I thought I didn’t have so much to do as from the previous week I finished Everything but I did get some more tasks assigned to me, it was not a problem as there was not much of them. They were easily done and easily implemented.
GGC is nearing and the game is getting the last touches…
This has been one of the most hectic weeks of our production, as we thought the Beta was earlier than it actually was. Some of us sat up all night trying to finishing up some of the ”last” touches of our levels. It was not pleasant to hear that we had worked those insane hours almost for nothing. After that we who had worked so late took a brake the rest of the weekend. Even though I thought to myself that I could use the break, I still worked a little bit.
I have worked so much that I have run out of things to do at this point. Some of the things we had planned on doing from the beginning, example wise the main character and the animations, they had to be cut from this production due to that we are short on time. Even that I don’t really have anything to do because I can not still do the things that were cut from the production as there is too little time… Where did the last weeks of production time go? I thought that we had 10 weeks, not 8… But everything has to be wrapped up in for Gotland Game Awards which takes place on Gotland the 28/5/2014.
Here are screen shots of some of the things that I have done.
(This is a little bit of late post. But better late then never.)
I made many textures for the wind level this week, we wanted to finalize a particular level so we could show our game to our Tutor. It was hectic to make so many textures in such a short time, but I did manage to create them with some easy methods. I reused some textures I had already created but I gave them some variation from one object to the next. I did this for the Color and Normal maps. I had already saved some Normal maps from before where I had some Random Cavities in them or a stone texture and etc. Same for the Color maps as many objects had the same materials, such as stone, gold wood or even painted stone, mainly painted stone. Even though I did much I did not get everything done, but it was enough to show how the level is going to look and the rest of the game. Some 3D models got a more simple texture for the moment, they will be replaced in due time. Another method for getting things done fast was to divide 3D models into the different materials, that way we already had a Material ready to simply be applied to the 3D models, this made the production faster and easier for me. Here is one of the Screen shots we took.
Later during the weekend we recorded some where I did the voice acting for our trailer and our cut scenes. It was very interesting at least as we recorded in a bathroom, we decided that was the ideal spot at the time, because we couldn’t access any better location at the time. There was just too much echo and noise in all other rooms. After three hours we had something we all were pleased with.
This week it feels like I had worked even more than usual, I don’t know how but it just feels like so. I usually work the whole day and I don’t really do anything else than work, but somehow I felt that I had to work even more which is interesting. None the less I did manage to complete the things I had to do. Why it was so hectic was because of the Alpha stage of the production was nearing, it took place on the Friday. We did get some interesting feedback, much of the feedback we got was something we already knew, but it could be expected that it would get pointed out. It is good that we got that feedback because then we get some confirmation of that those things we have thought of adding are important. Why we have not added them in yet is because of time, those things will be our priority of now. one of the things they mentioned were that the couldn’t tell what was important and not in a level. Among those things was the mirrors they were not easy to see but that has to do a bit with the lighting because it was very dark in some places. Still the mirror can easily blend in which is not a good thing, you must be able to tell what is something of importance and not. I got instructed to try out and make the important objects more clear while making everything else a bit dull in their color. The image below shows what I did to solve that problem.
I know that it still looks quite dark, but that will have to be corrected in the actual levels with the lighting, this image is from my own scene where I display everything I work with to see how my textures look. If you can not tell which objects are more important it is the ones that are in the middle, they have more strong colors while most of everything else looks a bit dull. So to make the object more clear the only thing missing is better lighting in the levels. I did this with just changing the color maps, I took away some of the darkest values and some of the lightest values in every color map except for the important objects. That makes them pop out more and the player will notice them easier but hopefully it will be subtle.
Tobias Carlsson 