Elements of game design, part seven: level design

Level design and environment design are two separate aspects when a game is in development, although are not necessarily held as completely separate elements, as generally the jobs are interchangeable with an individual in the industry. As I touched upon last year, environment design refers to the aesthetics of the assets which are places in the environment – an environment artist will model, texture and on occasion light an environment to create a visually appealing level. Level design refers to the assembly of said environments. In general, a level designer will design gameplay elements, as well as create scripted events and test gameplay – basically, the interaction with the environment artist’s creations. Their job is to create a level, environment or world in which a player can interact with and not get bored – and depending on the game type, avoid replication the mundane tasks of an individual’s everyday life. Then again this is really just a suggestion, as if people can find a game based around mopping and cleaning interesting as long as its blood, guts and in space then who knows.

Viscera Cleanup Detail - The space-station janitor simulator

Generally, what can be classed as good level design can be categorized into fundamental “rules” as it were. Starting with the navigation through a level – this being one of the core interactions a player has with the environment they have been presented. Crap layout can hide visual cues as to where a player has to go – in most cases this comes in the form of a light source, corridors,  colour coded areas such as in mirrors edge, blocked off “you can only go this way” sections, or the way in which the scary monster just went. Good navigation creates a good flow within a games level, with consistent themes throughout a game allowing a more instinctual interaction from a player.

Another suggested “rule” of game level design is the use of environment to tell the story, relying on just the right amount of visual cues to allow the player to immerse themselves and uncover the story for themselves without it being shoved down their throat. Narrative aspects of a level can be done in three ways, explicit – referring to text or speech, implicit – referring to the environmental cues, such as in Bioshock or Fallout 3’s use of notes, and emergent – this being narrated by the player as they travel through the level.

One of the more optional aspects of good level design is the players’ interaction with quests/objectives, and how they are to be fulfilled. In the Elder scrolls series it is a general running design that the character gets to choose their morality, and how certain quests can be ended – this affecting the environment around them in multiple ways. This leads into gameplay – quests and locations of interest should be distinct in their marking, with the option of how a location is interacted with being determined by the player. Doing so allows a game to steer away from repetition, giving some more variety in doing tasks and interaction where the player feels as though they are writing their own story.
The difficulty of a game is a sign of good level design – although maybe not one of the most important ones. I personally know I appreciate it when a game allows myself to select what difficulty I want to approach a game in, allowing me to get the enjoyment I want without unnecessary rage quitting – AKA: Dante’s Inferno. Adjusting the levels of enemies, difficulty of environments and the levelling curve via the adjustment of the difficulty can create a more rewarding experience with a personal feel.

Level design, in reality, wants to create an easy-to-play but not in your face, personalised, interesting and all round awesome experience for a player, showing off the visual environmental designs to their fullest whilst creating flowing, logical interaction with them which both strays from everyday life, but maintains balance in the real world with its understantability and interaction with an individual’s awareness and intuition. They should create emotive responses which fuel gameplay, with levels which highlight specific mechanics within a game.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanTaylor/20130929/196791/Ten_Principles_of_Good_Level_Design_Part_1.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanTaylor/20131006/197209/Ten_Principles_of_Good_Level_Design_Part_2.php
http://www.johnsto.co.uk/design/level_design

Elements of game design, part six: Visual Composition

Visual composition is an aspect that I find personally can be easily over looked when producing images, whether they be from life or an imaginative piece. It’s much easier to go “Hey, that looks alright” then to analyse and consider every aspect of the image. But this is something that’s important, as the composition of a piece can make or break certain aspects of the image, and I personally know is something that I need to actively consider more thoroughly.
The easiest way to approach this topic would be to break up the subject of composition into its’ key elements, so let’s do that. Firstly let’s approach space, referring to the area around and between objects visualised. This will give off the silhouette of an object, and generally the main focus of a piece depending on the intricacy and interaction of an object with its environment.
Generally, the layout of an image can be subjected to the rule of thirds – This is definitely an aspect I need to consider more, as generally the eye is drawn to the centre of an image which can create a somewhat static and uninteresting image. The idea behind the rule of thirds is that a 3x3 grid is drawn, the intersection of the lines of the grid being where the key visual aspects of an image will be situated. Adjusting the balance and symmetry of an image in this way can create a more dynamic piece.

The key aim of any image, whether it be a fine art piece or a design, is to simulate a 3D form in a two dimensional medium. This can generally be done through the use of the basic shapes used to create an image – for example cuboids being used to create the angle of the shoulders. With this, the general way to make something appear as though it has that depth is to show at least 3 faces of an object or shape. If not, 3D form can easily be low.

Values are another way in which depth can be created in composition, applying varying intensity to simulate foreground and background. This is something I have recently just grasped, however still have trouble with incorporating into  my designs due to the observational trickery of “that’s obviously in dark shadow so let’s make it intense” despite it being in the far background. It’s all about artistic judgement, and adjusting what we see to translate in a more effective or visually pleasing way on paper.
Values can also denote materials and textures, adjusting the “specularity” of an object can dictate whether something is shiny or matte, something which can bring life to an image through its application.
An addition element of visual composition is the application of colour. And this will be the last one I touch upon in this post, as this is a super long essay-bearing topic and I’ll save you the eye strain. The use of a large variety of different shades can frankly create a mess, on the verge of cluster-fuck, of visual unappealing proportions. Keeping the hues on a similar scale, but adding a key colour can create a more dynamic and smooth unity within a piece. This can be demonstrated across the years through many fine art masters – for example “Hylas and the Nymphs” by John William Waterhouse, or “Lady Godiva” by John Collier. In addition to this, colours suggest mood, temperatures and can dictate the softness of an image.

Hylas and the Nymphs

Lady Godiva

To sum up what could be an epically long post somewhat cut short, composition is more complex than one could initially suspect – a lot of artistic judgement, adjusting and concepting is needed in order to create the most aesthetically appealing piece – not to mention critically analysing yourself and your approach. A single misjudgment in colours, values or the composition could deteriorate an ideas representation. And that would sort of suck.

Sources:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_space
http://www.hippasus.com/resources/viscomp/RuleThirds.html

http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators/how-to/from-theory-to-practice/formal-visual-analysis.aspx
http://www.incredibleart.org/files/elements2.htm

Elements of game design, part five: planning and concepting

So I really should crack on with tasks, attempt to vocalise myself whilst I currently under go numerous brain farts and brain dead drooling in a corner.
Any set project, whether it be in the gaming industry or an alternative design occupation, undergoes a series of design processes in order to obtain a well-rounded final outcome. As I can refer more accurately to the projects I have been set over the past year and a quarter, it’ll be easier to pick the process I personally underwent in order to get my final outcome. In my opinion, the initial stage of concepting is possibly one of the most important stages of any brief, and whilst it can be the most time consuming aspect, I have found that a large, well thought out concept for a design – whether it be environment, character or vehicle – will generally produce a more effective final piece. The initial concepts of a design are an aspect which will constantly be referred to throughout a project – being adjusted as they go along, so in reality need to be produced in large batches in next to no time at all.
From my own projects, the process of concepting begins with research, gathering images and ideas from either primary or secondary sources for accurate representations of what the projects brief may be as well as suggesting stylisation and themes.
From here, a large quantity of silhouettes, thumbnails and prep sketches are produced using said research in order to gain the most eye catching form – with any design, an interesting silhouette can make or break its recognisability with an audience. These will then be narrowed down to the most attention-grabbing forms, their interior shapes developed and moving onto stylisation and colour theory application. I personally find that combining and nit-picking at silhouettes & interior detailing can help produce a more well-rounded design – although I find that caution needs to be applied with this approach, as a design can very quickly become over complicated, busy and impractical.

In addition to the initial concepting, the way the files are planned and organised are an essential aspect, as in industry concepts will be shared by multiple artists. Numbering silhouettes, file names and titling layers in photoshop files give ease to adjusting a concept later down the line, as well as ease in locating files and such. Planning out time management is also an important factor when it comes to not only concepting but the overall project itself, as if deadlines are not set and aimed for, a final design may be out of reach – or just take a lot longer to get to. Or, on the other hand, the final could be underdeveloped if not enough time and planning is given to concepting. In order to attempt to avoid this, I’ve given myself more time to focus on the initial concepting stage – as part of me still dislikes silhouettes due to the unreadable nature of the inner workings of a design at the first stage, I understand how important this is to a design and see it as something I can constantly better myself at. In doing so, I will be more of a valuable asset when it comes to the group project later on in the year, as well as demonstrate important abilities to everyday life.
All in all, concepting is more difficult than it may be initially thought. And I’ve used concepting too much in this post. Concepting, concepting, concepting. It’s no longer a word with meaning.

I realise this post may be rather dull due to the lack of images, as well as references, however I was at a bit of a stand still as to how to reference something like this topic. Next post should – hopefully – be more interesting.

Apparently I can be happy with my work.. who knew?
The past two game production products I've been relatively happy with the outcome - and obviously I could always do better, do more, and so on, but a standard I'm content with is quiet nice.
And yes, I may be procrastinating from the visual design vehicle project a bit by writing this blog entry.. but I hate vehicles. And presentations.

So the current project is to design a building which will fit between two provided, fully textured meshes. So I naturally went with my first cliche thought to do a Chinese restaurant.

Well, not really just a Chinese restaurant. Mainly inspired by the scene in the movie "Spirited Away" when Chihiro's parents are turned into pigs - more of an outside buffet idea. Ideally, I wanted to give it an appearance of a converted apartment building - a sure safe way to maintain the brief and make my design fit between the two buildings provided. Basically, taking typical, traditional Chinese shapes and applying them to a store-front styled design, with an open buffet/seating area 

 The one thing I was looking forward to about this project was the amount of baking I would be doing to a lot of the geometry - not necessarily having a strict, low tri budget meant I didn't have to be as strict with certain geometry - for example the roof canopy could actually have geometry and maintain its silhouette somewhat, but I doubt I could have a 10,000 tri asset attached to the scene and explain it somehow.

I even baked a little mooncake. It was a bit pointless, but I couldn't resist.

The final result I'm overall please with the appearance - it conveys what I wanted to, despite the fact I may have been a tad lazy/apprehensive to attempt parallex mapping to create a kitchen scene within the openinn and instead added shutters. I could have used more decals however, to grime up the place - however with the limited texture budget we had I didn't want to include too many details which would be blurry and distorted on the final object.

And so another year begins

Summer could not have gone slower, seriously. Stressful, tiring and lonely – made me remember how much I actually miss having friends and things to do. Sometimes. I probably could have done a blog post or two, but as I don’t necessarily enjoy having a presence on the internet and spouting nonsensical thoughts I found procrastinating in cakes and exercise more worthwhile. I did attempt a group project with some friends, it made me realise how crap my laptop was as in the end 3Ds Max wouldn’t even open on it.. So say hello new desktop – it’s beautiful and I love it. I’ve managed to do some 3D modelling before my laptop went kaput though. I think I improved, although what I produced was worthy of the pits of hell due to her under thought design.

I really need to draw more men.

We’re in week 3 now – coming up to week 4 of the second year, and looking back at the first year I can already see an improvement with my environments. After a huge plateau over summer its quiet nice to acknowledge improvement – not saying that I still don’t need to improve. I do. Majorly. But that’s not the point. I can sort of do perspective now, yay!
             

Values and colour seem to be a bit wish-washy, I can tell undertones in shadows and highlights when looking at something, and I grasp the idea of more distant items having less detail therefore a lower value, but replicating that? It appears I have ups and downs, where sometimes I can get it to somewhat work, and others not so much. It seems to depend somewhat on the subject matter – more organic items I love doing, trains and buildings are boring and too linear. But also time spent on it – thumbnails are meant to be quick but I ended up spending about an hour on some of them from Abbey park. Attempting to avoid doing that for Loughborough train yard and the Guild hall seems to make me want to produce nothing worthwhile.

My 3D has visibly improved, the way I work and think through the appearance of the final outcome – even with something as boring as trash – rather than doing the bare minimum due to wanting to throw myself out of a window from frustration, I’m instantly thinking of ways I can add to the scene. I attempted to give a bin bag a split with stuff falling out, and instantly thought of an environment it could be placed into. I considered two environments instantly, even! That’s new, thinking of possible environments is one thing but multiple ideas is another. Hopefully this thinking maintains itself through the year.

 And whilst I’ve improved and started enjoying environments more, no matter how frustrating the new aspects needed are, I still find myself attracted towards the human form, and characters. It’s still my ambition, unwavering, to be a part of the production line to well-rounded characters who produce some response from a captive audience, whether it be adoration, admiration or hatred.
I feel my life drawing has improved since the first year - however I am too linear still, taking refuge in the definite of "this goes here" rather than suggesting - which could be more worth while on quick 1 and 2 minute gesture drawings.

Week 1

week 3

week 3

The second year is no doubt going to be more stressful – so I’m kicking in and getting on with it. Trying to keep up to date – working through blinding migraines may become a more regular thing but this is what I want to do for a living. It’s time I start making it seem that way.

First year is over, lets review!

The first year is pretty much over, final hand in is tomorrow and a long summer break is looming in the distance. So what better time to reflect on how shit my work used to be in comparison to now – especially after presenting all my work, I’ve had a chance to glance at everything and see that maybe, I have improved in certain areas.

The majority of the first term, I was learning something new every day. It was fantastic, learning new skills and feeling as though I am progressing even after doing nothing. Having never actually done perspective or environments before – or if I had, never doing them in a technical or accurate way – I was producing for lack of better words, complete crap. Getting the basics down was more important than rendering, and when I’d gotten what I thought was pretty accurate line work in a thumbnail, when it was transferred to a larger scale and I attempted to render it, it completely went to pot. In reality I feel I'm still the same as this, and need a lot more work doing to perspective to improve - so much so that it's almost an impossible feat really, but hell never know unless you try I guess. This mainly refers to 2 point perspective - as I've not improved in this in the slightest.

2 point perspective still super needs work

Term 2 was abysmal - I produced substandard, uninspired work throughout it's entirety and ended up with a barely passing grade because of it. I plateaued, with little to no progression in anything - uni work or anything outside of uni, and if anything declined in my works standard. This including design projects and observational ones. I produced a terrible character, a poor nonsensical vehicle and poor studies of still lives involving people. In addition to this, I discovered I can't use marker pens for rendering, nor can I produce quick ridleogram style drawings to a decent standard.

The final term is where I feel the majority of the improvement has occurred this year - maybe that's because it's the most recent and therefore the freshest in my mind, or perhaps because we produced a comparison piece as one of the projects. This was one of the more enjoyable projects, as it has shown the course to be helpful to me, and after the second year I felt that's exactly what I needed. 

The newer bradgate drawing shows that I've improved on the concept of levelling within an image, and whilst I feel the final for this year is somewhat lazy and empty looking, it shows I'm beginning to gain a grasp on the level of details between the foreground, mid ground and background. Also apparently I can somewhat draw rocks. Cool beans.

 

Another comparative piece is the 3 hour final piece produced at the end of the year - this being done at the same museum in which we did rendering techniques on dinosaur bones in the first term. For me, it felt a lot more fluid in producing the second - coming together a lost smoother. It would have been nice to do a true comparison between the two - maybe produce another bone based final as opposed to taxidermy.

In addition to these, I feel my ability to design characters, or other objects, has additionally improved - going from substandard "I hate silhouettes they're stupid why am I doing this" to a more accepting "okay maybe they're worth it" view, and this representing itself in my work. From the interesting character in term 2, to the Reef and then finally the 1970's inspired character, I feel I've not only gotten better in my drawing ability, but become more thorough in my research, as well as my ability in representing certain themes, and acquiring said theme to begin with.
My technique is another thing I have felt improve. Normally I'm really anal and neat - I enjoy seeing clean line work before I start doing a painting, whether it be digital or traditionally. The masters study has shown me that I can do different styles without catastrophic results. Choosing Jenny Saville was definitely the right choice as it's pushed and challenged my abilities. Normally I dislike recreating artists - I understand it's a brilliant way to learn new techniques and styles and that "imitation is the best form of flattery" or whatever, but most of the time it just feels like I'm ticking a box with it - doing it because I was told I had to to get the grades, it feels pathetic and cheap - like cheating... then again, I feel the same about overly referencing for images I create, and I know I'm definitely wrong in that view. However I enjoyed doing this project, and may play around with this style of painting again in my spare time.

Although I have improved in some areas, there's still a lot to improve upon and I'm looking forward to seeing myself progress further. One thing I super enjoyed was the modelling in visual design, so creating the reef character and dare say it, making the weapon. More to the point where it gets you to visualise something in a completely different way, and makes a project more solid when there's a transfer from materials from a 2D design to a 3D sculpture. In addition to this, it makes modelling something on 3Ds Max a lot easier as you have a physical sculpture. It's another aspect I'm looking forward to improving on in the future.

Game production improvement has been more noticeable than in visual design - my topology has improved, as well as my construction and my patients whilst creating. In addition to this, my texture application and unwrapping has improved - but this is something that has been done every project, so has had a lot more time to improve in comparison to 2D's projects with varying aims. One thing that has somewhat bugged me with 3D is the limitations on texture and tri limits - however at the same time I understand how the lower budget on these allows focus on learning.

1970s Character project

I really do enjoy character projects most of all. Fine detail observation as well – my two favourite things, suiting my need for things to be detailed and neat.

I’d like to say I had no idea what I was doing, started from a completely blank slate and could fully develop my work in an interesting way and push my capabilities but.. well, that didn’t happen. I wanted to do something opposite of my original idea, but I liked that idea too much.

My initial idea was to design someone based off of 1970s punk bands that I liked - thinking either Subhumans, Bad Brains or Crass. Eventually I decided on the Xray Spex - my moodboard consisted of Poly Styrene and Tank Girl (even though she emerged in the 1980s, she was a good influence for the personality aspect of my character).

  I found that some of my designs ended up orientating to a more 1990's/modern day crust punk influence - this being mainly due to what I'd consider a lack of research. As I wanted to do a "DIY or die" influenced character, I wanted to put her in somewhat typical,simple fashion clothing - more of a Poly attire, but then convey a more punk/tank girl essence about her. This was more difficult than I originally anticipated, as in some cases she ended up too cute or fashionable looking. It was also said I accidentally drew myself - the bottom right design. Oops.

For the finalisation it was a choice between the middle two designs, as I felt they were most like what I wanted to convey within the theme. I ended up going with the more Poly Styrene styled outfit - adding the jumper and socks from the other design as they just seemed to fit. I somewhat wish that I'd gone with the other design - adding more tears and some patterns onto the skirt, however what's done is done now - in future I think I'll have to consider more possibilities from further developments in order to properly design my final outcome.

Colour selection was a pain. I decided to limit myself to a selection of colours gathered from my mood boards - entirely from the 1970s stylised posters, the majority of which being from Jacknife posters. However because of this, I found myself limited in my colour combinations, as well as the majority of the colours coming out too bright for the theme I wanted to convey - a little too disco for my liking. In the end I decided to take the 2nd design in on the top row and adjust the colours of the jumper, and dirty her up a bit - accidentally going a bit too crust punk/street rat for the original theme I wanted to convey. However, it made the in situ easier for myself as I could think of a definite location to fully complement and express this underlying street rat appearance.

Weapon Project

I'm ignoring a term 2 summary because of reasons. This reason being that I hated everything I produced.. also ignoring I forgot I had a blog.. so let’s move on.

During term 3 we had the weapons project, which combined both visual design and game production to create some uber project. I hated it to begin with – we had to physically make the weapon which was pretty bad to be fair. Construction really isn't one of my strong points, which is definitely obvious from the final outcome. This being said, considering I've never actually done anything like this project before – drawing weapons, making them, so on – I don’t think my final outcome was as bad as it could have been.

To begin with, thinking up weapons was difficult.. the whole underlying construction was interfering with any idea generating process because fundamentally, the project limited you to the shapes you could use due to it having to be made out of found objects. Also, not knowing the basic anatomy or workings of a gun made it more difficult because I don't really like nonsensical aspects on mechanical objects - random wires, leather straps and bits of metal for aesthetic purposes doesn't really float my boat whilst designing. In reality, I'd have to shove this aside to begin designing which was possibly the hardest part. I'm too anal for a project like this. 

 From the moodboard, I gathered I wanted to do a Fallout-stylised weapon, maybe a shotgun or some form of blaster.Thinking about it now, I would have loved to do some form of over the top super gun stylised like it was from Fifth Element. But no, over done post apocalyptic theme was the easier choice for this project.

Silhouettes made me decide I wanted to do some form of shotgun..thing. Well, that was the aim. Combining what I found on a scavenge and in pound stores - which consisted of a can, shower gel bottle, hairspray cans, other hair product bottles, a shower hose, wire, a staple gun and various bits of metal. And tape, lots of tape - I furthered the design, then combining them further to create the final outcome.

The construction, as I said, didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, and in the end I ended up spray painting it completely black - which I found way too boring, and would need to do a paint up in order to help myself gather textures for the 3Ds model.

Photo of constructed weapon

Paint over of 3D model for textures

 Overall, I'm happier with the 3D modelled version in comparison to the constructed version - it's a lot cleaner and just generally more aesthetically pleasing. For this project however, I would have preferred to have a larger texture budget - as adding omissive textures would have been nice for the display on the side, as well as the canister. Or even a colour specular would have been nice - there's one applied for these renders but for hand in it had to be removed, and needlessly said it didn't look as good - or more specifically, how I wanted it to.

Final 3D model