Atomic Garden Interactive

1 or 2... I experimented with some Post-processing layers. I think using film grain and vignette will really add to the atmosphere of the game, other effects I think I want to wait till I have a closer to finished product to test with before making a decision. I also think I want to keep the effects subtle so as to not be obnoxious so I'm going to try to use as few as possible .

Af fine map indeed Another bug I  encountered in my previous project was when using the PSX shader on large surfaces the warping became severe which was disorientating while playing. This is because the affine mapping that the shader does to emulate the affine mapping the PS1 did, approximates the positions of vertices in screen space meaning that if the vertex in question is far off-screen the approximation becomes more inaccurate meaning that if you subdivide the meshes into smaller triangles the effect is drastically diminished.

Trippy warning. During the development of my previous project, I encountered a bug with the PSX shader seen in the video above. When using fog the shader would break even when using linear fog which was advised with the shader. After a lot of messing around with settings, I found if I increased the fog start distance it fixed the bug.

Bar bar barbarians Images of the barbican estate in London.  I want to try to incorporate some of the different shapes that are prominent in the architecture of the barbican into my designs for my game. The semi-circles in particular are quite interesting as they reoccur in a variety of different places throughout the site.

The Pixel The textures in When the Sleeper Wakes ended up being blurry when I resized them. This was because when I resized the textures I accidentally left resample on which meant PS averaged the difference between pixels to break up the harsh lines of pixels. Which was the opposite of what I wanted.

Ya gotta think outside the grey box, ya know These are the grey boxes for the first 2 Lvls of The Barbican. The first is a straight shot to the objective to familiarise the player with their goal. The second is a spiral to introduce alternate paths to the player and encourage exploration of the environment. The Initial rooms with the Npc and dialogue will be separate scenes.

*Insert Joke Title Here* While testing some of the different Unity Templates I discovered that due to a change in the way that unity handles shaders a few years ago the PSX shader doesn't work with either the universal render pipeline or the HDR pipeline. This means that I must use the built-in unity renderer if I want to use PSX. This isn't the biggest issue but does illustrate the problem of using older resources found online that they often aren't kept up to date with current standards.

Enemy at the Gate The Barbican estate in London features a lot of the style of architecture that I wanted to emulate in the art and design project, so for this project, I'm going to try to create my own barbican estate using the real one as the palette. To do this I'm going to create concept art using the barbican as part of a reference sandwich to create unique architecture that should both be evocative of contemporary London, retrofuturist and contain elements meant to subtly guide the player through the area to their goal.

Project Design Document Player Control You control a Character in this First Person Platformer game where WASD, Shift and Space makes the player Walk, Run and Jump . Basic Gameplay During the game, an Antagonist Ghost  chases from behind the player and the goal of the game is to Escape the Antagonist Ghost . Sound & Effects There will be sound effects, Footsteps and Ambient and particle effects, Smoke and Steam Clouds . Gameplay Mechanics As the game progresses, The Platform will get more complex making it more difficult for the player to progress . There will also be an Antagonist that will attempt to catch the player and send them back to the last checkpoint . User Interface The Lives will Decrease whenever the player is caught by the antagonist . At the start of the game, the title The Barbican will appear and the game will end when the player reaches the end and escapes . Other Features The Game will include multiple animations for both the player and the NPC...

Covid-19 2 : Electric Boogaloo The Pandas here Represent Covid This project ended with me being sick the week of the hand in and so I requested and obtained an extension of a week. Because of this, I had the same amount of time to complete this project as I would have done had I not been ill so I will not mention that again but it did have a small effect on my final product. The first couple of weeks of this project went well I think, I formed a strong sense of the theme and mood I wanted to achieve through collage and image mashes and set myself some clear and achievable goals. The trouble began as I tried to create concept art to formalise my ideas into more precise images. I really struggled to create any kind of concept art, the fear of the blank page got the better of me more often than not and as a result, I ended up avoiding working on the project at times when I should have been pressing forward. I now know a good way around this would have been to grey box out my ideas using t...

Mise-en-scène Using the objects I had created I tried to create miniature scenes or vignette that utilise an amount of environmental storytelling.  For instance, see above there is a cigarette but in the foundation and only one of the people is obviously a smoker implying that they put it there. Also, there is a table set out in such a way as to imply that the three NPCs all sit together sometimes. Had I more time I would like to add the dialogue that I had planned but these vignettes will surfice.

Pro Bricklaying Using Pro Builder I created the larger shapes of the level like the building that he level takes place on and the slightly smaller but still bigger than the player objects such as the shed and the lift buildings and walls.

Silent hill 2.0 Using Maya I created a selection of small scatter objects to fill my scene and tell a story through the environment. I really enjoyed creating these and while UVing the chairs, for instance, was like pulling teeth the overall experience was very enjoyable.

London Fog is back! I used the fog setting in unity to create a linear gradient that obscures the distant building and the horizon this adds a great amount of atmosphere instantly and really helps set the mood I'm going for.

London Upsidedown I imported the blender file into Maya and duplicated and flipped it to create the greater overhang of the city that the text mentions. 

Careful not to inhale the glue flumes I joined the CAA (Computer Animation Arts) students for a session of kitbashing. I found this incredibly enjoyable and helpful. The act of just creating from reinterpreting the given objects and squashing stretching and cutting them into the shape you want was a dream. this also drastically improved my ability to control my as it solidified my understanding of muscle memory of the hotkeys and tools in Maya. Where I to iterate on this design I would increase the size of the tube section on top as currently its slightly under with regards to the proportions of the rest of the robot. But overall I'm satisfied with the result.  

Now in Orange I used the unity package Pro Builder I grey boxed out my level concept. By doing this I realised that the vertical nature of the level I had chosen would not work the way I wanted to. The sightlines from this level were severely obscured and the nature of being in buildings like this would mean I would need to create a whole bunch of objects I am not currently prepared to. So I will redraw my level.

  Licking the walls to access the quality of the textures I made some test images by combining images together to get different effects such as adding water damage to concrete and rust lines etc. I'm going to use this to create the textures ill use for the wall and floors of my environment.

Moody Boards I created a series of images to help conceptual the look and feel I want to capture from the text. Each image is inspired by some element of the text either a line or two or the greater setting of future London. The above image is inspired by ground-level London and the aesthetics of the streets and the below is the inspiration for the skyline and the horizon. This image is the 'overwhelming architecture' and 'aisle of Titanic buildings' from the text. I wanted to capture the emotion of looking up at towing buildings that loom over you in cities with skyscrapers. I was trying to create 'Gigantic globes of cool white light' hanging overhead. Combined with some of the other parts of the text it made me think of these street lights and stalactites. This image is 'a tracery of translucent material shut out the sky'. I tried to think of what London would have as a roof if it were to have one and this style of victoria glass and steel construction...

There Be Monsters This is the first version of the walkable layout for my game. Each image is stacked on top of each other going from the top right to bottom left, with the first as the lowest level and the last being the highest. The gradient indicates slopes/how you access the other levels. the player moves in roughly a spiral going up hopefully reducing the chances of the player getting lost. The Green dot is the players start position and the orange dots indicate the NPC the player can talk to. The Grey Blocks indicate impassible walls or fences. My Goal with this layout is to give the player an interesting route through the level spiralling upwards. Allowing the player ample opportunity to view the surrounding areas from a high vantage point and experience a sense of danger from being so high up. There are also a few places for the player to backtrack or go into deadends, these should deepen the feeling of exploration. This route should also force the player to pass the NPCs, mean...