Specialty, Brainchild and Split Paths

For this term I have decided to incorporate my work on the Brainchild project for my specialty one. Due to my experience in 3D modelling and technical knowledge I was charged with building a rendition of the Peregrinus, the first level of the Wanderer game, as my first asset. While I have worked on objects multiple times before in the past this is the first time I have undertaken the task of an environment, so I was a bit on the edge about the whole deal.

Working with me on this project were Lee Gregory who provided me with the initial concepts of the ship and its buildings and David Allan, whom I'm working closely with to develop the assets required for the game. The actual modelling of the ship began in late March due to my hospitalisation during most of that month.  Hence the concepts below were used as my reference sheets to get the right shape for ship, before anything else:

While I give credit to Lee for doing a splendid job at his concept art I felt like aspects of the ship could have been slightly different. For starters that balloon could not sustain the weight of the ship by itself even with suspension of disbelief at play and the front of the ship carries most of the center of gravity and thus requires more elevated support. Since we're also working with low polygon counts and approaching a certain artistic theme a third of my time working on this ship was spent trimming the excessive polys on the model and by extension making it look sharper and more angular.

It went from something like this:

To this:

I went on with the model while keeping in mind to restrain the use of adding unnecessary topology, as seen when I have detached the oars and tail from the main mesh. This allowed me to make more streamlined forms which Jonathan Pace, the one to texture the ship later on, will be especially appreciative for. For current intents and purposes every other part of the ship was modelled as a separate mesh to avoid a lot of stress, as well as making it easier for me to make modifications when required; As you can see in the final preview with the Zoe model made by Dominic Littler (i.e. Look for the candy red speck) on board as a size guide, the Peregrinus is a massive vessel on par with a modern cruise liner. The other addition to take note of here is the crates made by David (i.e. the white meshes) as clutter on the deck, though I made the conscious decision not to use all of his assets.

Just so I don't have the ship as my sole asset for this project I have also went ahead with an active mechnical asset which is very common in video games: The conveyor belt!

Considering this is on a much smaller scale than the airship I wanted to try out a lot of new things here. For starters this is very minimal, using no more than four meshes and 1700 quads. The pulleys are simple enough since they will be at a distance from the game and mirrored to make up the length of the belt and wooden planks. For the latter two I have experimented with modifiers until I have discovered the versatility of arrays, allowing me to repeat the meshes over a bezier curve which the belt and planks follow.

This was surprisingly fun to do. Most importantly, the conveyor belt was entirely my own design based on the mechanics of old printing presses and ancient Greek treadmills. This helped reinforce the consistent style we are going for the game and after a few tweaks cemented my credibility as a 3D artist. As you can see I have taken care to keep the animation seamless yet balanced by keeping it at 223 frames. It is symmetrical, so it can be flipped around to be used the other way round easily, although playing it in reverse should pose no problem either.

An early version of the ship with frontal sails.

Contextual Studies - Tangential Learning

Extra Credits's video on Tangential Learning

This has been a topic which has been constant throughout my life without my knowledge until I have heard of the term from this one video. Essentially, tangential learning is a process within which a game does not hereby teach a player, but induces them to go on about self-learning upon a topic they find of interest. Quoting Winston Churchill, "I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught." exemplifies the psychological drive behind using this system, especially in video games. Why? Games are inherently interactive, as is learning, and require the user's attention for the majority of the time; this is what conventional education and academics have trouble with. It has been established through researchers (and common sense for most people) that someone is more likely to assimilate knowledge if it's relevant to their interests. While this may seem silly at first one has to ask themselves at how many of their present hobbies and interests they have picked up while watching a show or picked up a novel. This is the same deal for games.

Age of Empires, a groundbreaking historical RTS which reemerged awareness of ancient civilisations.

So the question now is how can one combine the two, persuading the player into wanting to learn something specific, that the designer intended? The answer is tricky; as of now there have been no conclusive examples in which tangential learning has made this possible, whereas the more direct approach of strictly educational games tends to be disregarded to outright avoided for the target audience as the learning parts feel like a chore. They have their benefit, of course, although they fail to understand that players generally play video games for recreational purposes, so having things like work or studying in their play time is considered a cruel joke. This is why people find the idea of a topic grasping a player's attention enough for them to learn more about it elsewhere fascinating.

Final Fantasy uses religious and mythological iconography liberally throughout the series, as seen by this example from their summon creatures

Of course one has to be aware to make the distinction between what is an actual reference or something completely made up by the developer. As seen above, the majority of the summoned monsters are (loosely) based off real-life mythology or religious icons while others like the chocobo and moogle are original creations by Squaresoft. Despite this one could certainly say that those people that want to learn are going to do so, and tangential learning may either enlighten these individuals to something entirely new and/or get them interested in another thing altogether.

Connectivity - References

Bibliography 

Luke Plunkett (2009), Demigod: 18,000 Customers, 100,000 Pirates [Update] [online], Kotaku. Available at: http://kotaku.com/5215528/demigod-18000-customers-100000-pirates-%5bupdate%5d [Accessed 10 February 2013]

Juli Clover (2012). Piracy Cripples iOS Game in Less than a Week. [online] Place: MacRumors. Available at: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/12/03/piracy-cripples-ios-game-in-less-than-a-week/ [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Andy Chalk (2008). Mass Effect, Spore To Use Recurring Validation. [online] Place: Escapist Magazine. Available at: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/83689-Mass-Effect-Spore-To-Use-Recurring-Validation [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Andy Chalk (2013). Game Dev Claims Demos Hurt Game Sales. [online] Place: Escapist Magazine. Available at: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122056-Game-Dev-Claims-Demos-Hurt-Game-Sales [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Jim Sterling (2012). On-Disc DLC Cannot Be Justified. [video online] Place: Escapist Magazine. Available at: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/5625-On-Disc-DLC-Cannot-Be-Justified [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Eddie Makuch (2013). Dead Space 3 has microtransactions. [video online] Place: Gamespot. Available at: http://uk.gamespot.com/news/dead-space-3-has-microtransactions-6402708 [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Eddie Makuch (2012 Blizzard defends always-online Diablo III. [online] Place: Gamespot. Available at: http://uk.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-defends-always-online-diablo-iii-6387833 [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Chris Abbott (2012). Diablo 3's Best Error 37 Jokes. [online] Place: IGN. Available at: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/05/16/diablo-3s-best-error-37-jokes [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Luke McKinney (2011). The 10 Most Insulting Things Video Games Charged Money For. [online] Place: Cracked.com. Available at: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-10-most-insulting-things-video-games-charged-money-for/ [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Justin Olivetti (2011). Turbine: LotRO revenue tripled since going F2P. [online] Place: Massively/Joystiq. Available at: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/06/turbine-lotro-revenue-tripled-since-going-f2p/ [Accessed 10 February 2013].

Gameography

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) Bethesda Softworks, RPG

The Lord of the Rings Online (2007) Turbine Inc., MMORPG

Dragon Age: Origins (2009) BioWare, RPG

Diablo 3 (2012) Blizzard, RPG

Dead Space 3 (2013) Visceral Games, Survival Horror

Mass Effect (2007) BioWare, RPG

Spore Maxis(2008) Maxis, Simulation

Demigod (2009) Gas Powered Games, MOBA

Battle Dungeon (2012) Hunted Cow, turn-based strategy

The Ghost Captain

For my production project I have decided upon making an animated character. This particular one is a ghost of a captain corrupted long enough to assimilate the very nature of his demise... Anyway, I have chosen to make use of Blender to do the bulk of the modeling, rigging and animation as well as Sculptris as an auxiliary tool for putting detail and adding extra polygons to the model. The game engine of choice ended up being the Unreal Development Kit.

I admit I did not have much time to work on this project due to a lack of a workstation and physical crippling disabilities which have prevented me from attending lectures on multiple occasions, making me essentially housebound. Since this term was an exercise in production and exploring new tools for apprehending the process of the pipeline I have decided to shift from the standard choice of static mesh scenery into something a little more unique. The model itself averages on the 10000 polygons and uses specific settings to give the material a liquid appearance.

The process I have taken went as follows:

Model the base mesh.

Before I started on the model I have agreed upon borrowing Andrew O'Brien's conceptual sketch and made a few alterations. The survival horror genre isn't my forte so my design and eventual mesh turned out to match more into the action genre.

I used Blender to box model the base of the mesh, which was largely the undetailed upper part of the body which was symmetrical.

Sculpt the rest of the model.

At this stage I have exported the model over to Sculptris to add the rest of the detail to the mesh. I could not get all the results I wanted but it did the job.

Retopology.

The detailed model was imported back into Blender for retopologising. This was one of the more time-consuming parts due to a few mistakes I have made on my part due to the model's arms not being spread out, giving me more work than necessary.

Unwrapping UVs.

This part was relatively easy due to the user-friendliness provided by Blender when it comes to creating seams for unwrapping organic models. Care has been taken to accommodate enough room for margins and avoid bleeding. This would aid me for the next step.

Baking normal map and diffuse.

I overlaid the high resolution model over the low poly one and baked a normal map out of it. This procedure took some adjustments due to the bias overlapping with other faces on the model. A diffuse map bake followed right after.

Build an armature and rig weights on the mesh.

After everything was said and done I've built an armature underneath the model and promptly painted weights while posing it. The armature itself went under a few changes as I have been using UDK, learning how crucial a proper structure is. Originally I intended to have the "water arms" rigged to several bones as to achieve specific animations, though I quickly learned that it's bad practice and would be better off using morphs (which I didn't do for this model).

Do an idle animation.

I'm not really well versed with animation nor did I have a lot of time to create all the ones, so my attempt at creating a simple animation wasn't what I was aiming for. Fortunately it was quite entertaining to manually animate the character's head and tongue, giving the ghost a sense that it is seeking things out.

Set up the model as a skeletal mesh.

Once the model was technically finished on Blender I exported it as a Maya .fbx file and reimported it to UDK, sorting everything out inside their own package. Since the file was technically from Blender I image most of the assets weren't adjusted to conform with the import, so I had to take of these issues myself. In particular, the armature was broken and the liquid material I have set up did not work at all, so these two had to be dealt with promptly.

Assign a proper material.

I wanted to make the ghost have a liquid appearance rather than go for a fleshed out texture. Unfortunately due to time limits and difficulty of the endeavour as well as the engine not translating the original material I have made on Blender I modified an existing one on the game engine itself to suit my needs and adapted a decent substitute.

After all this all I did was fine tune and polish the mesh a bit more so the weights adjusted better and the animation was more... Animated.

Connectivity - At Your Service

So why is piracy so prevalent and why do players flock to the less-than-legitimate means to acquire a game rather than buy it outright? Simple. Players will always go for the option that is more accommodating and user-friendly. In this loop of circular logic publishers are stuck in, they have alienated players through their futile war against the pirates. From one hindrance to another, being gouged for every cent they can spare to other things such as the lack of playable trial versions or deceptive marketing one wouldn't be surprised they would download the game just to see what it's like. Some even try to justify their actions by claiming the demos would hurt game sales, despite the obvious implications that the player may just not like the game after trying it.

This is where the idea of service comes in: between a publisher that chastises you for playing their game to a pirated copy with no restrictions whatsoever, which would the average player really go for? The choice is easy enough, which is why the digital distribution service Steam by Valve has flourished since its conception in 2003. Steam is lauded as what the game industry should have been doing all along, from offering games at cheaper prices, allow smaller development teams to release their games on it as a distribution platform, store your games in a personal library you can install anywhere, the ability to chat with your friends during games and more functions. This has garnered a lot of goodwill from its user base and proves the tired "companies are in it to make money" line is not a good justification to spit on your customers for the sake of profits. Case in point Origin is a similar digital distribution service attempted by Electronic Arts to emulate Valve's success but the results were more than questionable, often selling games at their real retail price and exclusivity of certain titles regardless if you want to use the service or not. The less there is to say about Games for Windows Live the better, which forced itself into games when people never even wanted it. For games on Steam which have GFWL latched on the player is required to sign on the latter to even get in the game; how is that good service?

As with any successful business there needs to be a good connection between the distributor and the consumer. It is imperative for the publisher to remember at all times that without their customers they have no power, thus need to establish better relations with their players in order for loyalty to blossom. Take a look at Valve and their Steam service, making lots of money by making their customers happy. After all, isn't the relationship what it's all about, with each party getting what they want and being all the more content for it? Hopefully this kind of idea only gets better in the future, have the medium prosper and grow out of stagnation.

Connectivity - On DLCs and Microtransactions

To be fair it is understandable that the companies selling the games will want to protect their interests, ultimately damaging the development team itself if the game fails to reach a certain sales quota. To remedy this as well as extend the lifespan of a title after it has been released new content ends up being released. This started off as simple (and free) mods and add-ons in the 90s and early 2000s, as well as expansion packs for content far too large to be considered simple additions to the game; these often contained new gameplay, loads of fixes as well as modifications to the original to accommodate these new elements. Years pass and the prominence of connectivity became more widespread and powerful enough to be supported on consoles as well, allowing publishers to produce and release all of this under the umbrella term of downloadable content, or DLC.

As soon as the dominance of DLC had been established its usage was received with mixed results; some of the more questionable choices included horse armour for your horses in Oblivion to disrupting Dragon Age's immersion entirely with the Warden's Keep DLC advertising in-game, and that's not even scratching the surface about the implications involved about withholding content ransom by having it on the disc but denying it to the player. This raises far too many questions, of particular note regarding what you really spent your hard-earned money on. After all the majority of these games retail for over fifty pounds (or sixty US dollars) and have the gall to retain portions of the game away from the customer. If so, what do you actually buy? Do you own the game? A broken down version? Have you paid so much money just for the right to play a game? One could write books on the ethical dilemmas presented with these dubious practices.

On the other end we have another business model that does not require you to purchase a game at retail price and funds itself through in-game purchases called microtransactions. The practice is primarily utilised by games applying the "freemium" model, which allows players to play the game at their leisure whenever they want without any costs. If they so choose to acquire extra features in their game all they have to do is exchange real money for a special virtual currency only carrying value in that particular game or game portal like Aeria Games or Nexon. For the most part these currencies offer you extra features such as boosts, cosmetic items and additional utilities. This is all well and good, even aiding certain games when their subscription model failed to keep the game sustainable and in the case of Lord of the Rings Online tripling the revenue. However, the key word here is "free"; the reason this system works for most of these games is that they're readily and easily accessible for new players. In the instance where microtransactions are added to a game you have paid full retail price for is a blatant money grab.

This all boils down to why players would opt to go for a pirated copy of a game rather than the original.

Connectivity - DRM Blues

The controversial topic regarding digital rights management has loomed over the gaming industry ever since it was conceived. It is at its core a form of restrictive technology which in theory would prevent pirates from copying the game and thus securing more profitability from the games sold. This would essentially protect the interests of the publishers selling the game without harming the genuine player who purchased the game. Whether or not DRM has managed to achieve this endeavor is highly debatable due to the versatility of the people that commit to piracy and their means to find loopholes and workarounds, as well as disabling the DRM entirely thus making the efforts made by the publisher moot. Unfortunately things would only get worse in time, eventually adding to the frustration of the players who have bought the game and damaging the company's goodwill.

One of the most notorious forms of DRM comes in the form of SecuROM, whose primary function is to limit the amount of installations a player can activate from the same key on different PCs. This would make it impossible for illegitimate players to download and install the game, yet the straightforward and draconian nature of the system would backfire on the original purchase just as well. What if the player wanted to uninstall the game? What if the game didn't install properly or they had to format the PC? What if they bought a new system? None of these honest concerns matter since the game would lock you out after limit has been reached, cheating the player out of a game they have spent a substantial amount of money on (and we'll get to that too later). SecuROM has taken several forms in its running, including an online activation and regular routine authentication; all of these were received poorly and had the publishers reconsider their stance, albeit retaining the imposing DRM.

While not as intrusive as SecuROM the other shot in the foot is fired by the persistent online authentication required in order to play the game to begin with. Naturally there are some games which have a milder instance of this such as exclusively multiplayer games like MMORPGs or the achievement system implemented to encourage the completion of certain aspects of the game. However these instances are the exception, since the practice has grown to make it mandatory to permanently remain online for the duration of your playthrough. Blizzard even defends the use on their newer titles despite the fact that for the most part the games are largely single player and not necessarily benefit players who have faulty internet connections to none whatsoever. What if you suddenly got disconnected from the internet? Maybe their own servers are broken or going through maintenance or what have you? You are given an error code and promptly shot out of the game; this has been such a common problem it has become a joke that would cement the company as careless.

But I digress. Data protection wouldn't begin to scratch the surface on the business practices when it comes to survive the game.