A Gest of Robyn Hood." Having a minstrel laying music in a game featuring characters from a ballad often told by minstrels is, in my poinion, a good meta joke.
Inserting medieval minstrels into a modern Nottingham can be linked to how the client, Marketing Nottingham, claims to celebrate Nottingham's past, and future, which is the same reason I chose the Merry Men to be the protagonists in the first place.
Oftentimes music in games just... exists. Nobody really bats an eye on WHERE it comes from. I like having realistic excuses for something that really doesn't need one, so having minstrels explains where the songs come from while you're playing the game.

The reason that I don't need to worry about too many legal issues with using Kevin Macleod's music is because of how the license of use that he uses is set up. Simply, due to how Kevin Macleod licenses his work, I am allowed to use it in my project, as long as I make sure to credit him in my game. To check off this box, I credit him using the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which requires me to say who made the audio, (Kevin Macleod), what the song is, (Folk Round.) and what the license is. (Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0) In my project, I have the

INDUSTRY WEEK. (WEEK 6)

As of Thursday the 9th of industry week, I am 80% completed with Market Square! I have geese placed, a level changer working, a tube to drop geese into, a sign that tells you how many geese you need to win/advance, my borders are finally done, and I have unreflective textures now!

I created a basic minstrel NPC that talks if you walk up to them, (saying "I'm a musician!") and they play the attenuated song Folk Round by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0: By Attribution license. The tube to drop geese in was just the addition of an animated 2D flipbook to the Goose capturing cube, and the sign was just a reskin of the generic signpost NPC I made in the first prototype. I also implemented the ability to see the eyes of the Player when you run backwards owards the camera. The tube and signpost that give you useful information are both inspired by the game World Of Goo, and the choice to use Kevin Macleod's music is due to his tracks being
1: Free if I credit him,
2: Really solidly made and
3:Used in quite a few of the games I loved as a kid, so it's fun for me to use his work in my project.

I have been regularly working at least 30 minutes to 1 hour every day on my C.I.R over this last week as a schedule, and I am working in small chunks whilst trying to get the project completed, although the following of my Gannt chart was not as reliable as I had hoped and I started to fall back into a agile formula of working through the lists written down on my site. I believe this derailing of the Gannt chart is because I put too much work down in closely knit chunks, I felt obligated to complete the chart to the letter, and burnt out.

WEEK 7:

On Week 7, I am now much nearer to the end of my project.
I created a Friar Tuck NPC that talks if you walk up to them, and you can ask them a question. (Eventually max of 3.) I also built a system that causes geese to not spawn into an already cleared room.
I still need to make:

The rest of the NPC's, (Alan-A-Dale, Little John, Much The Miller's Son, Will Scarlet. The Sherriff. Marian.)
Castle Gate,
Green's Windmill's borders,
The Scene Changer Cubes. (Art added onto the normal scene changer objects)
Transition Screens, (One For Each Area.)
Plinths, (Game Acheivements.)
The Hub Room, featuring Marian, a Tutorial, the BIG GOOSE PEN, and the end-of-game victory state.
And a Save System.

I am hoping get some of the done over this week/weekend.

Sunday, End-of-week-7.

Over this week, I've made walls to disallow jumping up too high in locations, I have started on texturing the Castle Gate, and I managed to get geese to not respawn into levels, thus allowing the game to reach a good end goal. Modifications to the project are:

NPC's will only ask one question, two to three if possible. (Stretch goal: they give special information if you cleared a level.)

Plinths are automatically all acquired, just not read. (I can replace plinths with my NPC's.)

I will reuse some textures with Green's Windmill Borders. (It was quite easy.)

WEEK 8:

On Week 8, I have started on the last few chunks of the project.
I still need to make:

The rest of the NPC's,
The statues and little grassy area in Castle Gate.
Goose Noises.
Transition Screens, (One For Each Area.)
The End State.

On Tuesday, I added new images to the scene changer, by making the exits to the other areas look like the destinations, and I made a basic hub room.

On Wednesday, the clear-level code broke, and I spent that day trying to remake it. It was fixed by making a Game Instance node.

On Thursday, I added more to Castle Gate, made level transition screens, created most of the remaining NPC's, and started on an end-level,

On Friday, I made goose audio, polished the end-state code and NPC dialouge, thus adding the extra questions on level clearing, and planned out the visual layout for the end credits.

WEEK 9 AND ONWARDS:

After getting all the special mechanical aspects of the game done, I spent my time making special images of Nottingham Locations for the ending credits of the game, and adding polish to the rest of the game. Besides the end credits art, examples of my polish are:

Making a "scroll" asset to have dialog screens look more interesting.
I built a function to add text onto the HUD that tells you when a level is clear, just to really drive home the point that you need to head somewhere else.
Making the levels load in slightly smoother.
Adding a button asset onto dialog boxes, thus removing the default asset buttons.
Making a better Main Menu (by actually creating one), instead of dropping the character directly into the game.

Starting from Monday, 17th of April, and onwards, I added these points of polish, while also setting aside time to work on my Personal Progression Assignment.

FINAL FEEDBACK:

As the final feedback form of the project has been made, here's what people thought of the game:

4/8 people liked the menu, the other four noted that:

1. There was a slight delay when the button is clicked before loading up the game.

2. It's "too spread out"

3. It is "too pixelated"

4. There should be more geese.

3/4 people thought this game fits the brief, and shows off Nottingham nicely. 1/4 thought the game looks "Nothing like Nottingham"

When asked about Marian, the Tutorial NPC, it was a bit of a mixed bag.

4/8 liked Marian,

1/8 thought there should also be a HOW TO PLAY widget in the main menu.

1/8 was confused about the special mechanics.

1/8 noted that there's only 1 direct thing you're told about, the Leftclick-to-stun-geese.

1/8 thinks Marian is a bit unneeded, as you can just learn as you go.

As an expansion on this, when asked about their specific thoughts, 6/8 players thought Marian was not that helpful, and rather irrelevant. (1 did not reply, and the other thinks Marian is good for new players.)

The buttons were split down the middle with 4 liking them, and 4 disliking them.

When asked about what happens when you catch geese, 6/8 knew they were capturing geese, although 1 person noted that I don't mention the extra-jumps-per-goose mechanic, and 2.8 did not know what was happening, with one of the two saying that they were very confused for the first ten minutes.

I ask players if they can navigate well. 8/8 say they can navigate, but one was confused on exactly how to end the game, and another was unable to jump on come blocks. (The game has bad air control)

NPC's were enjoyed, partially, but there were complaints with the speed of the dialog, and a single vague complaint that they "make the game harder". Besides that, people didn't really talk to them that often.

6/8 enjoyed the audio and goose honks. 2/8 did not enjoy it.

6/8 people did manage to beat the game, and they had fun. 1 person did not complete the game, and another player did not complete it, or had fun.

When asked about their favourite parts:
2 people liked catching geese.

1 person enjoyed throwing nets.

1 person liked the city centre.

1 person liked the end credits.

1 person liked flying around with the geese, and another enjoyed getting the extra jumps.

This production page expands upon the work made in the first Creative Industry Response section. The build file is version 14, Modded Patch 0.3, the same build that was packaged and used for the Itch.io Prototype page. What appears in the game?

Four locations set in the city of Nottingham: Castle Gate, Market Square, Green's Windmill, (all real places) and a Hub Room location.

Pixel art renditions of real Nottingham places

2D characters in a 3D world

Educational rewards for playing through the game

and lots of geese to catch!

​

What exactly IS a branded game?

I found some examples of branded games that achieved varying levels of success. We can take a number of lessons from these titles when thinking about our own project.

​

Chex Quest:

A family friendly first person shooter themed around Chex cereal.

What was good about it?

It was a family friendly clone of the game Doom. This allowed it to reach a wider audience than the more mature prdecessor.

It was a well-made adaption of the Doom title, being a good game in it's own right, and also succeeded in its ulterior goal, causing a large boost in Chex cereal sales.

The game had good art and audio design, and as extra rewards inside the game, you were told recipies you could make using Chex cereal.

​

What was bad about it?

Most of the negative points around this game was related to how this game is a cloned and reskinned Doom, saying that the game was unoriginal and that it had little technical innovation. However, technical innovation was not the point of the game, so this criticism seems unfounded.

​

What could be taken from this?

A project can be a reskinned copy of a preexisting game, using uniquely made assets.

Having information that can be used outside the game is a good way to increase player investment.

Creating your project to be family friendly allows it to reach a wider audience.

​

​

I Love You Colonel Sanders!:

A dating simulator made for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

What was good about it?

The format of conversation-heavy dating simulator helps get people invested in the world the characters exist in.

It is a "dating simulator" game, which is very art and text heavy, and it has good settings, and dialog.

The developers know that the premise is ridiculous, and lean into the absurdity.

​

What is a negative part?

This game does have zaniness, but it overuses the comedy and doesn't have much of a grounded baseline in reality to offset the absurdity.

The game is a dating simulator, although a dating game might not fit quite well with an "explore Nottingham" game, at least for my version.

It is a text heavy game, which in a quick paced action game would bog down the time a player spends doing other actions in the game, and if a game revolves around that action, then slowing it down will be unwanted by the players.

​

What could be taken from this?

Having conversations to increase the interest players have in the game's characters is a good technique.

Games can use comedy, but overusing anything in a game can cause your project to feel uninteresting or stale.

Drowning players in an overabundance of dialog will get them annoyed and could make them lose attention in your game.

​

The games of Branded Business Games

This is a company that makes bespoke or prefabricated branded games for companies to use. What is good about these games?

The games are reasonably well made, and are all functional.

All a client would have to do is provde art assets, and they build the game for you, helping you get it distributed as well.

The projects all work on multiple platforms for easy accessibility.

​

What is negative about this?

The projects all feel unoriginal becuase they're all based off of limited codebases.

The projects can be reskinned for any situation, but then it would rely on the people who are applying their own work onto it.

​

What can be taken from this?

Branded games can be built with a basic mechanics system, and then use any art asset. They're "easy" for the client, but aren't particularly original.

Projects that work on multiple platforms can reach a wider audience of people.

Games can have tolerable mechanics, with good art, or good mechanics, and tolerable art.

​

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Asking for Prototype Feedback:

Getting feedback on my game's prototype before starting on development.

The link is here: https://forms.office.com/e/6tmSH1ny8

​

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How do people feel about the PREMISE?

It is across the board liked and appreciated. People think running across Nottingham catching geese is a humorous idea and works well.

​

How do people like the ARTSTYLE?

The artstyle was liked, and it was stated by a few that it all fits nicely, but there was a point people made:

People thought the artstyle was clashing slightly.

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How do people like the MECHANIC?

The mechanic was enjoyed by all. A few points given that I will modify are:

Walking back and forth into the box seems slow. To fix it, I will build a system to drop ALL your geese into the box at once.

People had no context on what was going on in the project. I can fix this with an introduction to the story via a dialouge system.

The prototype has no win state. I will make a goal to reach for every location, and have a little "you won!" system to visually reward the player.

I was advised to also make a better stunning effect for the geese. I implemented this on the Tuesday of Half Term.

The UI seems cluttered with the controls. I will modify this by having the menu ONLY contain the important thing: How many geese you're holding, and how many you captured. (I will have extra information like how many collectables gotten on level-opening screens and in the Hub Room.)

​

How do people like the EDUCATION?

This production page expands upon the work made in the first Creative Industry Response section. The build file is version 14, Modded Patch 0.3, the same build that was packaged and used for the Itch.io Prototype page.

What appears in the game?

This is a company that makes bespoke or prefabricated branded games for companies to use.
What is good about these games?

Do development on a Nottingham level If one area is completed, I should start on a new one. (Model area from photos. Research facts. Develop collectibles. Check code accuracy of levels. Build Level Changers)

NOTE: This video shows a gravity reduction of 0.1. This is an extreme to show what changes. The newest
build of the project uses the lesser 0.3, which is a much softer, and more reasonable reduction.