Alice in Wonderland Post Mortem

This project has been perhaps one of the best this year. The most fun title still goes to the Container City Project but this is a close second. I think this project was so good because it felt so professional. It was an external Off the Map competition, and because it was an externally set project it made it feel extremely professional like we were part of a real game studio. That made this project much harder than most, as the pressure to do well was much higher initially.

At first this project was extremely scary. Partly because it's externally set it felt far more serious, because it was after all this whole project was for a huge contest. Secondly our brief was Alice in Wonderland, which seemed like a daunting task to turn into a short game experience. And last of all I was working with a project of brand new people I'd never worked with before. That's always a daunting experience, but actually looking back I prefer that. It was a good experience which helped me grow working with new people.

And in the end of things our project actually looks really good. I really like the gameplay of it, it actually seems like a fun small game instead of just a game art asset show off. Of course in reality its both;

I think this project worked really well. And here I'll talk about some of the things that worked for our project as well as some of the things that went wrong.

Group Roles

Our group was a varied bunch. In the end we had one concept artist, two environment artists, one character artist and me who worked solely on engine. In some other groups we saw people getting so stuck in their roles being a bad thing but with us it really worked. It worked for us because while we were all specialized in what we wanted to do we also all helped each other with our jobs. Having extra eyes and sometimes an extra pair of hands helps a huge amount.

 For example one of our environment artists was also good with engine so helped me with some of our major problems, like our rotating cameras. By working together we could solve problems far faster than before. We all worked like this, helping each other when we needed it most. It worked really well, because even when people aren't entirely sure on how things work that extra opinion may just help. It leads onto my next point.

Communication is Key

As I learnt in earlier projects group communication is extremely important. And ours this time around worked really well. We used Facebook mostly, which may seem extremely simple but did actually work. By uploading our work and what we were doing to a Facebook group we could all see what each other were doing. It was extremely simple but things like being able to give and receive feedback quickly helped us work and reiterate our ideas quickly. We also didn't hold back. If we didn't like something we let the others know. That might sound mean on paper but its really important to give critical feedback as well as happy feedback. This I think was probably the most important thing about our group. It helped us have everything in the level match an aesthetic look, and helped us work together quick and efficiently. And work speed is important!

Quick out of the Gate

This ones more focused on me personally, but I'm really proud of how some of this work went. Mostly about how fast I got the basics done. One of the key parts of the competition brief is that the game we had to make had to be a game, have actual gameplay and not just be pretty. So as early in the project as possible I wanted to get that down. 

In the first few days I set up the basic concept of the game, all of us together working as a group to get an idea that worked for all of us. (Well one member wasn't a fan of these ideas but he swiftly left for his own solo project which made this easier on all of us.) We were meant to choose a section of the Alice in Wonderland story to base our game off but instead we aimed to make all of them, it seemed like more fun. Our first iteration of that idea was one hub world, with several small levels branching off it where you collect a key to unlock the next. 

As this iterated we lost the key system and hub world as we just no longer needed it, it complicated the experience. But this idea alone needed some more gameplay. The concept of changing size was of course a big one in the book so I created that. Other groups had done this idea but in our game you can change size at any time. I thought this would be fun and actually  feel like a game, with a puzzle like element. 

It took a little time to work out but by the end of the second week the game worked. You could change as a player between 3 different sizes. Each size works slightly differently and I kept working on this for the rest of the project. Below is the first version of my size changing mechanic.

As you can see it got more complicated. And this isn't even the final form it had.

I had great fun creating and adding particle systems to our game, especially adding them to the characters. It made the whole game fit more together. 

But I'm really proud of getting the basic gameplay systems done so quickly. I really have a passion for engine work like that and it was a really fun challenge.

After this I designed the levels of the game, which we have 4 of. I also really enjoyed this and really like what I created and how the game works. This didn't go through many major changes so through multiple art styles and some other problems, which I'm very happy with. The different levels of the game were great fun to make. My favorite has to be the final one, but all of them came with their own challenges. The End Level simulates Alice waking up from her dreams and nightmares, so understandably its a confusing world of floating rocks and shifting shapes.

Art Style

Our game has a really nice cute art style which I think fits the feel of the book. Our concept artist did a really good job designing each and every thing in the game. Having our own concept art guy helped us extremely. Now our project has such a distinct look now and everything matches and looks like one coherent world. I'm really happy with how it worked out. When the assets and textures started to come together and the world started looking together it was great. It seemed like a potential risk at the start having a group member focused solely on concept art, worried that he wouldn't be all that useful. Turns out it was the opposite and worked really well.

I also set up the shading system in the game! I was really happy this worked because it gave the game the childish cartoony look that the concepts had. I found a way in beta in Unreal, both Ray Trace Rendering and Distance Field Rendering. It took a lot of tweaking and work to get it to work right but in the end I like how it looks. It does mean we don't have complicated shading and lights but I don't think our game particularly needs it. 

Things that went wrong

Now there's always stuff that goes wrong. Nothing major happened in this project like that but we had many things that never got used or just straight up broke. Personally I wasted a lot of time on work that I never ended up actually using. But all of this was really a learning experience so I don't regret the time really. Like working on terrain, which took a long time. This was before we had truly decided on an art style. 

And then before we got to our current art style I tried a geometric brick like system. Its just a shame it looked really bad. I quickly scrapped this idea but it in some ways transformed into what we put in the final game. 

One of my major annoyances in this project was assets. Quite often assets were reimported but changed so drastically in size and often even the assets were completely renumbered. Not a huge deal, and honestly it's petty to mention but this may have been the single greatest source of stress and annoyance for me; when I had to cut down an entire level of trees and put them all back in because some one arbitrarily changed their assets around too much.

The major problem I had was as the project went on I had to rely more and more on other people. Not a problem per say, but it does become a massive problem when those people don't do their work on time. Only one member was a real issue with this. He would repeatedly fall behind deadlines and not get his work done. Often even when the work is done it would honestly not be the quality we needed, or not match our art style. It started as a minor annoyance but by the last few weeks of the project it was really making it hard for us to finish.

Our final week was also fairly hectic. Because of deadline issues we didn't manage to get all three Alice forms in the game. I did think this would be a stretch and hard to do. Ultimately we just have to do with recoloured versions of the same Alice form which works but wasn't our concept aim. A lot of work was pushed worryingly close to the deadlines and there were several things we couldn't get into the game we wanted. Like loading screens, which me and our environment guy were trying to work on in the last few days we just couldn't implement properly. But in the end we were able to present a finished level, even if some small areas are still lacking.

Conclusions

But  actually as a whole this project was mostly stress free. Everyone had their own problems that sparked up but as a whole we had a pretty smooth project. One of the best things that worked was despite the fact that this was all for a competition as a group we decided not to focus our attention on the contest. Instead we just focused on trying to make something particularly cool that we can all be proud of. And it worked, I'm really happy with what we made. It's a fun little game with a nice look to it, and honestly what more do we need. I feel if we all focused on the contest too hard we may of made something extremely gimmicky instead.

I'm really happy with what I did this project. I learnt more about engine work and level design two things I'm really interested in and interested in taking further. It was a massive learning experience and I spent a lot of time helping others in other groups with engine work. I enjoyed that, enjoyed how some people have been working together across groups. I am slightly worried that because these things aren't truly game art I might get marked strangely for them, but we'll have to see about that. At the end of the day though I helped make something that I'm proud of. And my group is proud of it as well. I'm happy to put this work in my portfolio. That's something to be celebrated in the end.

Week 30 : Bright Gardens

This week has been another one of compiling textures and making the game look just about right.

Our group had a presentation early in the week which was extremely useful. We got to show off our level and talk about how we got to this point which was interesting. I'm surprised how much of the early formative things for this project I had completely forgotten we had done them so long ago. It was nice to see how our group had worked, which I think has been one of our greater successes this project.

We also got some good feedback which helps me move the project in the right direction. The main thing is that as we add colour to the project there was some risk that our level would become too bright and cluttered to the eye, over saturated. 

And as I put the brightly coloured Garden trees into the level I completely saw what they meant. I do however love how they look. It really makes the garden seem like a surreal fantasy place.

Though to stop the level looking to bright and crazy I did lower the saturation of the bright grasses. This luckily is easy to do in Unreal as you can alter each texture and its levels with ease. So when I have all the levels done I can spend a day or two just adjusting these to make the level look perfect.

Not everything is in yet, but the level is starting to look right. The trees and grass even sway slightly in the wind. The trees were a puzzle to make do this and I was proud of how I fixed it. Because they're a solid mesh not alphas I had to mask off areas of the texture to apply the wind effects to which I was certain wouldn't work. But low and behold it does! I have the wind very weak to not be distracting.

The other major thing I worked on for this week was sound. By adding ambient sound to the levels it will just make the world feel alive, I think. One of the difficulties I had was trying to find sounds for the underground rabbithole level that doesn't make it sound like a terrifying place. For the moment the sound effects I've been using have been either from Freesound.com or from the British Libraries Soundcloud which was filled with high quality sound just for this project.

Adding more specialized sound was far harder than the ambient audio. Half because actually finding and editing sounds to fit my vision was difficult, but also because implementing them in the level is far harder than I first thought. I've had several issues with getting sound to work right. And as usual for Unreal the fix was usually completely simple and just some easy option or solution I hadn't even considered.

Week 29 : Break out the paint brushes

Back from Easter and back to work. Work this week has comprised all of applying textures into the level. There's been lots of back and forth trying to get our textures to work just right.

As you can see our first pass wasn't good enough. The ground blended into the walls and had all kinds of muddy look. We also had some issues with UVs overlapping and some roughness glitches. With our art style being very cartoony using roughness and normals too much may look strange so we're being careful.

With some tweaking we've made it look far better. We're still in need of some splashes of colour to make it look somewhat less dull but it is coming along.

The main issue I'm having with applying these textures is that we have two texture artists both working at different rates. This means one may be finished while the other still is working which is why we have lots of blank textures so far. I really want to see everything textures atleast slightly so I can get a good feel for the colours and level. Inevitably we will have to send them back and change things it is always the case.

Being set in the forests and gardens of wonderland I really wanted to try out foliage. Unreal Engine 4 comes with a foliage system which seems very dynamic and efficient. It even has ways to work with the terrain mapping we used to use. After programming some wind into the grass to make it have some motion I tried out the inbuilt foliage systems. It definately needs some tweaking but I like how it looks while you play. The major issue I'm having is again waiting. These flowers and grasses look garish now but should fit when all of the level is painted up. I just have to wait really, work on as much as I can in between breaks.

The level is really coming alive with colour, starting to look more like our concept art. That I always think is a success. We're on the home stretch. Our more fantastical dreams with this project that we never expected to get too aren't too far now. I'm glad I sorted out all of the gameplay systems early because it lets us use this time just to make the game look perfect without having to worry too much about how it plays anymore.

Alice in Wonderland Off the Map project - Early Playthrough

Week 26 : Conceptual Comparisons.

This week the level has reached a nearly finished point in the terms of level design. Almost every single asset is in the game, and the level is starting to look like the concepts, and like a real game.

So as we leave for easter this is where we are. I made some handy comparison pieces to show some of the differences and what we still have to work through. This was a pretty useful practice, helped me realise things I had to change and I had some time to do it. 

The trees are now in the forest level and it really makes it look alive. Not surprisingly, it took the trees to make the forest areas look good. A lot of the forest diverges from the concepts to add some more gameplay to the level. I think the gameplay aspects of our game a real highlight, and is basically complete now.

The Garden level had some issues. Due to mis-communication I had included a selection of assets not even meant for this level. But luckily the issue wasn't too bad and was easily and quickly fixed. But the colours and designs are all on track.  

I also constructed a castle out of several other assets we have. I think it's pretty snazzy. 

These are shots of the new and finally finished End level. Its meant to be a somewhat abstract and surreal, and I think I've captured that.

Much of the debris you see is actually moving within the scene, and does so due to being a mesh particle system. 

Like this, where every single letter moves seperately. This level is meant to be hard, as it's the last level and it's taken alot of level testing to get it right. 

Now it's easter I'll start planing my Reflective Essay and my Presentation project. Now the Presentation is too early to tell, but I think I have an idea on how to handle the essay. I'll be reflecting mostly on a combination of my character project and my container city project. I want to both look at how group projects worked, and the problems I had with my character project which were overcame by finding my place with engine and environment work..

Week 25 : Please wait rendering.

The level now is really starting to come together, as a whole new ground system is being put in place.

This ground is made out of dynamic small parts of earth, which are designed to slot together and and make a more interesting  environment than the terrain we had before. It also closer fits to the cartoony design we want for the level, making it more child friendly.

But the obvious issue is that the sharp contrasting shadows make it look really bad! Being designed to look like rock and sediment those little nooks and crannies catch all the shadows and make it look stripy and intense. So I took some time to fix that.

This is the fix, used by changing the default Unreal Engine 4 lighting with Distance Field Ambient Occlusion Rendering. It's something I was toying with beforehand, but works really well with the new ground and assets. 

It's a rendering technique meant for very dynamic games as it processes the shadows tick by tick, mostly for destructible objects or things that move alot. But I really like the kind of softer faded look it gives. 

This is due to the Ray Traced Distance Field rendering it uses, which is rather heavy on the engine but I think will be worth it. We don;t have many high impact parts of the game like high tri models so we may be safe.

Also as you may notice, you can change the colour of this lighting system far more. With this I can make the different levels have their own sense of atmosphere.

Other than just working this out I've been spending my time working on making the levels, putting assets within them and building this ground. It's exciting to really see these worlds come together. The issue is there is lots to still change. The ground needs constant work, and without textures everything may still be up for change.

It's an exciting time! There's lots to do, but the game is starting to come together. Also now begins the planning for our Reflective Writing challenge. This is exciting too me as I've not done any kind of writing since my English Literature days. Maybe i'll completely screw it up, but i'll atleast try and make this writing task fun. 

Week 24 : Populous

The work on assets has begun. The four levels of our Alice in Wonderland themed game are starting to be populated with assets of all shapes and sizes. While things are still extremely Work in Progress the levels are starting to hint at what they could look like in the future. 

Here's an example of the underground Rabbit Hole level. Rocks and mushrooms abound. One of the hardest things about this step is trying to get the style just right. There is a lot of back and forth between concept art, asset creation and engine. It's incredibly important to get every asset fitting the same kind of style that our concept artist has designed. It's always hard to get the game looking perfect comparative to a style.

Nothing has any textures yet but this is enough to give some idea of how the level will eventually look. I rather like how this looks with the white textures.

One of the main things we're now moving on his replacing the terrain system we've used to rough out our level design. While terrain works very well it doesn't quite fit the style we're going for and now is the time for a complete redesign. Yes, it may be our destruction. We will have to rebuild much of the levels and take some time to get everything working perfectly but the rewards will be far worth the risk.