Final Assignment Documentation

Final Assignment; TPS Shooter:

Documentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17nqYzPgMeY08DPMDKVZIz1eJoLFgusqYYzECOzCiUec/edit?usp=sharing

Video Walkthrough: https://youtu.be/Kt0kbW3nIhA

3D Landscape Documentation

3D Landscape Documentation:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1y47ixTCzk_HY2pBuSGvvPlJacJszzKW0-05bkhuWlVs/edit?usp=sharing

Concept Art

Character:

Environments:

Objects:

Making a 3D Model

Pre-Production; Third Person Zombie Shooter Game

Clients Brief: Create a third person zombie shooter game. There should be a large outdoor space, an indoor space in which you can collect items. As well as a final area where the zombies will be.

My Brief: There is a refugee who has escaped from a city and headed into a remote highlands, Zombies are everywhere and the players character wants to get away from the city and the zombie hordes. They begin the game at the edge of a dried up Valley that is home to a strange town made up of shipwrecks.

The zombies have been created by millipede like insects that have come up from out of the ground from a well shaft in the center of town. They inhabit human bodies and take them over, turning them into the hosts.

The player must collect the parts for an aircraft that will take them up and away from the high cliffs that surround the town.

The main character is to be female and the zombies will be very unique to the standard zombie that is constantly recreated for the games that are currently out there.

However, Since the plan above it has been decided for me to work on a different project individually. The plan is very similar, except it is to be set on a farm. The mission is the same, collect parts to fix a car and escape before the Boss Zombie can destroy the vehicle.

Market Research: Zombie games are huge on the current market, big titles such as Call of Duty, H1Z1 and Left 4 Dead have set a high standard for new Zombie games to come onto the scene. As well as these there are many other brilliantly executed zombie games, such as Dead Island, The Last of Us, Dead Rising and The Walking Dead.  The amount of Zombie games that are currently on the market is huge, its also ever growing, with a vast percentage of games either being zombie based or having a zombie mode within them. This makes it a lot harder to fit a unique zombie based game into the current market. However, there is a lack of games within the sector that have a well planned out and extensively detailed story behind them. This is where i hope that the game I am planning to produce will slot into. I'm aiming for a classic zombie game but with its own individuality. 

Ideas:

Animation: Having not looked at a lot of animation thus far, I can only speculate at what I can achieve. My aim is to get animation similar to the still frames of the videos below.

Legal Considerations: The main legal consideration i need to focus on is copyrighting, making sure that all of my work within the game is 100% my own work. Or work produced by other people on the team. Another important element in the Pre-Production is to ensure that the game has a suitable age rating. The game would probably be rated PEGI 15, due to a moderate amount of violence. There are many other things to consider, such as various different forms of insurance. The most important is the trademarking an copyrighting side of things. It is important that I use 100% of my own work to avoid any legal issues later down the track.

3D TPS Zombie Game Design Plan

Who is in your team:
Charlie-Anne

Who is the team leader?
Charlie-Anne

Who will do what?
As I'm currently working on my own I will personally work on the following:

• Main Character
• Standard Zombies
• Elite/Boss Zombies
• Landscapes
• Objects and assets. 

What elements will we need?
There will be various elements we need, the criteria asks for 3 separate areas, An large open space, a house/building or cave to explore and collect items from and an area that is infected by the zombies. As well as these I will need a standard zombie that i could potentially edit so all the zombies aren't identical, including the boss Zombie which will be bigger in size as well as in health. I will also have to think about various weapons and collectible items such as food and armor.

Location and Setting:
I was thinking of setting the game in a rural location, within the location there will be a farmhouse in which the character can explore and interact with various things. Within here the character will have to collect each of the relevant parts to fix an old car so they can escape the infested lands. Around the house and its surrounding areas there will be different locations for the different parts. Each part will be guarded by a various amount of zombies. Once the car is ready to leave, the boss zombie will spawn in. From here you will have thirty seconds to destroy the Boss Zombie. If the player fails to do this, the boss will destroy the car, consequently restarting the game.

This is a recreated version of "Hershel's Farm" from the series, "The Walking Dead", I believe it has been recreated using The Sims.

This is the kind of look and feel I aim for within my game, obviously I will aim to make it look as original as I possibly can. However, this is what I am aiming towards.

This is a rough idea of what the car is to look like when the character finds it.

The parts I was thinking of, would be:

• New tires
• A new engine
• New bulbs, for the lights
• A fuel Gage
• Petrol/Fuel cans

As well as the parts for the car, the player will also be able to acquire things to help them survive, such as first aid kits, clothes, weapons, amunition and food. These will not be essential, however the mood food they eat the higher their health, same with the first aid kits.

This is "Hyrule Field" from "TLoZ: Twilight Princess"

The above feild is similar to the look I would like for the open world. The main structure is going to be within a farm, so I plan to have an area in the distance which you cant access due to the area you can go being fenced in. I hope by doing this to increase the difficulty of the game.

3D Landscape Concepts

What is a 3D Landscape?

A 3D Landscape is a virtual open space with 3D models of various objects such as trees, waterfalls, rocks, etc. There are multiple different pieces of software you can install to your computer that can help you create or generate your very own 3D landscape. A few examples of this could be game engines such as Unreal or Unity. These engines have their own built in environment sculpting tools. Alternative you could use other industry standard software such as Maya, 3D Studio Max or ZBrush.

Creating a landscape, especially within a game, gives the overall look and feel of the game more depth. It shows more detail as well as a professional and clean look.

There are many elements needed within a 3D landscape, as well as some not as important, but also very effective elements.

Flooring: Typically grass, however it could be gravel, sand, mud, snow, water, or any other surface that could cover the ground. It could also be a mixture of these.

Trees: Not a necessity but they add dimension and appeal to the environment, it gives a larger environment a smaller feel. They also make the environments look more detailed.

Buildings: Not necessarily buildings that can be accessed, however buildings give a greater depth and feel the environment. As well as this, buildings can often change a somewhat recognizable space and make it almost iconic to the human eye. 

Stones/Rocks/Mountains/Cliffs: Dependent on the environment being portrayed mountains and cliff edges can set a scene apart from all others. More commonly stones and rocks add the little pieces of detail that a landscape often needs.

Creating my own Landscape:

Last week, I made a simple building with basic lighting. This week, I began to add a landscape around it.

Above is the building I started to create previously, around it you can see the grass i added to start sculpting my environment.

Once I was ready to begin sculpting some hills, I selected my brush size.

By dragging my brush I was able to make a series of hills surrounding my building.

Game Engines

What is a game engine?
A game engine is the software that is used when creating a game. There are many game engines out there that all do various things, the most well known ones being Unreal, Unity and CryEngine. These are all three dimensional game engines, the most well known two dimensional engine is Game Maker Studio. 

Unreal Engine: is a game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal. Although primarily developed for first-person shooters, it has been successfully used in a variety of other genres, including stealth, MMORPGs, and other RPGs. With its code written in C++, the Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability and is a tool used by many game developers today.^[2][3]

The current release is Unreal Engine 4, designed for Microsoft's DirectX 11 and 12^[4] (for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Windows RT); OpenGL (for OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, iOS, Android, Ouya^[5] and Windows XP^[6]); and JavaScript/WebGL (for HTML5 Web browsers).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine

One of the most popular games made with Unreal Engine is the Gears Of War series.

Unity: is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies^[2] and used to develop video games for PC, consoles, mobile devices and websites. First announced only for OS X, at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in 2005, it has since been extended to target more than fifteen platforms.^[3][4] It is now the default software development kit (SDK) for the Wii U.^[5]

Unity Pro is available for a fee and Unity Personal has no fee; it is available for any use to individuals or companies with less than US$100,000 of annual gross revenue.^[6][7] On March 3, 2015 with the release of Unity 5.0, Unity Technologies made the complete engine available for free including all features, less source code and premium support. Unity is noted for an ability to target games to multiple platforms.

Five versions of Unity have been released. In 2006 at the 2006 WWDC trade show, Apple, Inc. named Unity as the runner up for its Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics category.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine) 

One of the most popular games made with Unity Engine is Temple Run for Android and ios.

CryEngine: is a game engine designed by the German game developer Crytek. It has been used in all of their titles with the initial version being used in Far Cry, and continues to be updated to support new consoles and hardware for their games. It has also been used for many third-party games under Crytek's licensing scheme, including Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 and SNOW. Ubisoft maintains an in-house, heavily modified version of CryEngine from the original Far Cry called the Dunia Engine, which is used in their later iterations of the Far Cry series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryEngine

One of the most popular games made with CryEngine is the FarCry series.

What games use which engines?

League of Legends:
League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena, real-time strategy video game developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It is a free-to-play game supported by micro-transactions and inspired by the mod, Defense of the Ancients for the video game Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends

League of Legends was created using the Universal Fighting Engine, which is a Unity based toolkit specifically designed to create fighting games.

Call of Duty:
Call of Duty (commonly shortened to CoD) is a first-person video game franchise. The series began on the PC, and later expanded to consoles and handhelds. Several spin-off games have also been released. The earlier games in the series are set primarily in World War II, including Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, and Call of Duty 3. Beginning with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is set in modern times, the series has shifted focus away from World War II. Modern Warfare (released November 2007) was followed by Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Black Ops (released November 2010) takes place in the Cold War, while Modern Warfare 3 (released November 2011) takes place in a near-future setting. Black Ops II (released November 2012) takes place mainly in the year 2025. Call of Duty: Ghosts was released in November 2013. In May 2014, Advanced Warfare was announced. On April 9, 2015, Treyarch announced Black Ops III.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty

The IW engine is a game engine developed by Infinity Ward for the Call of Duty series. The engine uses id Tech 3 as its core, since the engine itself is proprietary with inclusion of GtkRadiant by id Software. It has been used by Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Raven Software, and Sledgehammer Games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IW_engine

Beyond: Two Souls:

Beyond: Two Souls is an interactive drama action-adventure video game for the PlayStation 3 home video game console, created by French game developer Quantic Dream and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released in October of 2013. The game features Jodie Holmes, one of two player characters. The other is an incorporeal entity named Aiden: a separate soul linked to Jodie since birth. Jodie, who is portrayed by actress Ellen Page, possesses supernatural powers through her psychic link to Aiden, growing from adolescence to adulthood while learning to control Aiden and the powers they share. Willem Dafoe co-stars as Nathan Dawkins, a researcher in the Department of Paranormal Activity and Jodie's surrogate-father-figure. The actors in the game worked during the year-long project in Quantic Dream's Paris studio to perform on-setvoice acting and motion capture acting.

Beyond: Two Souls, despite being a video game, premiered at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, marking only the second time the film festival recognised a video game. David Cage, writer and director of the game, explained that game development studios should provide "interactive storytelling" that can be played by everyone, including non-gamers. The game received polarized critical reception upon its release. Sales reached over one million copies worldwide by the end of 2013. A PlayStation 4 version was announced in June 2015.

Quantic Dream, the game developers, used their own game engine to create Beyond: Two Souls. This is due to the motion capture elements within the game requiring software that is used to create movies.