Wednesday, 28 May 2014

Introduction

Hi, I am a third year student on a games design degree at Plymouth College of Art in the UK. I specialise in level design, texture art and writing. This blog will contain a portfolio of my work that has been completed over the last year. Anomalous is the project that has been produced in this final year by myself and my colleague Ryan Lund.

Please use the sidebar links for easy access to various sections.

Tuesday, 27 May 2014

Anomalous Screenshots

Titled "The Archives"

Titled "The Engine Room"

Titled "Statis Pod Warehouse"

Corridor Type 1
Corridor Type 2
Corridor variant colour
Bloom Effects



Above examples of hallucination effects in the player character, achieved by using post process volumes.

Doorway
Bridge
Bridge, Redesigned

Particle effects after animation and lights trigger.
Particle effects on engine parts before lights and animation trigger.


Particle effect framed by engine parts and "Chinese Room" puzzle.

Orientation room alternate angle

Bridge room from the outside.


podroom upscaled
Orientation Room Consoles and Details

New hallucination Idea, fade into surrounded by a firey type particle effect.

I liked the way the red in this hallway frames the particle effects in the other room.

Particle Effects on engine reactor


Quick Presentation made in UDK of the Ship near the Planet. Not included in game.
Airlock Doors


Entire Level in Editor

Mechanical Arm in Podroom

Main Deck

Security Camera in Podroom

Security Camera in Server Room area

Final Console in Server room Area

Energy Bars in  Server Room Area

Entrance to server room Area

StripLight Detail

Monday, 26 May 2014

Full Walkthrough of Demo level

Here is a full walkthrough of my UDK level showcasing my level design, texture and particle art and voice acting!

And a little extra bit I made.


Audio Editing and Implementation into Level Design

Vocals recorded with Audacity then a Paulstrech and pitch change is applied. Vocal then exported as 16bit stereo track for use in UDK.

Some sound effects needed editing before becoming useful. This is one where I have mixed a clanking sound effect over various levels to achieve a better effect. 

All Audio assets had to be made into the correct format using Audacity before being usable.

Example of the triggering of the audio effects showing how I managed to implement the sounds in game.

Texture and Particle Art

Material for one of the screen meshes used.

Mesh Data based particle system.
Basic Door Texture used in game with corresponding material editor node set up

Slightly more complex, this one has the red parts glowing and blinking, visible in game as the Server asset in the server room area.

Basic set up for the fire particle effect, in it's material form. The colour is added in Cascade. This set up uses noise maps and pans certain co-ordinates over the base texture image, giving an animated look to the material.

Basic "Light Beam" using a similar material set up as the above fire. I used beam data in Cascade to control the shape and size of the Light Beam.

"Energy Ball" Here I have used two instances of the same material to make smaller spheres fly out from the larger central one.

Here I have expanded on the previous and used multiple materials to make another energy ball type effect.

This particle system uses mesh data, the mesh was a basic sphere with a crosshatch of lightning bolts as it's texture sample. 

The Fire particle, using the complex panning texture and noise maps. Now with a colour parameter from Cascade.


Flash Menu

Menu As appears in game.

Action Script I had to learn to get this.
Wanting to make as professional a product as possible it was mandatory to get a menu screen in the game. I knew it was vital to do this, so that it would provide an easy option for displaying at the Summer Show our college puts on for degree courses. Having the menu screen load before the main game, and then again when the final trigger in the main level had been pressed.

It was difficult, I had no knowledge of ActionScript before I tried to do this, and then it also involved new functions in Kismet and even required me to change around some config files before baking the package so that the menu screen would always load first.