BEFORE WE BEGIN:
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During the last week, I was told that the site contained no feedback, and I did not explain how and why I chose the third mechanic idea for my final choice.
I DO give notes on my feedback, but not as a singular chunk of information. Instead, I told the reader about my feedback at the end of every mechanic.
If you want to see the form I got me feedback from, here's a video showing all questions, and the answers to them, to show you where I got my information.
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Reading The Brief:
The Covalency Project: What IS it? The project was described as “A soft-scifi visual game featuring heavy exploration, and survival interactions.”
This game is meant for people in the age range of 14-21, and it is meant to interest the players in the STEM fields. I do not HAVE to make the entire game. All I have to make is an asset. The asset MUST SHOW the role of chemical isotopes, and their reactive attachments to another.
This requirement is meant to make me design my asset with the goal in mind to get people interested in STEM fields. I will plan a Player Icon, and design how the MAIN MECHANIC can work. As the game must be in the theme of soft sci fi, and have "Exploration Themes", After designing two other mechanics, I have started to design an inventory system, filled with real world elements. The reason behind the inventory being filled with real world elements is due to the brief’s requirement to discuss "chemical synthesis", and the reason I chose to design an inventory is due to because an inventory being a required mechanic of most exploration games I play.
I am required to explain where I get my ideas for what I create over the course of the project, and I am not good at coming up with multiple documents of research spontaneously. If I can come up with spontaneous research, it'll be about games that are closely related to what I'm trying to make. Strangely enough though, there's not a lot of games that follow a mathematic 3D dungeon crawler, an element bridge constructor, or a hyper educational resource collection game. So, because I had a few days of extra time left over towards the end of the project, I decided to write a list of the researched games I DID mention. in grand total, there are be SIX games I mentioned in this project as sources of inspiration:
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1. Times Attack is an old mathematic computer game inspired my ideas for the first mechanic
2. World Of Goo, a humorous bridge constructor game I played when I was younger, was similar looking to my compound synthesis premise.
3. No Man's Sky is mentioned in my third premise, as both games had a real-world element codex.
4. Another World, for the pixel art asthetic, and interesting story, was mentioned in the LORE section
5. Outpost Gamma, is discussed in the pixel-paper art design section, as I believe most of my design choices are closely inspired by this tabletop science fiction game
6. Sifu, as, due to the variable violence levels following the trope of "Kill the henchman, Spare the boss", is a game who has a PEGI rating that is both 14 AND 18
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First Mechanic:
I was told the game had to increase interest in STEM, and this led to me remembering the old Mac game Times Attack. In Times Attack, you were a little green player character who had to escape a fantasy dungeon with the powers of MATHEMATICS. You used these powers of intellect to solve equations that the dungeon gave you in the form of locked doors, and orc-like creatures who would try to stop your progression through the dungeon. I chose the game Times Attack as my inspiration due to the fact that I had enjoyed the game at a younger age, so I remembered it well, and also because I thought that this would be a good example of a game with a mechanic that was similar to mine. My love of this wacky game led to the idea of replicating it, and so I designed my first planned mechanic as a recreation of Times Attack’s premise, where you can defeat enemies with your mathematical skill by solving equations given to you by the computer. In order to give the premise a science-fiction spin, I explained that you duel haywire robots, and try to fix them by solving problems they spat out. When I made a survey to ask my classmates which mechanic was most preferred, nobody reached a consensus. I asked classmates if they thought this mathematics mechanic could feasibly be made in the five-week time frame, the answers were this:
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It would either be too hard to make in time, due to being too complicated. or
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It was easy enough to make in the time limit, despite the complicated premise.
Everyone thought the premise followed the brief, although I had been unsure about this idea, as I didn’t mention the chemical synthesis that the brief wanted me to discuss, but I noticed that despite this, most people liked the premise, enjoyed the idea of the mathematic puzzles, and the people I gave the survey to did think the mechanic does work with what the brief required.
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Second Mechanic:
I was told the game had to increase interest in STEM, and as I felt my mathematical premise was too risky, I decided to research exactly what the term Convalency meant in the first place. I used Google to find out what the term meant, and I read that convalency was “The number of convalent bonds an atom can make in a molecule”. This led to my plan of having my second mechanic being themed off of my interpretation of the term "Convalency".
In this second mechanic, which is a puzzle game mechanic, you will be given molecules, and a diagram that tells you which molecules cannot touch. The game will then prompt you to try and connect molecules together and make a stable molecule, without telling you which molecules can safely touch. This mechanic’s inspiration was mostly taken from my loose understanding of the definition of convalency, but on further reflection, I noted a few similarities between my idea, and the computer game World of Goo, a bridge-constructor type game, where you had to connect little goo-balls in order to make stable structures.
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Here's a screenshot of the game World of Goo,
to show the stable structure construction I was trying to create.
The layout of the stable construction would try to show accurate skeletal
molecule construction. For example, if you were told to create water,
(H20) then you would have a skeletal formula, that would look
similar to the real world formula
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When given feedback on this mechanic, I had the same unreached
consensus as the mathematics mechanic, and I remained undecided on which mechanic to work on for the remainder of the assignment. I was given good praise on the premise, being told that it seemed to follow the assignment brief quite well, as the mechanic was all about creating chemical compounds, which is one of the points that the brief wanted me to discuss in my mechanic.
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Management
This is a Gannt chart made in Excel, which shows
the timeline of my Major Creative Project.
* Week one is Informing Ideas.
* Week two is Problem Solving and Planning.
Week three and four is Implementation
Week SIX is Marking.
It's when my work will be marked in class
It's not actually week five for marking.
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Third Mechanic:
As I was re-reading the brief, to check for any details I might have missed while reading earlier, I came to a realisation: I believed that this brief, discussing how the game has "Survival techniques" and "Fuel Generation" is not some mathematic-fighting game, or a logic puzzle with colored shapes. This convalency assignment is meant to be a resource collector game. While I was trying to come up with a clever mechanic that ties into both the resource-collector game, and the STEM requirements, I realised that I was missing an obvious solution: I could use GCSE chemistry information on the Periodic Table of Elements, select a small number of elements from the table, and write up a page on each element I chose, add some art, and then I’d have an interactable tab that told you about an element on the periodic table, and it would give you useful information that you would be learning in school.
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When I began to plan the new mechanic, the main bulk of the inventory would be a wire-frame Periodic Table that would have a few slots filled in with squares of elements. I planned to use the elements Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Oxygen as the four elements I’d have the menu show you. When you click on a square of the Periodic Table, the game would pull up a page that gave you information on that element. I got feedback on this mechanic, most people thought the idea was clever, but all across the board people were saying that making a Periodic Table would be too complicated to make in five weeks.
As it turns out, I didn’t explain the mechanic clearly enough, and everybody thought I was making EVERY element on the Periodic Table. It was also said to be similar to the exploration game No Man's Sky, which does feature a system to collect and read about real world elements, and these real elements are used in humorous and impossible scientific creations. When asking for more feedback on Thursday 28th, I was advised to try and show the viewer what the groupings on the periodic table were. I hadn't given any explanation on how to tell element groups apart, and upon discussion, I formulated three ideas:
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1. I have labels on the bottom of the table that tells you the groups,
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2. I have an overlay menu that tells you the group:
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3. I have text on the wireframe that tells you the positions of the groups.
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or, 4: Just tell people what the group the element is in.... is in the sub menu for each element. I say Francium is in the Alkali Metals Group, and Hydrogen is.... in some strange category all unto it's own.
Lore Premise:
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My mechanic I decided upon was an inventory, populated by elements found on the Periodic Table. My only doubts with this mechanic is that it is using actual scientific information. I assumed that the work I made for this project had to be soft-science fiction, and here I was, making an educational inventory. So, my solution to using this real-life information in a science fiction brief is to write up a story that’s soft science fiction, which then will allow me to say that at least SOMETHING in this counts as unreasonable science.
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In my story, the game revolves around you, a slacking chemistry student, who inadvertently causes a hole in reality, causing you to appear on a mysterious planet, where you have to use the GSCE chemistry you never paid attention to in order to escape back home. I came up with this idea on the spot, and realized it was very similar. (As in identical) to the premise of the game Another World.
Here's a screenshot from the game Another World, to show the art style.
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Thursday 28th Lore design:
Now that I had my mechanic mostly planned, I needed a fictional story to explain it: You are a slacking GCSE Chemistry student who, for unexplicable reasons that nobody can truly define, has suddenly appeared on a mysterious, desolate planet! While exploring, you find a mysterious set of artifacts that require elements to activate, that you can use to escape home, and you don't know what any of the elements that you need are! So, you, the slacker, must try to discover, and classify elements, trying to find out which elements the artifacts require you to posess in order to get home! Use your Interactive-Periodic-Table-Information-Database (IPTID) to store the information on the elements you discover, and try to follow in the footsteps of Mendeleev, documenting out the entire Periodic Table, through hard work, determination, and scientific thinking in The Convalency Project. (end of advertisement)
After I wrote this up, I didn't really go anywhere else with it, or change it, because I just needed to write it up once, and never touch it again.
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WEEK 2:
In this week I have to look back on my notes, survey, and feedback given from the survey to then decide which idea I should do. After that, I can make little diagrams to explain how I'd illustrate the asset, give notes on how I would do the coding required, and try to give solutions to other possible issues.
Final Proposal:
I shall create a Widget Menu in the Unreal Engine. It will feature art drawn in the Aesprite, or Procreate Software, exported as JPEG files, and the inventory will contain factual information taken from GCSE Chemistry books I used to study with. I got good answers across the board for my survey, everyone thought the ideas followed the brief, and there were equal votes on the differing ideas. The problem with this response means I have no idea that was voted as "The Best" out of the three. So, in order to fix this stalemate, I chose the most educational idea, and the easiest to create: The Inventory of Elements Menu. Although, If you look at the questions, shown in the "THE FEEDBACK" tab, you'll see that in most places, ideas 2 and 3 tied, like in 4: "Which do you like the most", but, all in all, despite the assumptions that I would create EVERY element in the table, which sparked a few responses that arose from the assumption that I would make the entire periodic table, (I know this is true, because I asked them.) the third idea was still the most liked overall.
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What Issues May Arise?
The constraints I will have to face are:
1. The time of the project,
2. The PEGI ratings I must follow in order to keep the preferable rating of PEGI 12, or lower (Specific age tier is 14-21) and
3. Whatever issues that may arise when making the asset in the third and fourth weeks.
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In order to prevent possible issues with the time limit, I will try to follow the plan expounded earlier. To try to follow the PEGI rating, I will check through the ratings as I create asset fragments. In order to prevent the loss of project files, I will have two versions of my project builds. ONE version will be called "Build School" and it will be on the USB to be worked on at school. Version TWO will be called Build Home, and I will hold all the build work done at home in this folder. This will most likely prevent any issues involving missing files, or messed up code that may happen during production.
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Layout Designs:
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Flowcharts are a visual guide to explain how a game will be navigated. You can use flowcharts to explain gameplay loops, but I'm using it to explain the Menu navigation.
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The current plan of the flowchart will change, and get more complicated as the builds go on. Currently, the level build will have a stagnant room, and a prompt to push the button "Q", to enter the Inventory. The inventory-to-room flowchart will be a loop, where all you can do is go in and out of the pause menu. This will be the prototype, but as the project isn't that complicated, this will only have a small amount of extra changes in the end, when I add the four sub-menus.
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School Project:
Major Creative Project
An assignment given by the (fictional) group Unruly Ember, I must create an asset for The Convalency Project. It can be an art asset, 3D, or 2D, or a mechanic. As I said I wanted to be a game developer, *I MUST make a mechanic. This means I will be spending most of my time using the game development engine Unreal. I was told when I first started on the project that I had no specific engine I'm required to work in, and I can reuse earlier code, from unmarked work. I assumed that this would allow me to create my asset mechanic in the Godot Engine, which I am more proficient in than Unreal. This was a misunderstanding, and so, or the assignment, I must be assessed on things I learned in Confetti. This means that the software I will be allowed to use in this task would be:
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Aesprite for 2D Pixel art, and
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the allowed engine is the Unreal Engine
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Empty Room
(push q)
Pause Menu
Constraints
In the end of the assignment, I assume that this basic Periodic Table will remain the same. It's not really like you can change a periodic table too
drastically from the recognized image. So, when drafting this menu, I'll probably just use a Periodic table as a reference, and try to have it look well polished. So, most of my design won't cause too much of a constraint on anything.
1. The first actual constraint I will have to deal with in this project is time. I have mentioned before in this assignment that I have five weeks to create this asset in. This means that, as I write this in the second week, that I have three weeks left to create the asset I need to fit the requirement for the brief. I wrote up a Gannt chart in the Management tab that shows how I plan to allocate my weeks, which explains that in the third and fourth week, I will create and implement the menu designs into a usable Unreal asset. This practically means that, instead of having three weeks to create this menu in, I have two weeks to create the menu, and all related parts, so it is especially important that I can manage to stick to the time constraint.
2. The second constraint I have to deal with is the PEGI ratings. In this brief, I must have the asset fall within the bouns of a PEGI 12 rating. If I want my asset to land in this rating, I must not feature, or refrence just materials as:
1. Graphic Violence,
2. Adult Themes. such as rape, murder, and serious drug use, or
3. Visually Disturbing topics or Icons,
like terrorist groups, severe injuries, and cutscenes where you stab and choke two people to death.
This means that, if I were to have some image that showed especially gruesome scenes of bodily harm in a page on the element Astantine, I would not hit the PEGI 12 rating. If I had, for instance, a warning sign with a cartoon skull that said "HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH" then that would be tolerated. This assignment has the large age range of 14-21, so I have to be careful to keep track of where an asset's minimum age level falls. The gruesome violence may be safe for people aged 16-21, which was part of the age range, so it is OK. However, the gruesome scene of bodily harm may NOT be safe for people aged 14-15, so the gruesome image, in the end, does NOT fall within the safe age margin. Tolerated materials and subjects that fit within the margin of PEGI 12 are:
1. minorly realistic violence
2. minor expletives
3. low-teir scary scenes
Here's a few examples of what would be tolerated:
1. The Martial combat used in the game Sifu.
2. mildly bad language is fine, like if you say"Darn" after something bad happens, like you're a cartoon character.
3. Minor Jumpscares, like this little dragon puppet frightening you
to Mozart music.
WEEK 3:
In this week I will continue to follow the path set out with my Gannt chart, and work on creating and implementing my menu. This week will show the development of my menu, featuring videos, pictures of code being created, and notes taken on any problems that may arise during development, and how I would try to fix said problems.
ASSETS
For this Creative Project, I chose to make a menu. This menu will consist of one Major Menu, shown as the Periodic Table of Elements, and four Sub Menus, representing pages on the elements Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Oxygen. This will be similar to the Q is For Query menu I made for the Tiny Rooms task. due to the plethora of submenus that the Query menu contained, but this menu will contain a larger swath of useful information, as it is most likely going to be that I have two versions of the sub menus:
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1. Version One will contain all the information on one page, making FOUR sub menus total, as planned, and
2. Version Two will have each menu hsve three submenus contained inside it, allowing the reader to swap between tabs, and have small chunks of information delivered, instead of a large mass of text all on the screen at once.
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I was also possibly going to have a little setting where a player character stands, to have the player be able to go in, and out of the menu at the push of a button. The button that will allow you to enter and exit the menu on the input action being pressed will most likely be the input key "Q". After I set up the menu code itself, most of the development work would be to type up the information on the elements that I'd get from my GCSE handbooks, and make the art assets I'd need for the menu and sub menus that I'm creating for this project.
REQUIRED WORK TARGETS
links are embedded that allow you to head to
specific sections where I completed the targets
Tap the blue text (you can't push this blue one however.)
1. This Wednesday, (4) I should have the Main Menu Code started.
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2. by Friday (10) I should have the menu text, and art assets created and implemented. (They will be stored in the CP file, to avoid losing them to a confetti computer wipe.
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SEE MAIN MENU TAB.
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For the Thursday-Friday, I will do work on the menu in class, to try and fix any theoretical issues that may have risen during development.
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The main Menu should be done by this Saturday. If it is done earlier, I will start work on the submenus.
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THURS 5: NEW TARGET CREATED. Noted as "Thursday 5th Set Target" elsewhere on this site.
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New Target #1: Due to 1: deleting my work, as I had created all the code required "too fast" and 2: failing to save the work I did in class, I lost the work I recreated. The Target: create, and properly save a build of the menu asset. Art and educational text is not required.
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COMPLETED ON: Friday the 6th
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FRI 6: IMPLEMENTATION TARGET.
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New Target #2: Start to write up the text required for the menus, and create the art assets, Target: add the writing into the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen pages. Create the art assets into the menu, while also creating them over next sun, sat, and mon.
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COMPLETED ON: Tuesday the 10th. *NOTE* Due to target #3 being the same as the second half of target #2. this target's conditions became "Make the menus", instead of creating ALL the art assets. I did, however, make the art for the Element cubes, so that at least counts for something.
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TUES 10: Menu Art implementation
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Target #3: Make all the menu art, and write up the text needed. Target #3: Art and Text Generation This will require art assets, made in Aesprite, or Piskel, along with a requirement to find a pixel text font for the engine, so I don't have to use the in-editor font.
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COMPLETED ON: FRIDAY THE 13th. ^approx^ (SEE YELLOW TEXT BELOW) *NOTE* Due to being so close to the end of the project at the time of writing, (Tues 10) the work will be completed by this Friday, Fri 13, which leads to the date being put here as "Friday the 13th. ^approx^" as I may be done by before, but all work related to professional practice and problem solving is meant to be done by the end of the week, so I decided to cut corners, and just put down the end of the week date as the date the target was completed by. The ACTUAL completed-by-date will be noted down in big colored letters below.
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TARGET THREE COMPLETED ON THURSDAY THE 12th. The Nitrogen, Oxygen and Hydrogen menus have been created, tested, and found to be working well. They have had feedback given by ten classmates I questioned over the five minutes of the development process.
They were gobsmackingly easy to create.
MAIN MENU:
I begin the Main Menu creation on Tuesday the 3rd. The project I start with is a blank, empty Games project with no starter content.
The engine version is 4.26.2.
I will have a copy of this project on my USB, and Onedrive, to have two copies to work on while at home.
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WHAT TO RESEARCH:
After setting up the project, I came upon a few problems/objectives to complete, which are listed here:
1. Look back through the Tiny Rooms Query Widget information to clarify how to access a widget in the viewport.
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2. If the research using the website fails, I have the project code itself that I can look at.
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SMALL ISSUES:
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1. I didn't make any art assets yet. So I have no art to implement.
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2. I didn't bring any of the material to get stared on writing up the educational text. Though, the material I was planning on using was GCSE books I have in my house, so it probably would have been a bad idea to bring the workbooks to school.
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3. in the main room the menu opens in, you can move with no gravity in any direction. And, to make things worse, you can still move while the camera is open.
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THE SOLUTIONS?
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I do all the work for that art and writing starting this Wednesday! I can go do it all tomorrow, and the timeplan won't get messed up too badly!
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I can do the writing at home!
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I disable the player movement! How? just destroy the Input Action scene! This means that, when you open the menu, you cannot push ANY input!
So, if you can't push any inputs, you can't move an inch! problem solved!
Production Problem #1
While at home, working on a small personal project, (A pause menu system) I came to an epiphany:
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I really enjoy making menus. As in, REALLY like making menus.
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I realised this during a point where I was sketching out a re-design of a hub world, when my "excellent idea for making this project so much incredibly better" was to make a fancy level selection menu. "It will reduce the workload for the level designer if I don't have a hub menu!" was my train of thought.
Then I realized that this menu creating was a theme:
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This Wednesday, I spent my two hours of free time to make......... what? A MAIN MENU.
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The first project in my course? Make A Menu.
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I wanted to make some interesting interactive element for my Tiny Room? I made a menu for it!
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During this project, I tried to think of a clever mechanic, and I chose................. yesh. a menu.
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This repeated creating of menus has led to me being a pretty tolerable creator of menu systems. That makes a bit of sense, I've spent five whole hours in just this week alone making menus. But, this means that if I put my mind to it, I could create the entire mechanical menu in the first four days. (and that's if I'm taking my sweet time.) So, due to how I don't want to blur past this implementation in the first few days, I am going to try an do this as slowly as possible, without seeming like I'm slacking off. (This ignored the fact that I wiped my previous, fully functional menu because "I did it too fast.")
Solution:
Upon talking with 14 different people, including teachers, I have acquired a NEW plan:
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(assigned by my teacher Martin)
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* I must get the menu prototype, and get feedback from 5 people.
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STEP ONE:
Open up the backup project: (Known as Home, School, or Onedrive CP)
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*. The backup currently contains the Main Menu,
with code that connects to the Carbon Widget.
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STEP TWO:
* Re-set up the menu, with the MAIN menu, and a subdivision menu.
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(I just create two widgets.)
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(why is the background black? It wasn't before, and here's why:
I made the background black with an
image, is because the previopus grey background is a
TRANSPARENT background. so, the screen would show
white floating text in the air. not good for readability.)
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STEP THREE:
Set up the code properly so it loads right.
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( I do NOT want the mouse captured, so I use this code to set it up.)
What this code does is that when you start the game,
then the engine will show the menu, and it will
allow your mouse cursor to move about inside the menu.
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When I start the game, I see no menu. WHY?
This is partially a good thing. You're not supposed to start
with the menu opened. You push "Q" to open the menu.
... or so I thought.
..... I pushed "Q" three times and nothing happened.
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WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?
There's three reasons:
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1. Was "Q" a legal input? No. it wasn't.
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Here's the picture to prove it.
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2. Does the code say you push "Q" to view the menu?
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Yes. Of course it would....
...No. It opens on Event BeginPlay.
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(Probably should have noticed that.)
3. Do I ever tell the game to make the widget visible?
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NO I DO NOT.
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Now, since that had taken quite a while for me to fix, I was hoping that there wouldn't be any more issues like that to deal with for the rest of the forseeable future.
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A VERY VERY SILLY ISSUE:
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(because I just HAD to say that last line.)
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With the adding of a button that clears all widgets into the Main menu, I have noticed a minor issue, specifically, the fact that you can STILL MOVE while using the inventory.
As the inventory covers a little bit over half of the screen, having a large black square blocking most of your vision is an issue.
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And so, my solution:
I'm keeping it. mostly because it's not too game-breaking.
EXTRA ISSUE:
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All my code just got lost as I was checking the
project before saving it to the USB and Onedrive.
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I failed to save the Menu opening code somehow.
I'm not exactly sure HOW it happened. I was most likely just forgetting to push the save and compile button. So, during the next lesson, a new challenge is given: (By myself.) How fast can I replicate the code from a blueprintless build? Let's test!
Completing this challenge will hit the criteria needed to mark off the
Thursday 5th Set Target was completed on Friday the 6th.
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It was completed using hard work, determination, a will of steel, and the detailed information shown in the MAIN MENU tab that's right above this one.... I might have gone overboard with getting feedback. I have acquired 18/5 people's feedback.
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(I got 18 people to give feedback, when I was trying to do 5.)
(this is a link you can click.)
ART:
What should I do? I need to make assets for a Periodic Table of Elements asset. That makes sense, but HOW should I do it? An art software, preferably. I was planning on using the software Procerate, which I also used for Tiny Rooms, Click To Play, the Sir Lamorak art on the front hub menu, and the big Fancy Fairy that appears as the logo. But, as I'm in school right now, and I don't have Procreate, so then, if I can't ue my main art software, what's an alternative? I have a clipboard with some paper, and a few bold ink pens. They were used to draw a few of the concept sketches shown around the site, like the Periodic table art sketch that should be up at around the top of the page. Although I was advised that it may not be incredibly proffesional, so I shouldn't use these designs directly for the final asset,, I'm going to at least give it a shot, and make some nice diesigns for some art. But, once this is done, how can I get them on the site? I can add the images drawn on paper onto this site by emailing them from my phone to the Confetti school email I possess.
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FIG 1;
The top left shows the viewing scenes for looking in
the North, East, and West directions. The south facing
view will be similar to the other sides, as it will show
off a desolate barren setting, but it'll have this...
bug.....person......birdy.....thing.
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This fellow exists to give an interesting visual menu
indicator. What does that mean? The tablet this
chap is holding shows an angular letter "Q". As we
already know, you push "Q" to interact with the menu.
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How fun is that?
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HOW DO I IMPLEMENT IT?
Practically, if I were to make this, it would consist
of approximately:
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1 texture. (For the ground)
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4 images (For the views)
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1 big bird....thing...... (It's a big bird thing! It's cool!)​
WHAT DO I DO TO MAKE THIS?
Using a placeholder asset made in Piskel, I made a new level in Unreal, named it Map, and applied the image I made as a floor material, and got this massive, empty field as the endproduct. To give a sky background, I made a night-image, and massively scaled it up.
WHERE DID I GET THE INSPIRATION?
WHY pixel art for this block asset? Why not just have a blank block? I blame Another world being in my research sheets for that pixel-art asthetic of block. I'd blame/say I took inspiration for the sandy color scheme on the game Outpost Gamma, in which the setting was an isolated desert planet, and I would say that the bug-bird-alien thing has inspiration from the alien art that
was also used in the game Outpost Gamma.
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As visual examples, here's screenshots of the two parts of Outpost Gamma that I'm refrencing:
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I tried to match the colours of the game's map as best I could, and ended up with this cube.
I would personally also say that my alien-creature on the right can be said to take some inspiration from the Outpost gamma alien (top)
WEEK FOUR:
Implementation of room art, and some COOL EFFECTS.
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First, I wanted you to be able to look off into the distance, so I made a few massive cubes, decorated with the rock tile material. Then after a few modifiers, I walled off the place, and it ended up really really dark. So, my solution was to get a few purple lights to simulate a night- time scene, and I got this image to the right
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(This room isn't actually supposed
to be this bright. I messed about
in the Unreal Editor, and managed
to get an interesting way to break
the Unreal Engine's lighting for
my A2 Creative Project asset room.)
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Next, I knew I wanted our alien chap to stand
ominously behind you, so I made a version in
pixel art, as I couldn't directly use the drawn art.
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This image below is taken in engine of our scary-as-nightmares fellow. I'm not entirely sure why I gave them a red light, but I managed to reuse some photoshopping skills I used in past projects, i,e, the illuminating of only selected parts of an image used during the Tiny Rooms assignment.
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Due to a mishap however, Unreal didn't properly save the
art asset file used, so I took this photo, and put it directly into Unreal,
as a replacement for the original.
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As it turns out, this led to an amusing bug:
Here's how it looks when you face it head on.
Here's when you look at it out of the left side of the screen, it looks slightly towards your direction, making it seem to still look directly at you.
....that's creepy, isn't it?
I didn't modify the image in any way from how it was shown as the image in the top. I'm assuming that due to how it's slightly crooked in the image, that that translated to the impression of it leaning, but that would mean that if I want the image to stand straight, I have to be crooked, and I'm looking at it head on perfectly in the top image. That means that when I'm looking at it, I'm looking at in a STRAIGHT PERFECT line. This is really weird, but I think it adds to the surreality of the enviroment. Due to that extra little oomph it gives you, and the rather important fact that I don't know exactly how it works, and so I can't remove it, I'm going to be keeping it for the final build.
THE I.P.T.I.D MENU:
When starting on filling the I.P.T.I.D menu,
also known as the:
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Interesting Periodic Table Interactive Database, (or something like that. I keep forgetting the acronym definition.)
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I first made four images for the buttons required, and I imported them into the engine.
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I chose to use pixel art for the element cubes because I had already used pixel art before in this project, making the Alien chap, and the ground tiles, and so I didn't want to have any contrast in the art style.
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In order to show that the element Hydrogen is in a different group to the elements Carbon, Hydrogen, and Nitrogen, I made the color be a dark red, to give visual contrast.
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While creating the multiple menus, I had two
pesky issues I had to deal with:
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1.The images, at 32*32, didn't scale properly.
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(The images you see here are scaled up by 5.)
(that scaling will cause problems later.)
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Issue 2 is more annoyng to deal with
than the first graphical issue:
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Firstly, the highest two blueptrint chunks both
lead to the same menu. Hydrogen, and Carbon
both open the carbon menu. It's a small error
of connecting up the menus, but it's still not fun.
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Issue 3, if you look closely at the rightmost
chunk of code, that is linked to the Oxygen
button, you can see that the code in that
position is missing a block, specifically
the missing chunk of code is the
"On Button(Oxygen) pressed:" This missing cube means that no matter how much you push the Oxygen button, it will NEVER bring up the Oxygen page. I've had to deal with this before, and for some reason, it's not become my go-to tactic to check if the input is connected.
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This work completes the target #2: Fri 6: IMPLEMENTATION TARGET.
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MORE ISSUES!
What is wrong with this picture?
As a hint, it has to do with the floor, but it may be hard to see, as the lights aren't very bright.
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If you said "OI! that floor is made of Hydrogen!" then you're
absolutely RIGHT! So, here's the problem: The material we
USED to use is replaced. How do we fix it? Simple. We just
drag in the proper texture!
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This leads to the SECOND issue with this picture:
I didn't perfectly crop it so you can only see the viewport,
and so you get a lovely view of all my materials.
Can you guess which one is missing? If you said it was the
original floor texture, then bravo! You are correct!
The material we're missing is EXACTLY the one I need to
fix this debacle!
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THE SOLUTION?
Wix! I can go onto my website, and just download the
floor texture image off of it! This means that I can import it back in, and my problems are solved!
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Because there's no modifications to it, like a higher resolution, or a difference in the colors, and so it will work perfectly fine to replace the missing version that used to be in Unreal.
But now we have a new question:
How can we save the file to have it NOT get wiped by bad Unreal saving?
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Well... we DO have the Home CP project folder. That's what my plan noted out as a way to fix these sorts of issues.
The next step is putting the art asset into the Home CP folder in order to have it saved close by,
and not on the school computers where it'll get wiped, I re-implement the image into the Unreal engine. Problem Solved!
Lo and Behold:
The plan worked splendidly! Once we reimport the art asset back into Unreal, we have our newly re-implemented image, made into a material, and it's back on the floor where it belongs!
*I didn't actually replace EVERY tile, I just
replaced the 176 tiles that were closest to you.
If you look far enough into the distance,
you can see that quite a few tiles out of the 387
are still decorated with the Hydrogen material.
The reasons I'm keeping this is twofold:
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1. The only practical way to see if if you run at top
speed for three minutes towards one of the lights
without ever looking away, or else you'll get lost
when the screen turns black, so it's a pretty low
chance that anyone could see the Hydrogen tiles.
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2. When I make the showcase video for this project, I'm behind the wheels of the camera. That means that I can just not show anyone the Hydrogen tiles in the video, and nobody would ever know of their existence, unless they had read about this incident.
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Having full directorial control on the video would allow me to cut quite a few corners in implementing the asset, and not many people would be able to know what I did. If I had, for example, an issue with the collision on one wall, and so you could walk right past it, then I can just act like the wall is tangible, and that's what everyone would assume, because I acted like the wall could be touched. My main reasoning for keeping it is that It looks cool, it's a nice visual touch, and nobody can stop me doing it, so I'm keeping it in the final build
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RAPIDLY COMPLETING WORK:
This tab will contain the information and notes required to check off the #3 Target Target #3: Art and Text generation
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If this tab doesn't contain the information needed to complete the assignment, i.e. all the work was done on Wednesday the 11th, then the rest of the notes and information can be found underneath the creation log of each asset group, depending on if they were all made in the same day.
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The tab titled "THE VIDEO" is the Friday work
What art assets do I need to create? The Periodic Table itself:​
I made the periodic table menu image in Aesprite. I used a light-grey color for the boxes, so it wouldn't be too eye catching, but still be noticeable in the dark room. At first, I didn't have the grey cubes on every square, but I added the grid lines to every cube for visibility.
(In the beginning, I couldn't tell apart the cubes, so I
added the grid lines to help myself. also, the grid
itself is coloured in with a faded set of colours.)
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Why the contrasting colors? it's so you can look at
the menu with a glance, and still tell that each cube
is part of a group.
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2. What can I write to put INTO the menus?
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Educational text, obviously! This is meant to help
increase STEM interest in the age range of 14-21,
so I need to give ACTUALLY USEFUL information! I used a CGP GCSE Combined science book for the information, and gave a few examples of useful facts about the element Carbon. *Why Carbon? The Carbon menu was the first one I did work on. As most of the menus will be practically the same, I picked one, and just tried to complete it to a tolerable extent.
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Here's a video that shows the carbon menu, and, after I
realised that the menus overlayed badly, and you'd re-open
the MAIN MENU over the Carbon menu, I also have the
implementation of a fix at the end of the video, to show how I
fixed the issue.
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Making things more TACTILE! ....and what comes of that:
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As I was working, I was advised to try and make the buttons more interesting visually. So, my solution was to make the buttons brighter when you push them! As I was re-making the buttons, I realised I had walked into an issue that I couldn't solve:
As you can see in the video, when you hold over the Hydrogen menu,
then the letter and number on the cube dissapears!
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When you hold over the Carbon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen cubes, the go brighter.
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All's well, right?
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well... no. Somehow, even though I made all four buttons in the same way,
and all I did was make them brighter, and add a little wiggle when you push
them down, Hydrogen loses the text, and the other three ONLY have the top-
corner numbers visible. The borders stay the same though.. It's quite strange.
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I'd have expected the cubes to only show the top left corner, and so only the left corner of the border can be seen, instead the ENTIRE border is visible.​
This engine seems to just love making my stuff go haywire in ridiculous ways.
Scaling Solution:
First, I was advised to try and scale down the pixel art cubes! So, the pixel art cubes are shrunk down from 1028 pixels to 32 pixels.
The cubes, however, were still off. To FIX them, the 32 by 32 pixel cubes were scaled UP by 3, and then they were working correctly!
THURSDAY 12th WORK
Earlier, I put the art assets for the Creative Project into my Home CP folder.
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This was to prevent losing any files, as Unreal wouldn't be looking at the desktop for my art files, they all would be encapsulated in the folder.
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AS IT TURNS OUT, THIS DOES NOT WORK.
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The last time I was on a school computer, my art assets were on the desktop.
Due to Confetti's regular computer wiping, those files didn't exist anymore. I predicted that Unreal would try to look for the files, but I then assumed that Unreal would start to use the properly sized, perfectly fitting "Tile.png" files I made at home.
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The only problem with this incedent, however, is that it's a tad bit annoying. so all I had to do was to re-implement them by hand.
UNREAL: "Your files were not found."
(EXPECTED)
ME: "YOU MEAN THESE TINY, PERFECTLY SIZED FILES?
(groan in anger)
Here's me re-adding the files in.
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It took two minutes to do them, and all I did was drag the
files into the editor. This wasn't a MAJOR SETBACK I'd have
to deal wth. It's just annoying when my plan goes awry.
So, here's what the menu loaded as:
You can see, none of the assets are in.
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It's quite annoying, but in fact really quite easy to deal with.
All I need to do is re-import the assets, and ta-daa:
The cubes are all filled in, and when you hover over them,
then they get slightly brighter.
EXTRA NOTE: WHile still here, I had been noticing that the menu in the bottom corner had the green cube in the wrong spot.
(It's meant to represent Carbon's location on the periodic table.) This is a placement issue. I can fix it easily.
That was one issue stated, and the second one was that, and people thought the Hydrogen tile, (the bright red one) was a bit... too bright. That's.... a bit more of an issue. I didn't really care too much about this small, and a bit unusual tidbit of graphics.. The contrast between Hydrogen red, and Alkali Metal red is enough that I can tell them apart upon a black background, and because I'm using this to help with my visual impairments, I'd count this as an appropriate level of contrasting colors, and having the Hydrogne being Alkali Mental red would make the difference of the groups be harder for me to visually tell apart. But, I have to recognize feedback, even though this high contrasting color system is meant to help my visual problems, and was meant to help with low contrast issues. So, my solution is to re-brand this! (with text, not colors.) The compounds I listed are Carbon, with Hydrogen, and Oxygen. In the project, I have said that this table, whilst also being a button, shows the locations of the elements that feature in these Carbon compounds!
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MAKING THE REST OF THE MENUS:
The time has come, to show the creation of the rest of the menus.
Here is the development of the Hydrogen menu:
STEP ONE: Grab the Carbon Menu.
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STEP TWO: Replace every image of Carbon with an image of Hydrogen.
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STEP THREE: Try to remember the information on Hydrogen from my GCSE's.
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STEP FOUR: Take a screenshot of the menu to upload it.
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STEP FIVE: Check to see if the menu connects.
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STEP SIX: Your menu is most likely done. Pat your back a bit.
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If you noticed, the words Carbon and Hydrogen aren't needed to explain this five step process.
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Ler's read it when I replace those words with "Old Asset" and "New Asset"
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STEP ONE: Grab the Old Asset Menu.
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STEP TWO: Replace every image of Old Asset with an image of New Asset.
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STEP THREE: Try to remember the information on New Asset from my GCSE's.
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STEP FOUR: Take a screenshot of the menu to upload it.
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STEP FIVE: Check to see if the menu connects.
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Isn't that amazing? I'm just using what is, codewise, the same menu FOUR TIMES. So, if I wanted to, I could be done with ALL FOUR MENUS today!
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...oh wait. I AM done with all four menus:
Here's the four Periodic Table menus, completed using the Five Step process illustrated above. To make it a bit faster, the blueprint for Nitrogen is now labelled as Carbon2 in the editor, and Oxygen is Hydro2 in the editor. That made the coding go ever so slightly faster.
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When testing the menus, Oxygen didn't work. (AGAIN)
and so I reconnected the nonexistent
"on Oxygen Button Input pressed" input the code was
missing for the third time.
EXTRA ISSUE RELATED TO THIS!
As it turns out....... WHENEVER I OPEN THE PROJECT, the Oxygen widget doesn't have the "Q" input connected.
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It's not even THERE. This is a problem I need to fix..... but HOW? The current solution is that I saved a fixed build on the game, and replaced the old, bugged version with this new, hopefully working version.
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Will that fix it? I'll test on a different computer.
This is a screenshot of the different desktop,
now containing the Home CP. We open the editor, and what do we see?
The solution WORKS! But, even though the Oxygen menu is now interactable, you can't right click to leave the menu.
Why is the right mouse unconnected? HOW IN THE WORLD could that have...
(look at this chunk of blueprint code.)
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The code seems to work in the blueprint.... So, why would the editor not
detect the input?
..........well.......It is a very simple explanation: You have to double click the right button in order to escape the menu.
Once that was cleared up, I'm all good! The code works perfectly fine, the art is no longer going haywire, the code works, the engine isn't going ballistic, all I have left to do is polishing, and getting feedback. I can now say that the asset is near completion.
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Compared to the Gannt chart in TARGETS, I should have had the fourth menu done by Friday 13, i,e, tomorrow, but I rushed myself, and got the work done a day early
Here are two versions of the gameplay video:
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Version One is filmed in OBS.
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Version Two (THE PROPER, BETTER ONE) was refilmed, and given controls text.
OBS:
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This shows the setting you spawn in, with
the alien-thing created earlier during this project also featured.
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*remember my discussion of being able to control what people perceive?
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The alien guy is actually a flat picture.
You never get close enough to see, and you never go behind them, so nobody
would EVER know what I did.
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The menu is made from all the menu work created during the project.
FAQ: *Those lights. what are they?
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Lights. only lights. It's not like there's a glowing lamppost in this big void. The lights are detatched in-editor created light sources.
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FAQ: Ok then. what happens if you go to them?
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It'll be difficult/tedious. If you look away from a light source for long enough, or you're too far away from one, you can't see it anymore.
If you were looking into the darknerss for long enough, you'd get lost, and probably NEVER get back to a light source
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As for the light source you spawn under, it's so dim , and it's so unlikely that you didn't move the mouse walking back to it that you will very unlikely ever get back to it.
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FAQ: Man. that's really annoying. why do you have that?
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The engine did it. It's unusually weird for me when I set up lights.
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FAQ: What happens if you can somehow get to a different light source?
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You get to see this. (If you went towards the very first far away light you see.)
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YEP! IT'S A HYDROGEN TILE! because ALL the tiles are colored compared to their corresponding slots on the periodic table! That's right. The rock tile you spawn on is floating above the actual floor, which is a MASSIVE periodic table shrouded in darkness. Fun, Eh? I think it's a nice interactive touch.
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(Here's a visual model, in case that explanation made no sense whatsoever.)
The lights
Player Spawn
The Floating Stone on which you Spawn
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Q: WHY ARE THE LIGHTS SO BRIGHT? also, why does the editor keep showing the red text for having unbuilt lights in the prior pictures?
Isn't that really not a good thing when trying to show clear and professional communication in your project?
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The editor keeps showing unbuilt lights, because I did something that was really stupid/clever:
Here's the explanation on what I did, and why I did it:
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1' This player, like me, has vision issues. They have a horrid adjustment to lit surroundings. Lights in the Unreal Engine take some time to get to maximum brightness. So, what I did was have a ridiculous number of messed up ligjhts in one place, shining onto a patch of reflective groundthat makes light reflecting off of it brighter.
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So, it takes a REALLY LONG TIME for the lights to reach maximum brightness.
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This practically causes you to get horribly lost after staring into the darkness for a bit, then looking back at a light, as it takes longer than usual for the lights to return to a reasonable level of luminosity
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This also ends up with causing the 2: Really bright patches of ground lights.
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The ground is reflective, slightly. and a bit brighter than the normal ground tile.. This causes whatever light that shines on it to be slightly brighter reflecting off of it. So, I gave the editor a bad time by having 79 maxed out lights all placed in the same spot, reflecting on a slightly brighter-tan-normal surface. This means we have a really bright spot of ground. WHY in the world is that good though? It's a good thing to cause the editor's lights to go insane, because then the lights will be (slightly) easier to see when we're readjusting our vision. Also, it has the added bonus of allowng me to have a brighter room. I really dislike games with wretched visibility, so messing with the editor in a way that helps with increasing visibility is all good in my ballpark. So, that's how my personal visual impairments made an intreresting room, and caused me to end up with a rather nice way to simulate (and find a partially successful way to fix) a visual impairments issue in a game.
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UPDATED VIDEO. VERSION TWO: THE BETTER ONE
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This video shows the new, updated version, where the only major change is that it tells you the controls in blue text underneath the main light. This is an interesting choice of placement. The first thing you see is the control that tells you how to rotate the camera with the mouse. As the most important control is the camera, and you can control it in two ways, if you get used to using the arrow keys, you won't get disoriented when you lose mouse cursor controls after interacting with the camera.
Two notable examples that I could think of for games that use this system of only controlling the game with a keyboard are:
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HOW WELL DID EVERYTHING GO?
Week 1:
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I managed to create three good ideated premises. That's better thatn most of the other projects, where I started with one idea, and didn't make any others. My idea ended up fleshed out as an interactive menu that gives you periodic table elements, inspired by most exploration games with their fancy codexes, and all parts I expounded in the "CHOSEN IDEA" tab were applied in the end. I got good feedback on every premise I made, and I created a Gannt chart. I only had refrences inspiration and refrencing to six other games. That's not too good, but it IS better than the other projects.
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Week 2:
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The Gannt Chart, as well as the CONSTRAINTS of PEGI were followed. I actually ended the Gannt chart a day early, expecting that I'd have to finish the project at home this Saturday. and instead finishing the asset this Thursday. The issues of losing files was faced, as I kept losing art assets from badly storing them, and so my final solution to fix losing files was to store every art asset directly in the Home CP folder. It worked partially, as I didn't lose all copies of my files when Unreal wiped them, but I DID have to deal with Unreal forgetting the files and I would regularly have to replace the assets with the Home CP backups.
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Week 3:
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I have had to replace the code for the menus five times:
The first time, I did it "too fast" and I deleted my files.
The second time, I didn't save the menu.
For times 3, 4, and 5, the code would have one fragment go wrong, like the On Button(Oxygen) pressed or the RightClick input not connecting.
The final solution to fix all of this was to update the final menu with a version of the asset with ALL issues fixed.
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The asset is now fully functional. Besides that, during this week, I drew a few sketches of an alien-creature-thing for some extra visual flair. The sketches were drawn in pen. I do pen-sketch art in my own time, but I don't really use them as refrences for final versions of art assets. So, this was a technically new experience using my pen work as pixel art refrences. The pixel art I made for the final project was made in Piskel, and Aesprite. With all the assets, I'd regularly have the engine forget them. As said before, I fixed the forgetting (partially) by saving the art assets in the folder that I stored the project in. This "Partially" worked, as until the final build, the editor would still forget, but all I had to do to fix the forgotten files was to drag in the assets from the storage folder
Week 4:
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In week four, I made the four mini-menus, and implemented them. During the implementation, I had to deal with losing art files, bad blueprint connections, and other pesky errors, which I've explained in more detail in the respective week tabs. All together, I managed to create four menus in the end, completing them earlier than expected, and after making repeated builds, fixing multiple litle errors, I've managed to brute-force my way to a successfuly working Creative Project Asset.
Week 5.
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As I didn't think of much else to do, I went about getting EXTRA feedback from friends. At the time of writing, my menu is completed. Although I most likely won't edit the menu, to preserve the successful code I managed to implement, here's what I will note:
1. To help with better viewing of the menus, have larger headings, and try to have the text line up well.
2. I has adviseed to implement a control list, to explain my odd controls, as Mouse, AND the arrow keys allowed for controlling the camera.
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As an extra thing that I did, I discussed my own visual issues and how they impacted the creation of this asset.
Week 5:
*MOST OF WEEK 5 WILL BE SPENT LOOKING OVER THE SITE, ADDING A FEW EXTRAS, AND FIXING ERRORS.
MY PLAN FOR UPLOADING THE FILE..THAT DIDN'T WORK
I was plannng to do one of two methods for accessing my project: Moodle, and/or directly having the project downloadable on the site.
That is... if the plan had worked. My ideas behind doing Moodle, or uploading directly were fourfold:
1`. I have limited total space on this website.
2. It has a good chance of not working on this site.
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3. I know for a fact that I am going to have to add files for grading
into the Submissions folder for the A2 Creative Project featured on the Confetti Moodle.
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4. pck and exe files, which are the two ESSENTIAL files that the executable needs, don't work on Wix. so, even after all that spiel, the executable would NEVER WORK on this site. Also, even worse, as my file was going to be on Moodle, it wouldn't be allowed to get graded.
THE SOLUTION TO A WORKING PROJECT:
I don't have DropBox account, or one for Google Drive. As it turns out, I NEED those to allow someone to play my project.
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So, I planned to try setting up a DropBox account with a fellow classmate.
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As I had managed to set up the account without any issues, you can now use this button to access the Windows No Editor folder, which contains the A2 Submission files.
THE END OF THE PROJECT
WEEK 6: Updating the project
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MARTIN FEEDBACK:
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Martin discussed the lack of feedback, saying that having the mechanics jump straight to the lore was jarring.
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To fix this, I added the FEEDBACK video at the top(ish) of the site, there is a new section, as the Feedback/Design & CONSTRAINTS was originally just Design & Constraints. Also, I was told by Martin that it was ill advised to have the desktop visible in the final video. So, I remade the video, which you can find in the *THE VIDEO* tab as the RE-IMPORTED VIDEO. (scroll up after clicking this)
CAITLIN FEEDBACK:
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I was reccomended to try and consolidate my feedback sections into one single chunk, to keep things organized.
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As a second point, it ws also noted that I didn't really have much research. So, I eventually learned that it is A: fine to mention my pervious work, and B: perfectly safe to refrence films, books, and music. That won't really help too much with this, as it's a bit too late to pull up lots of new research at the very end of the project but I can apply that information for other projects, in order to have more, and better research for future work.
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Also, it was pointed out that I go on tangents. Specific ones you may have seen was the Periodic table floor, the Hydrogen tiles, and the long discussion on Outpost Gamma
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In order to have a clearer, and more serious portfolio, I was advised to try and redesign my site. Here's how I was advised to refine the site:
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1. A project will have a header page, like how this Creative Project tab is set inside the Created Work tab.
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2. Each week, or other dividing point, will be a different subsidiary page.
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3. If I try to go off on a tangent unrelated, or a bit unusual, compared to the topic at hand, I link you to the TANGENTS page at the bottom of the list.
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To try to illustrate this, I have made a page, titled "EXAMPLE PAGE", that contains two blank pages, labelled Week 1, and Week 2, and a TANGENTS page below both of the week tabs.
