Portfolio grading activity

As part of the initial project, we were put into groups and assessed previous year's portfolios to get a feel for the mastery model this is where you have to achieve a distinction in everything to get that grade overall, and the lower the grade, the lower the overall grade is. What I learned from this was the supporting work for the overall product needs to be strong, to show my understanding of each thing that I produce/ research.

Swot Analysis

Strengths

In the past year, I have learned how to blueprint within Unreal Engine and how to make different things happen within the engine. I can problem solve the issues that I come across within the engine. In order to develop and build on skills relevant to my course at University, I feel like having less of a focus on aesthetics and more on the interactive side, doing this will help build on my practical skills and make things more contextually correct.

Weaknesses

Sketching is not my strong point so my drawings don't look as good as I would like them to. So when It comes to making the level design sketches I will either make them very basic so they have a key with some symbols, or I would create the level first and then go back to make the level sketch. Also, I find it hard to write down on paper my ideas and I have so many which could push my project to the next level but without me blogging effectively lets me down.

Opportunities

The skills I have learned in the past year within Unreal Engine and making my outcomes look as good as possible.
I have a high expectations for my projects and I feel like this could be my best one due to it having all the mechanics I am wanting to add for it to be interactive. From doing this project I feel like my exploration within unreal engine will be beneficial to my progression onto uni this project has some more advanced things such as stamina bar and stamina decay.

Threats

Time Constraints due to some personal things that may take some of my time and attention and I may have some distractions from my peers.

Contextual Research

When looking at the contextual research this could mean multiple things but I am just going to focus on the location research to figure out where my game location will be. There are multiple places that it could be set in, such as USA, UK. Europe, Asia and many other places but where my idea is set in an urban area it will need to be somewhere that has an urban place I could do some research on as this will effect the look of the buildings and the way that the buildings are laid out on the streets.

New York/ American Road Layout

Some of the positive things about having a block layout are the modularity that could happen as the streets are always in a square and the streets are easier to build things on. But the negative things are that the streets could look boring as it is the same style most of the way along.

London road layout

One positive of the smaller lane layout is smaller buildings can be added, this can make more variation for the street aesthetic.

Melborne road layout

The road layout in Melbourne is a mix of new york and London as its on a grid and has blocks but also it has some smaller lanes that can make some varied streets.

After thinking about what I wanted to make the map look like it has some structure to it so I thought the best thing to base my game in America. This is because it has a 'block' format and I feel like this will suit my project more compared to choosing layouts that are seen in the UK and Australia. As this would make my game easier to make the streets look the way I want them to look.

Street View Of My Location

When I was looking at the more run-down areas of New York I found this urban looking area, and I thought that this would be the best-looking area and the most fitting for my game, as it's a run-down looking environment. When I was looking at locations for the base of my game, I found this location which is in downtown New York.

Game Research

Cyberpunk2077

When looking at some games that are somewhat similar to the game that I will be making. There are a lot of similarities between the genre that I could take a look at. For Example, a game that does the whole dystopian theme is Cyberpunk 2077 the main thing that this game that I would be taking from this game would be the visual codes that it shows as it is made in the cityscape as my game is built in an urban environment. If you take a look at the images below, you can see the streets and buildings are built in a square/ grid layout as it is based in America and it follows the rules that are often associated along with this.

Deus Ex

Looking at some other games such as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided it has some combat features that I find interesting due to it being more of a realistic game for its era. The things that I could take from this game would be the characters as they look realistic and they have a sense of power with the way they carry themselves. There are also some design features that I would take for example the pipes and wires that are all over the floor. You can see this in the picture with all the people. When looking at the layout of the scenes, there is a lot of garbage in the streets, the rubbish in the streets had been made into signs, and in the factory, the image seen below there are pipes trailed all across the floor which gives it an industrial feel.

Watchdogs

When I started to look at other games I chose to look at watchdogs as it is built up city. But watch dogs has multiple 'Districts' from rundown full of crime areas to high end areas. When you load up the game for the first time you start the storyline. where the main characters niece gets killed, but in the first mission you get to explore some of the gameplay environment. weather it being driving around and using alleyways to escape the cops. When you are looking at more of the finer details such as the road with its imperfections and the pavement with leaves/litter on the floor you can see that a lot of thought has happened to make these small decisions, But also the local people on the streets no one person is the same in the game so a lot of time has also go into character design. overall all of the added detail gives the game a sense of there is always something to do which makes it have a fun sense to the game which is why it is such a big seller and so popular still to this day.

(PlayStation, 2013)

MadMax

First of all Mad max is an open world game where you can do a lot of missions weather these be collect something or defeat the enemies. But i think mad max is so popular due to the open world setting where you are not stuck to just one mission, You can start a collection one and then go and kill some enemies but they all feed into the storyline of the game its self. When you take a deeper look into the more survival missions you have to fight in hand to hand combat with the enemies coming up behind you, but with the fighting mechanic you can lock onto the people that are coming up behind you. But the overall open worldness of this game makes people want to come back and explore the environment which the game is set in.

(MAD MAX Gameplay Walkthrough, 2020)

I Am Alive

At first glance the colours for the streets and all the fog for a feeling of uncertainty and like something else is going on that no one knows about. The colours make the game seem bright and in places make you want to know what's actually happened to make the town where it is based in go the way it is. The environment in which you have to move about in seems like a massive tragedy has happened for example there are crashed cars and bits of metal all over the bridge that you have to cross at the start of the game to get to your house.

(I Am Alive - Gameplay Walkthrough, 2012)

Lockup/warehouses in America

when I started to look into American style warehouses I found that most of them are made out of brick structures with a modern style interior. These images are going to help persuade my design ideas.

Technology in the future

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter on a near-atomic scale to produce new structures, materials and devices. The technology promises scientific advancement in many sectors such as medicine, consumer products, energy, materials and manufacturing. This sort of technology could be sort of thing that I could implement into my game with a chamber that is seen In Elysium (Elysium, 2013)

Virus Reaserch

In the real world, viruses can cause serious illnesses such as the one that we had to go through in recent years, Covid-19. This virus would affect your respiratory system and could hospitalize you and make you go on a respirator to build your blood oxygen back up. Eventually, there was a vaccine made where you had to get booster doses. As seen in the article on (COVID-19) et al., 2022) So COVID-19 is more likely to go deeper than viruses like the common cold. Your lungs might become inflamed, making it tough for you to breathe. This can lead to pneumonia, an infection of the tiny air sacs (called alveoli) inside your lungs where your blood exchanges oxygen and carbon dioxide. During this period when covid was really bad we were forced to wear masks in public spaces. When it came to having vaccinations you would have to attend a vaccine center which would be full of different chairs, tents, portacabins, and some metal fencing (all seen below in the images.)

Existing Game Lockup

When looking at some existing games there are multiple examples that you can look into. The lockups that are in this particular game there are multiple examples the game that really stands out is Grand Theft Auto 5 (Games, 2013) Looking at the images below they all seemed to be placed in similar locations but all over the map. Weather they be all the way at the top of the map or all the way down at the bottom they all would follow a certain look as seen in the image atomic garage it has a fence around it.

Homelessness Within Games

When looking at some locations where it could be seen as homelessness as 2 of the locations seen below have tents and fire pits for security and warmth. But the third image can be seen as more of a hangout for the homeless people within GTA 5. Two of the main locations are underneath bridges/overpasses.

PBR Texturing and Substance Painter

When It came to me texturing the environment and the interior I used two main methods one being Substance Painter which is apart of the adobe Creative Cloud and the other being PBR Texturing. The main reason for using the two methods are that one can give me more detail where the other can give me more freedom to make it how I want it to.

Substance Techniques

When it came to using substance painter I started by selecting my material and then applying a black mask and selecting individual polys and applying the material one at a time.

Homeliness

When crating a base for my character I knew the main aspects of what I needed one of them being a safespace for them to come back to after they had been out exploring. So the base will need some garage items such as tool boxes, kitchen equipment and a bed. With this I would also need to try and tell a story within this safe space.

First Playtest 'Focus Group'

On 11/05/2022 one of my lecturers pointed out to me about the scale and the overall feel of the game felt 'Floaty' like he was playing Halo. So the thing that I can do to fix this is make the gravity higher or make the jump strength lower to make it not as "Floaty" and I have fixed the whole scale within the map to make it feel alot more realistic to the characters size.

Exposed Infrastructure

When it came to making the skyscrapers I liked the thought of having an exoskeleton on the outside to support the building this type of building can be seen quite often in industrial areas but it can also be seen in the London on the Lloyds building.

Play Testing

As you can see from below there is a varied response from my small batch of play testing that I carried out, All of the points that where raised where things that I was already aware about,The thing that I found most useful from this is the future development points where it states about fenced off areas not just invisable walls this would make the feel of the game more like it is intended. The dystopian future.