GAM-495 | Capstone Final Project Artifact Two
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Hello there! This is the second of a series of four artifacts as a capstone for my Game Programming and Development undergraduate degree at Southern New Hampshire University. These artifacts will give the reader insight into what I've learned and what I want to focus on as a game developer after graduating. If you want to dive deeper into these artifacts, please look into the YouTube videos below.
For this artifact's repository access, please go to: https://bitbucket.org/RinuDev/gam495_artifact2/src/martinez_christopher_artifact2polished/
About
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Artifact Name: Paintball Graphics
Tools Used: Unreal Engine 4, 3ds Max, Visual Studio 2017
Highlighted Skills: Game Engine Mastery | 2D & 3D Graphics | Graphic Interface Design | Complex Logic Problems
For this project, I decided to play with materials in both a 2D and 3D environment in an attempt to create visually stimulating effects for the player to experience when progressing through a level. This included streamlining the ammo HUD to a more thematic graphic that filled and emptied with appropriate colors for limited ammo types while also having an animated texture when choosing an ammo type with infinite ammo. I also created materials with properties that would dynamically change when applied with in-game logic, and I used particle systems to create interesting effects when observed, especially a system that morphs particles and materials to match a given starting and ending mesh targets. Lastly, this artifact features an animated mesh using only vertex animations created through the use of 3ds Max.
Gameplay aside, visuals are an important aspect to games. Having shaders, models and scripted actors react visually to give the player feedback on a game state is essential in conveying information without the use of words. Graphical fidelity isn't as important when designing a game -- there needs to be a broad variety of art assets that the player can either admire or interact with in order to make them feel more engaged with the games they play.
Reflection
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Q: How would you describe the process of creating and polishing the artifact?
A: This project was more of an experimental one. When it comes to graphic design, I believe it's important to toy around with all sorts of visual effects in order to figure out what works, what doesn't and what needs to be adjusted in order to be visually pleasing to the player's eyes, so I treated this as more of a playground/sandbox on what sort of effects I could combine to create visual feedback.
Q: What did you learn as you were creating and improving it?
A: There's a virtually limitless number of possibilities that you can achieve with visual effects. Depending on your art direction, you could go with bright, colorful lights or a dark, gloomy ambience. I also learned that there are ways of animating meshes without having to go through the painstaking process of creating the animation itself and implimenting it into a system that requires a behavior tree, which can save precious computing resources that could be put to better use in other parts of a game.
Q: What challenges did you face?
A: First and foremost, time management. Given that I have to work 60+ hours a week while also attempting to complete a project on time within a span of 2-3 weeks, it was hard finding the right balance of work, academics and simply finding a time to relax and recharge my batteries.
Furthermore, creating interesting materials is hard if you don't have a knowledge of how the graphics API works. I'd imagine that, without help from researching ideas from the UE4 community and visual effects artists, I would probably been able to come up with anything substantial of my own on time as it would take a lot of time researching and tinkering with the materials system to figure out what sort of effects I can make out. The same can be said for particle systems in this case. In the end, however, I believe I managed well enough with the time and resources available to me.
Q: How did you incorporate feedback as you made changes to the artifact?
A: Surprisingly enough, feedback was mostly positive, though with this artifact, I was encouraged to add more substantial content. Other than that, I was instructed to simply build upon what I already had and iron out the kinks in the systems.
Q: How was the artifact improved?
A: Improvements were made through methods that gave the player smooth and responsive visual feedback as a result of their actions. Signs and walls lit up with a bright flash to signify that what they had performed was the correct input on their part, and ambient objects were placed within the level to give the player something visually stimulating to look at.
Breakdown
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Showcase
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