This week's activity saw us break down another artefact and "select one or two of the prototyping methods outlined and build quick prototypal representations of your chosen artefact. Note down any interesting characteristics of the artefact. Perhaps, you notice the colour palette is used in a certain way or the layout follows a standard grid system. Depending on your chosen artefact, you might want to annotate the dimensions and analyse the padding and spacing used."
Since I had access to my friends source code from Two lines I decided to use this as a base. The game is available here:
I have written about the process in full in the activity section of the blog. However, I do feel like the game design and challenge went really well. I also like how breaking this down has made me look at the way in which it was developed in the first place.
When it comes to rapid ideation, my only experience had been with game jam games and bug fixes for our studio releases. Generally my experience in this area is quite positive but there are a couple of occasions where I would say my experience has been a nightmare. Speaking of the latter, the recent Falmouth University Global Game Jam saw us create a game based around Lost and Found. Everything was going great and I decided to package the game to send to a friend to play test and I was met with an "Unknown Error" when packaging. I then spent 4 hours diagnosing the issue with very little to go on. Eventually I had fixed it but the point I am trying to make is no matter how structured your approach or whatever methods you choose to help you with rapid ideation, you never know or can account for things that go wrong. Specifically referencing the game jam again, 48 hours doesn't leave a lot for bug fixes. 48 hours as it is can very difficult for even the most veteran of developers to formulate a solid idea let alone execute it. My greatest achievement when doing rapid ideation in my own work was for another game jam I entered for the Caveware Digital 2020 Scream Jam. I had 5 days to make a horror game. There was no particular underlying theme, it was just about horror. All the models and sounds were made by myself and no assets were used. I did work around the clock and tirelessly to do this but this was because it was very ambitious. The critical reception of this game was mind blowing. I had big youtubers such as Markiplier play it and Mr Kravin and the game went on to win hosts choice award. Since then I have received many messages from people asking to remake and expand on the original. I have started doing this and the game should be releasing on steam come June in which is my biggest undertaking yet. I am feeling really optimistic though.
Week 3 Update - 11th February 2021:
I have been sketching a lot this week and even treated myself to a new drawing tablet to help me with prototyping. I drew out this concept for an upcoming game Idea I have which will be a collaborative effort between myself, Matt Reeves and Vidas Salavejus. I will be getting the guys to use rapid ideation methods to complete it.
However for this week I will be using White Boxing and Game Prototyping techniques to complete this weeks activity. Using grey boxing/white boxing has been quite liberating as I have found a particular style to go alongside the simple geometry models. As you can see, I have a custom skybox and I have added a little ray tracing to the scene to really make the blocks stand out. This was a 10 minute task which really adds a lot to the overall scene even for a quick prototype.
This image here is where I used a plugin called procedural environment generator. What I did was create a few quick buildings in blender and texture them and use the shader graph to connect up the textures and pack everything together. I then dropped in all the buildings to the plugin and hit generate. This then randomly generates a new area using all of my models, reducing the need to hand place them. The time saved on this is huge and a great asset to use for rapid prototyping. The plugin is free and is available on the epic marketplace for Unreal engine.
In terms of obstacles that I encountered there really wasn't anything major. I would say there was increased packaging time for Unreal due to the large map size and effects I used. However as long as this can be taken account of when using this in a game jam, you should be fine. I never witnessed any texture overlaps or issues with UV's overlapping. The plugin worked fine and I would use it again.
Looking back on this type of method for rapid ideation I really like it. I am more of a visual person when it comes to creating concepts so I like these methods best. However I would consider paper prototypes and Figma. Figma looks really interesting and certainly is visual also.
Below is also a helpful link to a great article about other prototyping tools you might find useful.
Sonntag, S., 2021. Game UI & UX: The State of Wireframing and Prototyping Tools in Game Development. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://medium.com/@seb_sonntag/game-ui-ux-the-state-of-wireframing-and-prototyping-tools-in-game-development-190260143669> [Accessed 8 February 2021].
https://medium.com/@seb_sonntag/game-ui-ux-the-state-of-wireframing-and-prototyping-tools-in-game-development-190260143669
This weeks activity was to identify an artefact you feel is particularly interesting. This could be anything from an inventory system UI for a game to a museum website that utilises AR or VR. The more experimental and interactive the artefact you choose, the more challenging this prototyping activity will be.
Select one or two of the prototyping methods outlined this week and build quick prototypal representations of your chosen artefact. Note down any interesting characteristics of the artefact. For my piece of work I decided to represent a game called Two lines.
https://mattreeves.itch.io/two-lines
The methods I have chosen to recreate this artefact is Game Prototyping using Unreal Engine 4 & blender. The second method I used is white boxing also using UE4.
What are these methods? White boxing is simply the process of placing primitives to represent the final shape and volume of the level. It's to allow the other developers on your team to prototype without having to wait for the artists to make the actual level content. You can get plugins to help you with these primitive models but usually they are simple enough in nature that you can easily do these with very little effort. It's important to note than when white boxing, you do not get caught up in the aesthetics of the model.
Game prototyping is where you just jump straight in and start designing. This is sometimes linked to blue sky thinking such as.
- Reimagining an experience. - Identifying inefficiencies and ineffective design elements.
If you look at the screenshot's provided you will notice that I included a shot of my map with an incomplete building. This is for multiple reasons. Time saving (due to the rapid ideation) and performance saves on FPS & engine workload. This is because the building is placed behind other buildings and the player does not need to see, or will ever see further than the front building meaning I can save on lowering the amount of objects in the scene.
I noticed whilst making this representation that all the buildings used in the original artefact were square or rectangular and lacked shape or difference. I can see that a lot of the buildings used in the original followed the same sort of design path with only slight variations on them. This was because all of the models were modelled by hand in blender so it would have been time consuming to do it this way.
For me, I was able to use a procedural generation plugin that incorporated all of my models I made and spread them out different as each new world was generated eliminating the need for my own placement. This saves time and effort as well as keeping things looking & feeling different each playthrough.
I also tried white boxing to ensure I had the initial layout correct and that it still managed to capture the look and feel of a city.
As per my screen shots I have also included the mirror city which is where the player finds themselves upside down. It was to show that the player was trapped in a parallel world, and since the upside-down area was the "true" city, that meant that the player was actually upside-down, so effectively descending into hell. The main inspiration came from wanting to make a sideways city because the developer thought it would be weird, and look cool. Once he scrapped that idea, the upside-down version popped into his head, and he knew he had to incorporate it. At first, it was more about aesthetic, and trying something that looked cool. But as it developed, he found a way to make sense of it that fit the story.
In summery I find that the rapid ideation method is something I am becoming very comfortable with. Weather it is a project I am looking at spending time with and developing over a long period of time, or just a quick short game like a game jam. Rapid ideation helps you look at the bigger picture and work out mechanics or designs before implementing in a full on project, thus reducing time on design later on in the project or, using it to quickly develop a fun little game that people can enjoy without sacrificing quality. A game doesn't have to AAA to be successful. Good quality mechanics and enjoyable gameplay make for a compelling game. As always, don’t underestimate the value of a disproved idea or if it simply does not work. It also allows teams to learn, move forward, and be better informed when designing in the future.
With this in mind I wanted to take a look at another friends game called Two Lines.
Since I have the source code I should be able to open up the project and look at exactly what the design is and how I can better improve this. Specifically I want to look at the world itself as the main artefact. The city scape is where a lot of the action happens within the game and looking back at it, was also the main highlight due to the upside down world that exists within this also.
I remember the city being a very big part of the game and I often felt lost due to a lot of the buildings being very familiar. My aim in this challenge is to recreate the entire city using two of the rapid ideation methods, White boxing and game development prototyping. The main reason I want to use these two is because my reading and research this week has lead me to look into Blue Sky thinking, which to me seems rather apt for this challenge.
I plan on using UE4 for this challenge along with blender a plugin to help with my idea. My goal is to create a better, more realistic environment that not only looks lifelike but easier to produce as well. This is where the plugin comes in. I am looking at using a procedural generation plugin for terrain and objects, meaning If I model several buildings in blender, I can then drop them into a similar tool like the foliage tool and the plugin will randomly generate me a map with all my objects. This not only saves time by not having to manually
place them but by also creating a new and exciting world each time you play.
The other method I am looking at using is White boxing which is where I shall just use the engine basic geometry to build a city scape whilst sparing aesthetics to ensure a quick and speedy level design for immediate play. This is exactly what it says on the tin. Use cubes, circles and cylinders to create buildings and then test play the map. since the buildings are rather large and tall, it is also essential to me that I create a semi decent sky box so I can sell the environment to players when playing.
Update Week 3: 10th February 2021
I have been starting to think about what the next two weeks will look like given the webinar I have just watched. We are to make an artefact within two weeks using rapid ideation techniques. This will follow a theme which will be announced next week. I always like to think about things in advance and try to plan as much as possible, so having to wait a week is going to be tough.
When it comes to rapid ideation, my only experience had been with game jam games and bug fixes for our studio releases. Generally my experience in this area is quite positive but there are a couple of occasions where I would say my experience has been a nightmare. Speaking of the latter, the recent Falmouth University Global Game Jam saw us create a game based around Lost and Found. Everything was going great and I decided to package the game to send to a friend to play test and I was met with an "Unknown Error" when packaging. I then spent 4 hours diagnosing the issue with very little to go on. Eventually I had fixed it but the point I am trying to make is no matter how structured your approach or whatever methods you choose to help you with rapid ideation, you never know or can account for things that go wrong. Specifically referencing the game jam again, 48 hours doesn't leave a lot for bug fixes. 48 hours as it is can very difficult for even the most veteran of developers to formulate a solid idea let alone execute it. I find when it comes to the actual development cycle of Rapid Ideation a lot of people worry about what it is they are going to do or they constantly worry about time.
Last week we were asked to create an artefact from an already existing artefact and I chose a game by Matt Reeves which was called Two Stars. The game revolved around an astronaut who crash lands on the moon and has to find his wife. I decided to turn this into pretty much the complete opposite using the opposite thinking method. I now have a hover car that floats around the moon which you can drive in the air and travel from planet to planet looking for things. It came out really well. You can even visit a supermarket and buy milk. Just because the brainstorm got really weird.
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