Caitlin Hannan
Final Project
Context & research
Walking simulator review
Firewatch
Firewatch is an adventure game developed by Campo Santo and published by the developer in partnership with Panic. The game was released in February 2016.Firewatch is set in the Wyoming wilderness, year is 1989
The developers of this game use the techniques of telling the player what to do through narrative by talking to a woman one a walkie-talkie, as well as the surroundings showing the player where to go by paths and maps that are placed by paths throughout the map. The developers also make the player feel for emotionally involved in the game by showing dialect between the character you play and his wife. As you play the game you learn more about their relationship together and how his wife suddenly becomes ill and the effects her illness has on both of their lives.
Firewatch is about a man named henry who has taken a new job to escape his messy life back home and is trying to forget about his dying wife. Personally I think this game is about trying to distance yourself form life and finding distractions so you don't think about all the negative things happening.
Walking simulator review
Gone Home
Gone Home is a first-person exploration video game developed and published by The Fullbright Company. Set in the year 1995, Gone Home puts the player in the role of a young woman returning from overseas to her rural Oregon family home to find her family currently absent and the house empty, leaving her to piece together recent events.
The developers use the techniques of storytelling through visuals and with a short conversation at the begging of the game before you play which gives the player contexts and an idea of what's happening. And as the player explores through the house they are given the freedom to roam through the place however they want and with vital parts to the story being put in places where they're easily seen and can catch someone's attention.
This is a good game for me to look at and take inspiration from since it has a lot in common with my ideas for my final project. Gone Home also has mechanics and uses techniques that I like in a storytelling game and some which id like to include in my game.
Mind map
Here is a mind map I made to help come up with ideas and to help me add to those ideas.
After putting in a lot of thought, I have chosen to go with the idea of going through a dead relative's house and exploring going through the house as well as the items within it. what I want to have within my game is that at the begging the player knows nothing about the relative apart from knowing they're dead. however, as you play you see how the grandparent slowly faded away and because a different person, forgetting things and having their life change negatively due to Alzheimer's. I want the player to have a personal experience with this game, and I'll try to achieve this by making things and pictures disappear and move around so it confuses the player, giving them a personal experience of what it must've been like for the grandparent.
SWOT Analysis
S- Strengths
Modelling in 3Ds Max, Mudbox, editing in After effects, Substance painter.
W - Weakness
Understanding of Unreal engine, time management, getting distracted.
O - Opportunities
Improve unreal engine, trying to create better planning so I can pace myself at the right speed
T - Threats
Missing Days, Losing work, Work missing, Random Lockdown, work not syncing.
Contingency Planning
Researching Alzheimer's
Here I am going to do research on Alzheimer's because I think it is an illness which would go well with my game idea.
For my game, I plan on having the player go through the house of a deceased grandparent who died of an illness, at the start I don't want the player to know what illness is but then pick up hints that tell them what the grandparent had died from. I also want to hint toward the character being the grandparent and that they are stuck in an old memory.
With this idea, I think Alzheimer's is the best illness to use to help with this idea. This is because I can use some of the symptoms of the illness to help hint towards it and to also make the player feel confused and also have a more personal experience.
Alzheimer's causes people to:
- lose memories,
- become forgetful,
- lose focus,
- resort back to old memories,
- lose basic motor functions,
- become disoriented,
- have a loss of interest,
- Becoming increasingly repetitive, e.g. repeating questions after a very short interval or repeating behaviours and routines,
- Regularly misplacing items or putting them in odd places,
- Confusion about the date or time of day,
- Some people become low in mood, anxious or irritable, People may experience hallucinations, where they see or hear things that are not there.
What is the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's?
Dementia is the term applied to a group of symptoms that negatively impact memory, but Alzheimer's is a specific progressive disease of the brain that slowly causes impairment in memory and cognitive function.
What is Alzheimer's disease?
Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurologic disorder that causes the brain to shrink (atrophy) and brain cells to die. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia — a continuous decline in thinking, behavioural and social skills that affect a person's ability to function independently.
A few ideas which I have to include these symptoms are to have post-it notes around the house showing that the grandparent was aware of their forgetfulness, as well as having repetitive notes; having some parts around the house being clean and others part being dirty; Having part of a wall painting, showing the grandparent was decorating the house but becoming distracted; having a calendar be on the wrong month and having random dates crossed off; within notes of a diary or something else have the grandparent mention a constant sound such as dogs barking or a loud ticking clock, but as the player continues through the game they never hear these sounds except for once or twice as a way to show that the grandparent was hearing these sounds and it was all in their head.
These are just a few examples I have in mind to add to my game to make it a stronger experience and give the player a closer idea of what it must be live to have Alzheimer's. In order to add these to my game, I will need to find helpful videos online or ask for help to input these features into unreal engine.
There have been quite a few movies and books about Alzheimer's and how it affects people an their families. A few examples are: still Alice, Iris, The farther, The taking of Deborah Logan, silence, Another year, and still life. All of these show different ways on how Alzheimer's takes affect on people and how it makes the person who has it slowly fade away from everyone and become a different person.
Substance Painter Research Addition
What are some of the key features and tools of Substance Painter?
Substance 3D Painter supports a wide range of features such as:
· Automatic UV Unwrapping.
· Baking.
· Effects.
· Smart Materials and Masks.
· Subsurface Scattering.
· Dynamic Material Layering.
· UV Reprojection.
· UV Tiles.
Adobe offers 4 versions of Substance: Substance 3D Painter, Designer, Sampler, and Stager. What do each of these do?
Substance 3D Painter helps you achieve the look you want, from product design to realistic games and visual effects to projects such as stylized animation. Substance can texture your models to an industry standard.
Designer designs parametric 3D assets and allows you to have full control of the design you want to achieve. Designer can create seamless materials and patterns, image filters, environment lights, or even 3D models. Each asset can output infinite variations
Sampler can create materials and lights from real-life images. You can import a reference photo and transform it into a high-quality 3D material with features powered by Adobe
Stager can compose and render state of the art 3D scenes in your own virtual studio. Stager lets you make creative decisions in context. Refine and adjust your composition in real time. Visualize and edit advanced materials with complex lighting and shadows
What is good practice to prepare a 3D model before bringing it into Substance Painter? Please provide detail.
It’s a good practise to unwrap your models in 3Ds max before you import the model into Substance painter. This way the texture will fit onto the model better and have a better looking outcome. When you unwrap a model in 3Ds max you'll be able to make sure that there is no over lapping textures as well as making sure everything in mapped correctly and the way you want it to be.
Provide an example of an artist showing their Substance workflow and summarise some of the key tools they applied for their result. For this you may want to check out Substance video tutorials on YouTube, or an ArtStation Breakdown.
Here is a link to a website that has 9 Tips for Preparing 3d Model for Substance Painter.
9 Tips for Preparing 3d Model for Substance Painter - CG Obsession
I will be using Substance painter for my final project, this is because I find Substance painter helpful in making my work more detailed and it also gives me more freedom to create what I want, meaning I can create the style that I want for my final project and I'm able to make it as detailed as I please.
The importance of game atmosphere
An atmosphere can change the complete dynamic and feel of a game and can be very important to help get a developer's message or meaning across to the player. Almost every game has its own specific look for setting the initial impression of its game. This helps put the player into knowing that the game is sad, happy, exciting, serious, and mysterious. The atmosphere also elevates the game experience beyond those first moments of the gameplay.
It’s a combination of the artwork, audio, level design and story that help to influence these emotions and feelings
Sound design
Games in the horror genre are some of the best at conveying atmosphere. Games like Alien: isolation, Resident evil, and Amnesia are known for being great at scaring the player, but the main part that makes them so scary is the tension that the music and sound effects make, which create these intense situations for the player and not knowing that they're going to get a jumpscare or be spoked.
Sound design can also be used to suggest where and when a game is set, for example, if a game is set in 1900 then the music would be the stereotypical style of music that was most popularly played in that era.
As well as letting players know that something is about to happen in the game, a developer could use a sound effect to show that something has been picked up, dropped, been harmed, to show something has happened.
Sounds can also warn players of something bad, for example, a simple tune could play to inform that the character is in danger and the quicker and fast pace this tune is the more serious the situation. The quickening tune can also cause a player to be more fearful of what's happening as they know something is about to happen but not exactly what that's going to be.
Not only can music and sound design create an atmosphere, but it can also make a game easily recognisable to players to hear it in other places.
Lighting
Just like everything else in a game, lighting can be manipulated to change the look and feel of a room or part of a game. For example, being inside a house in a normal game, the house would be well lit and have normal lighting like a normal house would, however in a horror game the house would have low to almost no lighting in some places to make the atmosphere feel eerier and mysterious. Games can also use lighting to lead the character in the direction needed to continue the storyline and to bring attention so items and assets which could be important to the game.
When it comes to lighting, there are two main types, warm and cool lighting. The colours of warm white light have prominent hues of red, orange, and yellow tones, so they feel cosy. And a cooler light consists of more blue, making it feel crisper and more refreshing. These tones can help change the feel and aura of a room or place in a game. Warm light can also be used to represent hot and that a place has a higher temperature, whereas cool light does the opposite and can make a place appear to be colder.
Lighting can be used more than just a simple light, it can be used to show that a machine or an item is electronic and working. With different coloured lighting, it can make a scene appear more sci-fi, fluorescent, or ominous.
With the research I have done here, I now know what I can do to get my original idea for my project and apply it to my game so I can achieve the look and atmosphere I want. Since my game is based on walking around a bland house I also want there to be basic lighting to show that there is nothing special and the player is free to go wherever they please. Since my game is also about walking around a deceased person's house the music I created sticks to the basic theme but also has a sad tone to it to influence the player to also feel this way while exploring the layout.