Shepherd of Shepherds

I know it's been a long time since my last post, color in your own excuses.

I'm a a design lead now on a lovely little game called Oracle. We're more than half way through production and I'm working with a team of just one other designer. Still, being the lead means that I do a lot of design with the rest of the team, and it has really reformed my understanding of the people and the types of people who work in this industry.

I am a designer. Through to the core I put things together or take them apart constantly. It shapes my worldview and my understanding of life. But when something is so core to your system, it's often hard to realize that the same way of looking at the world does not, necessarily, go double for the people around you. This is one of the most important things I've come to understand in my position as lead designer, NOT EVERYONE IS A DESIGNER.

I keep thinking, "Oh, we need some animations. I bet the animators would love to concept some cool flips and attacks." But they don't. They're still creative -I have no doubt about this- but they don't want to design things. They're Builders. Their creativity comes in execution, not conception.

And the whole industry is filled with people who's great creativity is somewhere other than design. I know this as a general point of knowledge, but It's so far from my conscious thought that I tend to forget. In my mind it makes sense that an animator would design animations because I assume that everyone uses thought processes similar to my own. I assume everyone is a designer in addition to whatever it is they do. And I need to stop that.

Today, my co-designer and I were talking about the world map and we were trying to fill a design hole involving backtracking through the map without backtracking through the story. I kept trying to prompt him for an idea as I didn't want to trample on his map design, but after a few minutes he just flat out said, "I need an executive decision." He isn't a high concept designer. He's a builder with design sensibilities. He doesn't want a big blank slate, he want's someone to draw the outline so he understands what he should build. And that's more than ok, that's great. We couldn't survive without him. But it means I need to be more conscious of when I'm heaping blue sky design onto people who are, for lack of a better word, agoraphobic.

So I'm going to do just that.

Modular Design

I've been putting together a level using Bethesda's Fallout 4 Creation Kit. It's my first time using the Kit and my first time using modular pieces to make something, needless to say, it's been a learning experience.

Modular stuff is great in it's own right, I feel like to could pump out level at an incredible speed this way. That being said, I've run into a few problems typical of modular kits. While I won't list the others here, I've just discovered that somewhere in the level, a piece got tilted about 0.9 degrees. Every piece placed afterwards followed the trend because when you're snapping things together, you really only care if they are snapping together. Now that I'm doing some more precise work, I'm trying to duct tape a solution that doesn't leave holes or cause noticeable Z fighting.

The lesson here. Check the transform details every once in awhile. Probably every time you save.

BP Homework 2

So the homework had some ups and down. I managed to put together a pretty night scene, but a some of the terrain ended up rough, and it took a lot longer than expected. This was my first real foray into making rocks from smaller rocks. Honestly, that was a lot of work, or time at least. The finesse that goes into making them smooth and realistic looking is significant. Overall, I was pleased with the blueprints I put together, and I learned a lot about getting different blueprints talking to each other, in addition to getting rock blending experience.

A glow light you can throw that illuminates dark areas. You only have one, so the BP destroys your old light if you throw it again.

Allows Mushrooms to be picked up.

Spawns a bounce mushroom if the hit surface is "mushroomable."

All of the Player Blueprints for throwing things, making the HUD, and others.

Color Picker

I know I'm a few posts behind, but I'm up to my arms in work, you'll see it soon.
I just wanted to pop in to say that Photoshop can color pick from anything, including an open UE4 project. Fantastic. Very useful when your sky sphere won't tell you what color it is (because it's hooked to the sun height).

Blueprint Homework 1

So, this week I'll be working on a level design homework that is all about blueprints. The requirements are simple. Make a level with 2 areas, and 5 different functions blueprinted, that's it. I've decided to make a level where the player traverses a tropical forest by collecting and deploying bouncing mushrooms.

BP 1 will be something like a grenade, except it will spawn a bouncing mushroom.
BP 2 will be that mushroom
BP 3 will allow the player to pick up these mushrooms.
BP 4 will display the number of reserve mushrooms on the UI
and BP 5 will be a light source that floats up into the air and illuminates an area after it hits the ground

The trickiest part, so far has been the grenade component for which the tutorial I followed was severely lacking. So, instead, I'm going to start from scratch and steal bits and piece from the premade FPS level that Unreal has. The gun projectiles are similar enough that if I reimagine the blueprint with my new mechanic in mind, I should be able to make something work.

Wish me luck.

New Side Project

Decided to start a new side project. I'm going to build a Fallout 4 mod because working for Bethesda is a not-so-secret dream of mine. I've come up with a unique an interesting mechanic too. The game includes some power armors that can gain a jetpack upgrade. However, the jetpack is weak and lasts for maybe 5 seconds at the best. I am going to make a special jetpack armor that allows significantly increased flight time, and then design a fun and vertically inclined area to play with it.

The concept for the map is based on the Boston Aeronautical Society which, unlike in real life, stayed open up until the nuclear war. At the time, they were prototyping the fun new jetpack that the level is built around. The reason that no one has yet found the jetpack (or building remains) is that during the war, a massive chasm opened up below the building and most of it's contents fell down into the hole. I'm going to have the player use their new found toy to ascend out of the chasm fighting super mutants, ghouls and a behemoth along the way.

In anycase, this is the first small piece of the grey-box, and I wanted to share:

Though they are hard to make out from this angle, the 2 tilted rectangular prisms are hollow and represent actual chunks of the building that has split into a number of pieces which I will use to guide the player up and out of the chasm. The rest of the flat surfaces are chasm floor. As to the colored objects, Player's start on the blue space, green and bright green are ghouls, pink is for super mutants, and yellow is for junk/loot. Not visible from this angle are 2 spots where I have used a blue box to demarcate more valuable treasure.

This will make a whole lot more sense when I'm done. I promise.