20th May 2015

Same critique feedback. In truth I was actually expecting those criticism to hit us due to the fact we did not implement stuff such as sounds and lighting etc in the game, Still I am not really concern (well I do but not that much) as this is easily fixed before the presentation. What i wanted to do now is to get the group together and conduct a quick short meeting, aka a Project Manager role, and show to Miguel what it should be like to plan things out for the team.

After a good solid 25min meeting, I'm pretty sure all of the group members understood WHAT we have to do for the next meeting. Assigning each individual member WHAT and WHEN I expect this to be done and be firm with the decision on dateline.

Md Rizal

May 20 at 12:14pm

Miguel u need to note this down as a PM in a nicer document format. In future meeting next semester you wil have to do wat i did just now. kinda like a scrum master

Riz: Promo Art, Curved Slope, Training Area, Crosshaier(?), Animated 2D(?)

John: Area next to museum segment, Sounds, ground pavement, traffic light(?)

Joe: Ligting, particles, Rails

Programmers: Networking, Countdown
Sounds needed: Grapple, jump, Bump to wall, railgrind and wallride

This was the outcome from the discussion and the goals that have to be met before next week presentation. I would love to a Project Manager but again it's not as if I had a choice to do this and overtake someone else role for the week; this was literally been missing since Miguel took over as a PM and I was to occupied with the workload of the game assets, character rigged and animation

21st-22nd May 2015

Well as I am the guy who did the planning for this week so I had to lead by an example. I get most of the 3D assets done asap because theses are the prioties that is needed for the game world. Johnson, the other artist ,was really hit hard with sickness and again I had to cover the load up to get things done till he recovers. Even when he's isn't fully recovering he still make an effort to get most of the stuff needed so that it could be used for the team.

Sprite Arrow/material

More Billboard designs

Working on the sprite

making it work

Reflection of the day: With all the tension going earlier, It actually make us stronger as a team. We are helping one another and crossing over each other path to get things done efficiently. Ryan returning to the team works wonders as well!

18th-19th May 2015

Working on more textures. Things that have been added in relation to Laz critique last week:-

• Added trees
• Game Object textures
• Overall color outlook (This was done by the level designer and the other artist, I was tweaking things to make the world more standardize in term of colors)
• Billboard

Tree test

One of the few textures for the billboard

This is where things get a little heat up. The team keep pointing out my mistake regarding the issues that was done for the character, while I admit I make those mistake it was more due to an unforeseen mistake. It get a little tiring to explain that the error was not due to the skeleton INSTEAD it was due to the cluster and vertices changes in the FBX files that literally cause this issues.

Ways to fixed it? I know how to do it. How?

1. Unskinned the character model
2. Fix the hole 
3. Reattached the skin and skeleton
4. Rebake all the animation to the character

This i believed will fix the issues we are having now BUT NOBODY is listening to me and thus it kind of irritated me badly.

Reflection Segment: I could not fix it now due to the time and the desk critique is tomorrow While I was actually telling my other members off, there was no malice or personal attack to it. It's just that no one seems to listen. People use the word "LAZY" or "I DONT CARE" really tick me off as here I am trying to understand both programmers and artist pipeline, getting those comments from the team members is infruating..
Again it fall down to communication and i will talk to them tomorrow to clear things up.

16th-17th May 2015

This feel eternity. I always realised that the character model had issues that requires fixing but I keep delaying it and actually create more animation with the model. WHAT A BIG MISTAKE!

Issues with character hole

I did not realized what a mess i created for myself and the team until I tried to fixed one of the character and pass to the programmer. I am certainly angry at myself for not listening to my gut feeling earlier and fixed this issues.

This also creates a little tension with the programmer as they have to refix all the character animation over again. While no one like to fix and redo stuff, what other choices we had?

I didn't realised the technical issue with Unreal till now; apparently Koh (the programmer) insist he need the skeleton to fix the issue, problem is i did not change any variable or naming to my skeleton!
Nothing was changed apart of adding the hole to the feet (which i deleted ages ago in trying to safe polygon faces) and the hole in the hair due to vertex breaking apart.

I did my own research and apparently found out what actually cause this issues to keep coming back which resulting the new animation (model) to be combined to the existing model.

Reflection Segment:  Yes mistake was make, while I am a little angry at my stupidity and delaying fixing this 1 issues, I knew it could be worse if this issues was seen in other 3 character that is waiting to be model and animate. 

15th May 2015

I FINALLY MANAGED TO SOLVE THE ALPHA ISSUES. It took me literally the whole night yesterday to figured how this work. It turns out it was easier than I initially thought!
The trick is not to fixed it in Unreal but in photoshop itself!

With the alpha mapping issues solved, I could pass the fences and arrows to the level designer to place it in the game world. This will then act as a blockade and arrow map area for the player.

The fences for the game that will act as blockade

Game Arrow for player track

Getting the transparency up in Unreal.

Still this won't be the end as we actually intending to make those sprite animated for player. That will be done and research during the holiday.

13th May 2015

The desk critique doesn't go well today.We were bashed pretty hard due to the fact that our game, in Laz on words, there isn't any game out of it. What we have is just a mechanics and a character that running around the world aimlessly.
Other criticism includes:-

• World is boring
• Aimless track
• Too many empty spaces (lacking of level design)

In my defence, I really did my part in terms of fixing stuff to the character model, texturing and helping John (the other artist) in setting color to those models. The only mistake I make was thinking that alpha mapping work similarly in both Maya and Unreal. Thus we were unable to show the arrow direction of the race track. 

Laz remind me to sort it out by next week.

Reflection segment: I realised a little peculiar habit my group had. While we are suppose to be in a constant progress, strangely we only get to work after we get our butt kick from Laz. It seems we are likely to get a praise on single week and then get screwed at the next. I bring this issues to the group and all of us agreed that we need to fix this for next critique.

14th May 2015

Start researching with alpha mapping for Unreal. The goal is to have the the image showing only the desired 2D object with a transparent background. While Maya could take 2 different mapping this is not the case for Unreal. 

Reflection Segment: I feel this is really the most crucial part, the highlight of hurdles that I need to overcome for this semester. The game need the arrow on the track for this semester showcase but I just couldn't get to grasp and understand how I get it to work. I knew if i managed to solve this problem it would open a new ways to manipulate the game assets without actually modelling stuff in 3D.

12th May 2015 

Preparing for tomorrow desk critique again. Just like last week there isn't much things to update in terms of arts or stuff that have been done. Seems like the hard part of testing and feelings on what is right for the game is over and now is the repetitive steps.

Still that does not mean I am slacking. Had to do check on others models (most of the time I found myself fixing it) and unwrapping UVs that was unwrapped wrongly. All this have to be done so that we could keep texturing the world that we planned out.

Example of the assets in the game

While it isn't as hard as modelling an organic character, still texturing hard edges model have its challenges.

Things that also have been refined for tomorrow desk critique includes:-

• Refine Run animation (Blading)
• New Jump animation
• Grapple actions
• Refine taunting animation 
• Lamp post  (Assets)
• Traffic lights (Assets)
• Building
• Side slope
• 4 way slope

All these animations and assets will be presented tomorrow

On the sideline I did a mini comic for the game but was rejected by the group as they find it to complicated to understand. I am also working on a mock UI look.

.

The idea here is to have a "comic" like cutscene in the game before the player starts to play. .

Reflection segment: Seems to get the benefits of all the trial and error i did earlier while I wouldn't say I know all of the stuff (such as maya  fbx transferring to unreal etc), I have a good understanding what would work or would not. The art seems to evolve as well and i find things easier to draw all the characters for the game compare when we first planned things out

29th April 2015

I didn't blogged in any way for previous week not because I am doing nothing but it is pretty much a reiteration, re framing of animation and building texture. All of that were to prepare for Wednesday presentation. Finally get the "right" feel for the game world that we had intended and that make thing easier for me to control the group artstyle.

During the presentation while we were a little screwed up due to "breaking" the game (not sure why to be honest), we were using video as alternative for our mock showcase. I find it a little confusing as the jury were actually shooting us due to the breaking of the build issues but at the same time commending our efforts to our game.

What make things more peculiar was Laz going "we were one of the "go ahead and ready" group; I just don't feel that way. In fact i feel i could done better without some hiccup that is currently ongoing with some of the team members.

Seen some of the other groups game progress, which some of it is really good...

Reflection segment: While I am not really complaining about some of the team members incompatibilities or issues they faced outside of school that affected them, in a strange way, it make me technically better and increase my speed in doing stuff and getting things done without relying them that much.