WIP - Campus House

I want to document my level creation process, not so much for others to see, but so I can track my own pitfalls when it comes to putting a complete package together, and hopefully make myself more efficient in the future.

So, here we are, day 1 of Gorgoroth (me and my roommates' name for our on-campus house), modeled to scale, textured and lit in Unreal. It seemed an obvious choice for a side-project because I don't have to travel far for reference ;)

(Click to see detail)

Today I primarily grayboxed the scene I wanted to work on (the living room) and then began work on the base materials.

I knew from the start that the carpet material would take the most time. I've never really been happy with the carpet materials I see in games - they all suffer from terrible repetition, flatness, or some other issue. In fact, carpets are probably the 2nd most butchered texture in games, the 1st being brick walls (imo).

With that in mind, I designed the carpet with multiple layers of Lerps, Adds and Multiplies in order to create natural-looking variation, and Rotation and Texture Coordinate nodes to ensure that the texture will never repeat.

I then moved onto the walls, which I used a similar process for. They're still a work in progress, and the ceiling is placeholder. However, I felt like I was spending a bit too much time on them, so I decided to move on and get back to them later.

I wanted to start modeling... And it made sense to me that the first model I make should be the light fixture - get the light motivated as soon as possible, right? (Plus I wanted an excuse to try out UDK's new transmissive mask feature.)

The lamp itself was just an extruded cylinder with, I believe, 15 sides. Fairly low-poly, just enough to get the silhouette right. I didn't bother fixing UV's for the black metal stand, since I'm planning on just using constants for diffuse and specular there. The one part I did make sure to UV was the top translucent plastic... I need a gradient there for the transmissive mask. And after playing with the values of the transmissive mask and transmissive color a bit, I'm extremely happy with the result - fairly accurate to how the light actually does spread through and illuminate the plastic.

So, next I'm going to start modeling from big to small, starting with either the couch, tv stand, or coffee table. I'm also planning on getting those doors and windows in so that we aren't constantly looking into the black void of Unreal space.

Next update tomorrow...

Puzzle Design and Occam's Razor

Recently in Game Design class we have been developing individual "tutorial" levels in Unreal in order to showcase mechanics we developed previously. And naturally, the route I've chosen to go with my particular mechanic requires me to dive straight into the insane world of puzzle design.

My mechanic is a simple magnetic ball with a magnetic field that can be toggled from positive to negative. The first part of the tutorial level that actually demonstrates the magnet's field is a large, sliding metal block that is, by default, blocking the player's path. The player must discover how the magnet interacts with this object and then utilize that information to progress.

The first iteration was an utter mess. It was the first time I had ever attempted staging a puzzle for the player to solve, and I had attempted to throw too many minuscule things at them at once. During initial playtests, the players never received the correct information, even though they received a large quantity of clutter.

I realized that my problem with the design was in the fact that I had designed the puzzle in a linear fashion, a habit I had brought over from Scripting class. When writing scripts to solve problems, it is legitimate (and many times necessary) to solve each new problem with a new piece of code. If that code creates new problems, write yet another piece of code to tackle those, and so on! (Incidentally, this is the same approach I use in designing magic tricks!)

With puzzle design, I discovered that this method of creation is impossible. When the player went the wrong way, I would throw in a wall or a distraction to make them go the right way again. When one path doesn't work right, I made another. This is what led to the player's confusion, when there were more things in the puzzle meant to account for the player's actions than there were to actually solve. With magic tricks, this is a beautiful thing - it separates the audience from the solution. But in puzzle design, it's exactly the opposite - bad, bad, bad!

So, I decided to go the opposite route. I challenged myself to make the puzzle as simple and transparent as possible, while still being functional. I ended up taking out about 60% of the level. Anything that didn't explicitly benefit the design fatefully met Occam's razor. Things I'd always thought necessary, after further consideration, were found to be nothing but problematic, and/or had much more elegant solutions. The next playtest was an outstanding improvement.

My other discovery at this time was the complete lack of documentation concerning puzzle design for games. This is alarming, considering that all games, at their core, are puzzles, and good puzzle design is essential to creating a good game. There are certainly masterful puzzle designs in popular games (Braid and Portal stand out to me as recent examples), but my fascination with the process of designing these scenarios is largely unsatisfied.

Solving puzzles requires a certain mindset. Creating puzzles involves seeing through the same mindset, both forward and in reverse, through a haystack of probable failures and dead ends, all the while balancing the tightrope of self-designated design and keeping an intimate record of exactly what is being presented to the player and how they might see each point of the puzzle through their own eyes.

Creating puzzles is insane. I'm going to bed.

Augmented Reality

If you can see it, touch it, hear it, taste it, and smell it... is it real?

What if everyone can see it?

Imagine walking around in a digitally augmented world. As you walk past buildings, virtual signs pop out, telling you if there is currently seating available and displaying a virtual button to click for the menu. Your friend's name appears over their head as you walk up to them, and with a universal tagging system, you play a little prank and attach the description box "didn't shower today" onto them for the world to see (hey, not your fault they enabled friend description permissions). You look up at the night-time sky to see each star marked by name. You invite your friend to a game of chess, but neither of you has a board. No problem; you clear off a spot on a nearby table and a chess board appears, fully set up, for you and your friend to manipulate in real-time with your hands.

If you lose your keys, a compass-like arrow in your field of vision points directly to them and tells you how far away they are. Better yet, your car instantly recognizes who you are and will not start for anybody you haven't authorized.

You have edited your personal preferences so that words you don't like to hear are censored-out of surrounding people's speech for you in real-time. When someone says a big word you don't know the meaning of, you can convert that word into text and read a dictionary definition.

You haven't sat down at a physical television or computer screen in years - just project your own into 3d space and make it visible to whoever else you want. And if you're trying to explain what something looks like to a particularly non-imaginative person? Just draw it - in mid air!

There are no "computer programs" anymore - not in the normal sense. There is only reality, and the virtual framework that augments it. "Applications" exist as tangible, 3d objects with which to interact.

Video games run on their own "channels" or "frequencies", visible only to those who enable them in their feed. Gigantic boss dragons loom over treasure chests at the bases of historical landmarks.

The newest "Discovery Channel" special, say "Underwater Earth", simulates a tidal wave enveloping your local area in real-time, crashing down and rushing between the cracks of buildings as you gaze around seeing it all play out around you.

Don't own a drum kit? Or a piano? Don't have to - project whatever kind of instrument you'd like into reality and play it at your local gig.

The word "internet" doesn't exist anymore. Only the word "reality".

No single corporation owns authoritative power over "reality". On the contrary, every user has equal power, contributing to reality in a similar fashion to Wikipedia. Personal changes only effect individuals who allow for them, while a universal database of information grows larger every second, giving every human on earth access to any education they desire, on-demand.

These are but a few of the possibilities of advanced augmented reality - the combination of the virtual world and the real world. This world would be visualized through handheld displays, specialized glasses, and, eventually, contact lenses. Is this what the future holds? That all depends on company politics and people.

We are just now starting to see the beginnings of augmented reality - in advertisements, browsers, games, and maps. But this technology, given enough time, is potentially the most exciting invention since the internet itself.

Until then, enjoy these first toddler steps into this uncharted realm:

Layar - Augmented Reality Mobile Browser: http://layar.com/

GE Augmented Reality website: http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

One of the first AR games: http://www.indiecade.com/index.php?/games/selected/levelhead

The first of 8 faces...

For a gigantic 18x24 family collage commission. And you people wonder why I've been busy...

Playing with Lightmass...

Still having issues, but I have discovered that Dominant Lights are amazing. The entire scene is now lit by just 1 light.

Now, to tinker with more settings... I'm sure it can look a lot better!

The Favela Level...

...is due tomorrow morning. Here are a few screenshots:



Now, time to polish OneUP for Game Design class Friday morning...

And One Month Later...

Yay, updates!!!

Since my last post, we've been working on 3 tiers of props for our eventual level; easy, medium, and hard. I was assigned:

Easy Prop: Signs

Double-sided sign: 28 triangles


Billboard: 1224 triangles


Medium Prop: Tire

432 triangles


Hard Prop: Skydome and Background Assets

Mountains: 20 and 30 triangles


Buildings: 6 to 30 triangles


Over Thanksgiving break we have to create the rough layout of our personalized level by blocking in geometry. (You can see the beginnings of the process in the picture above.) This is my original, rough layout:


It will obviously evolve over time. I'll post updates as the level becomes fleshed out.


In Game Design class, I have finished the gameplay of my mod, OneUP, and am now in the process of finalizing all of the visual elements (pieces, board, rulebook, and box) which is due in two classes. I'll post the rules up as soon as I polish them, so that any readers can try the game out for themselves!