Showcase summery

Comment on the overall success of the showcase?
The showcase was pretty successful and I think that everything went well, the examples of work that were shown looked really good and everything went well without any problems with the computers

Did everything get done in time?
Everything was completed in time for the showcase

What kind of things were in the media rooms?
The thing in the media rooms ranged from display boards which had examples of work from last year and examples of work from this year, on several computers there was a show reel of work from the students from last year, in both rooms there was a big screen which had the trailers being played. In the second room there was a few display boards and a table with folders of last years work, and on the big TV there was the England football game.

What was on each big screen?
On the big screens were the 4 trailers from the games development course, these were the darkshock trailer, the zero G trailer, the desolate trailer and the tempest trailer.


What were the students doing?
The students in attendance just did various pieces of work as well as explaining what they were doing, some students were helping by fetching more people who was waiting at the stall.


What were the teachers doing?
The teachers were basically explaining a little bit about the course as well as explaining the concepts of the work shown


what visitors did we have?
For the showcase, the visitors we had were mostly potential students and there parents.


What comments did anyone make about your work, or someone else from the course?
well i don't think there were any comments left by the visitors.


Can you think of anything that didn't work i.e. video or software demonstration
I think that everything worked fine during the event


What was the most enjoyable part of the day
probably watching the England game

Trailer evaluation

The first trailer to be looked at is zero G by team 42, the theme of the trailer is science fiction/racing, the trailer features a series of spaceships racing along a futuristic race track. in the trailer there is an interesting part involving the track becoming a wire frame and switching back to a normal view, the soundtrack of the trailer is OK with the sounds for the spaceships being very effective when they fly by. The only problems with the trailer is that the title of the trailer is small in size and it might not be easily seen, also the credits looked like they were done in movie maker, overall this was an OK trailer.

The second trailer is Darkshock by team paradox, the trailer is based around the science fiction/thriller genre, the opening to the trailer is very good with the effects of the screen going fuzzy and finally going off, the rest of the trailer shows some pretty impressive 3D models, the soundtrack of the trailer is OK whilst the voice overs in it are brilliant, they sound pretty funny whilst the end scene is brilliantly done,the end credits have the feel of a movie, the only downsides to it is that the bomb at the beginning of the trailer is a big oval and that the officer Jones model does not seem to have eyes. but overall the trailer is brilliant.

The third trailer is desolate by team negative one, the theme for this trailer is mainly adventure and has a few hints of the fantasy genre. The trailer is beautifully made with the water effects looking really good, the trailer has some brilliant scenes such as the shot of a darkened rock face/valley with a fog effect, this adds a bit of atmosphere to the scene. The music also adds a bit more to the atmosphere to the trailer, the only downsides to the trailer is that they had only one piece of music playing throughout the trailer, it would be better if the music was separated by voice overs and each section had there own individual soundtracks, the trailer in conclusion is good.

The final trailer is tempest by team laserbaby, the trailer is based on the horror/mystery genre the trailer is brilliantly made with the fog effects in the later stages adding to the atmosphere, the other good feature in this trailer is the music which adds to the atmosphere making it more mysterious than first thought, and finally the last good thing about the trailer is the use of film reel effects which make it look like it was shot using an old camera. The only problem with this trailer is that in the scene with a woman pointing at the camera you can see down her arm from the palm, this could be sorted out. in all due respect this is a very good trailer.

Project evaluation

Does the product match your original intentions?
I think that the trailer does not match my original idea because my idea was to have a story for the trailer but it was changed to something a lot easier near development time, I think the idea was dropped due to it looking a bit complected when it comes to actually creating it in 3D Studio max, however the racing scene i think were slightly modified for the actual trailer. here is my storyboard


and here is a professional trailer for the game wipe out pulse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7z7Mu0sfiM
as you can see wipe out pulse is close to the trailer which has been finished recently, the trailer shown was used as research at the start of the project, during the research i have noticed that in games like wipe out, there is virtually no story or plot line to the game at all.

Is the end product suitable for your intended audience?
the game trailer is suitable for the intended audience as the game to begin with has no violence in it and is mostly centered around hover car racing, the game is aimed at those who are at about 16 and over.

Discuss the technical aspects of your work and highlight the strengths/areas to develop.
to begin with in photo shop I first used a scanner to add the hand drawn storyboard to the h drive, once done i opened it in photo shop and proceeded to colour the image in, I think that my strengths for this is that I can use certain effects on drawings like adding weathering effects to buildings and as well as adding a different palate of colours, my main area to improve on is that i need to try and make the work look more professional. for 3D studio max the models are all made by using standard primitives mostly spheres, then the textures which were images I found online then edited for the planets, my main strength in this section is that i can attempt to make 3D models which look like the object they represent without the use of editing standard primitives, the main area i need to work on would be that i need to work on UV unwrapping more complex objects.

Discuss the aesthetic aspects of your work and highlight the strengths/areas to develop?
the aesthetic aspects of my work are that the textures and the photo shop work looks a little bit unprofessional with certain aspects of the work looking a bit like a cartoon, the strengths of the aesthetic style is that the style looked colourful in appearance, the main area to develop is that the style needs to be made to look a lot more professional.

Discuss the content/style of your work
the style of the work is suppose to look like a cartoon with the fact that i added a lot of colours into the whole project, the content of the work also has a little bit of science fiction worked into it.

Did you encounter any problems through out the project and how were they resolved?
i encountered no problems throughout the project.

What have you learnt for this experience?
I have learnt to create a sky box in 3D studio max and also i have learnt how to use audacity for editing basic sounds, like that i edited a basic vacuum cleaner sound effect into the sound of a hover car.

What skills have you developed through out the process?
well i have developed an understanding when using audacity as well as learning how to make a sky box and also how to edit basic textures.


Did you meet the deadline?
I did meet the deadline.


Did you have any problems with time management?
I have had no problems with time management.


If you had the opportunity to make this product again would you do anything different?
If i did have to make the project again i feel that the only things i would add to it would be a back story because i feel that a game like this would need a back story, but overall I am happy with the final product, I am also happy with the rest of the group as they have helped with the project and helped get it all together

Setting up a atari 2600 jr

To set up an Atari 2600 Jr you first need to get the system out of the box before first plugging in the joystick controllers/paddle controllers/keyboard controllers etc. the control ports are located at the back of the system, once completed you then have to first connect the system to the aerial socket by using the RA cable, the socket for this can be found at the back of the system. once done you need to connect it up to the plug socket using the AC adapter. finally you need to plug in the game cartridge and switch on the system to play.

Summery of main project

At the start of this project we were given the task of creating a game trailer, this project is to be completed by friday 18th june 2010 and will be displayed at the digital showcase on the 23rd june 2010, the client is shipley college.



to start off the class was seperated into two different teams, once that was sorted out we then were given the task of identifiying strengths and weaknesses, I noted my strengths as be being good at photoshop and having good ideas, for my weaknesses I noted down as being easily distracted and talking too much. Once done we decided on the team name, the name of our team would be 42, we then had to create a logo for it and at the next team meeting we voted for dans logo. Next up was the storyboard in which we have to think of a story for the trailer, my story see's a homeless person being taken in by a old man who runs a garage, the orphan soon starts racing hovercars and becomes a regional champion, he is aproched by a promoter but he declines his offer, so the promoter kills the old man and destroys the garage. now the orphan wants his revenge. in the end we went for different design.

here is a link to the professional game trailer wipeout pulse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7z7Mu0sfiM

after this we started work on our different scenes, i was assigned the first scene. this was simple to make as it was easy to make, also during this time we had a few team meetings to discuse a few things (more recently we were looking at sounds, i have been working on the space ship sound effects) the enviroment created is a space enviroment which has planets, the camera pans over the planets.



for another part of this project was to create designs for the merchandise for it, i decided to make a mug design with the team logo and the game logo on it.

Team meeting date: 18/05/10

In attendance
Sean
Micky
Matthew
Dan

today we had a team meeting in which we discussed about what sounds were required for the trailer, i was put in charge of sounds in which i have to find sounds for the spaceships, ambient sounds and a soundtrack. We also discussed on what to put down in the credits portion of the trailer, we had no problems on this subject and got it sorted out quickly.

Final trailer intentions

My plan for the position of the scene/environment is that its going to go at the beginning of the trailer, this is because the scene is intended to be setting the scene for the trailer. the only thing i need to do for the scene is to add dialogue to the scene, i am planning on doing this as soon as possible. once this is done then i will add this to the final trailers once the other scenes have been finished.

Finished enviroment

The environment which i created in studio max 2010 was pretty interesting to make, to start off with, to create the terrain if first opened up photo shop and on the document i clicked render and difference clouds. Once this was done i used the paint brush option and added several features including the walls and the flat ground, once finished i saved it and opened up studio max. I then created a plain which then i used the photo shop document and added it as a basic map, i then displaced the plane to make the basic terrain. For the texture i opened the photo shop document and planned out the textures, i got the textures from the Internet and i added them via the stamp tool, once finished i added them onto the terrain. For the house i created it by standard box modelling and then UV unwrapped it. The textures were again from the Internet and i added the windows via the brush tool whilst the bottom was painted black, i then added the textures to the house. For the pyramid i basically created the pyramid via standard primitives and then using the cut tool after turning it into a editable poly to remove parts of it, once finished i simply painted it yellow to finish it. For the stack of cups i simply made a cylinder, turned it into a editable mesh and made the top a little bit wider, i then cloned it and created a stack of cups. for the castle i made it out of several cones, cylinders and cuboids and groped them together, the outer walls are red with blue roofs whist the Easter egg is a photo shop document. Once finished i added them all to the terrain document and were placed in different places, the trees were added via a standard primitive, for the sky box i first took a picture of the sky for the sky texture and made a sky box, for a finishing touch i added a sky light, originally i was going to add shadows to the scene but it would not render well so i dropped the shadows, the light is of a red colour. once finished i added a camera and created a render to finish the work off.

here was my original plan, you can almost instantly see the differances, i think i was a little bit over ambitious, most of the stuff here was dropped including the old style house, the greek temple, the river, the walkway, the goat and the bridge. the teapot, the diamond, the cube and pyramid, the sphere were removed due to not being relevent and not being of any purpose

explaining the creation of my trailer scene

The creation of the scene was pretty simple, first i created 4 sphere's using standard primitives, each sphere is of a different size. I then textured each of the spheres with different textures which i got from the Internet, the textures have been faded a bit and have had a layer of colour below it. for the main planet texture i have used the colour blue for the see and green for the land. when the textures were completed i then put them onto the planets. For the sky box i first added a sphere and cut it in half and flipped it inside out. I then applied a tillable space texture which i also got off the Internet. Once done i decided to do an animated render by having the camera to move towards the earth like planet before zooming in on it.

Team storyboard

we have created a team storyboard for the final trailer, the storyboard is to start with a shot of space before cutting to the game logo. After this it cuts to shots of the hover car race before ending with the release date and other information before ending, for the actual production of the trailer we have decided to work on 2 scenes each (me doing the first two scenes as they are pretty easy to work on)

game trailor rendered enviroment

here is the rendered version of my video game trailer, i have not added any sound to it yet. the planets and the sky box have been textured with textures i got from the internet, the textures of the planets have been coloured and slightly modified especially the earth like planet which i added,


here is the modified texture



here is the original texture before i modified it, whilst the sky box has textured with a tilable texture.the textures were easily applied, UV unwrapping is not needed through out the enviroment shown here, the textures for the skybox were created by getting a image of space and then placing it in photoshop. I then displaced the texture so i can edit the texture so that it will appear tilable. this took a few minutes to do and once it was done i created the skybox by creating a sphere, removing half of it and turned it inside out with the flip over option, I then pasted the texture to the skybox,

final render

here is the final render of my enviroment, what i have done is that added a sky light which i coloured red, also for the castle i added an easter egg to it, overall i think it looks good in appearance and i found it easy to make.

scenes 1 and 2 script idea

today we discussed plans about the script, the script we planned is that for several scenes we are to have a commentator for the trailer (we have not decided on who will be the commentator in the trailer) we decided to work on the part we were assigned to create in studio max, i was assigned to write the script for scenes 1 and 2, these scenes are meant to be short with the camera panning towards the planet, the title would show up after this scene. i typed the script for the two scenes and i have got them more and less done.

Final logo choice

we have decided on a logo design and the design we went for was Dans logo design, the reason for the logo design is that the result looks good on merchandise and the eventual games trailer and has a professional finish.

Zero G logo idea

Here is my idea for the logo for our game trailer, the logo itself was made in Photoshop with the outlines being made using the paintbrush tool with the letters appearing to be joined together and has been coloured in a light blue so it makes this look futuristic. The blurred effects makes the logo look as if it is going at speed, i have also added speed lines to complete the effect.

team meeting, merchandise

on tuesday we decided what merchandise we would be producing if we were to produce the game, we decided to do a T-shirt, a mug and a desktop wallpaper, i am responsible for creating the mugs, i used zazzle to create a couple of mug designs , the first one had a dans game logo whilst the second one uses the team logo, i added a black background to each one to make the logos easily viewable.

unit 66 enviroments

In the past few days i have been drawing up an environment for the trailer, the main features i planned for this drawing was to feature a hover car race track, a couple of houses and the desert, after planning i drew the environment on a A3 sheet of paper. i added an area of cracked ground to it. Once finished i divided it into 4 sections. the top left section has been left blank. The top right section has been coloured in using colouring pencils, the bottom left section was coloured in using coloured pastels with several colours which had to be created (E.G. for the race track i used black and white and for the fence i used red and blue) the i have also spread the colours out by the use of smudging (E.G. for the desert i smudged the colour yellow) For the bottom right section i just used colouring pens.

creating a railworks scenario

This is a simple guide on creating a scenario for the game railworks, to do this you must first go into edit (if its not highlighted then go to play which will take you to the main game screen then click the globe icon and click the locked padlock, then you can edited scenarios) next go and select the standard scenario icon and place it on the route, it should look like this.

Once that is done you can type in the title of your scenario in the name box, add a description, add a brief, edit the difficulty, edit the duration of the scenario (always set to 120 minutes), time of day and finally the weather. After this you can add the locomotives and rolling stock to the scenario, the locomotives number, water level and coal amount can be edited whilst in some wagons the load can be ticked if you want it to be loaded with cargo.

On a locomotive you can add instructions stating with the driver icon which allows you to name the consist, make the train player driven (by ticking the box, leaving it unticked make it a A.I train), add a destination to it and finally name the type of train you want it (E.G. express passenger, slow freight, light engine ETC).

Next you can add a event icon to make a certain event happen (timed stops mostly), i just add a message for the player to read, next up is the passenger icon which allows the train to stop and pick up passengers, to add stops simply go to the 2D map and go over to a station. Platforms are represented by a green line so click the plus icon and select the line, continue this to add more station stops, next up but not illustrated is the stop icon, its similar to the passenger icon but only allows you to stop at a place (stations, sidings which are represented by a yellow line). Finally is the pick up/drop off icons which allows you to pick up stock from sidings, to do this you first need to click the plus icon then select the stock you want to pick up/drop off and then select a siding (this only works for player trains as A.I trains just crash into a siding), once your finished making the scenario you can give it a test run, if it all goes well you can release it for download, i hope this has been helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFZ3DxGXM_s

minutes for team meeting

team members present
Sean
Matthew
Micky
Date of meeting: Wednesday 3rd March 2010
Location of meeting: SFo1
Resolution: to decide on a final storyboard idea for our major projects.

today we presented our storyboards in order to decide upon a final storyboard idea, at the end of the team meeting we decided upon a storyboard with no conflicts between any of the team members, we have also decided upon an idea which we wrote down and have started a rough version of the storyboard done by Micky who will also work on the final version, once done Sean will do a digital version in photo shop.

Storyboard idea

For our project we were asked to produce a storyboard for the trailer, at first i did not know what to have in the storyboard, after a while i had decided what the plot of the storyboard would be. I then started work by first drawing the storyboard on a simple template, after this i then used a camera to take a photo of it and i sent it to the computer so i can add the colours to it. the colours i had selected for the storyboard included a range of red's, blue's, greens, yellows and oranges. I also added backgrounds to several of the frames just to make them look more complete. the finished product was colourful and looked alot better than the original storyboard, the background was coloured with colours which represent the future like light blue, purple and black, the writing was coloured white so it can be visible, the writing also tells the story of the prologue, overall i think this storyboard was easy to do and looks brilliant.

house for 3D enviroment

over the last few week's i have started work on a house for my 3D enviroment, i have decided to make it as simple as possible by having it a basic shape which is easy to texture, the model itself is made by first creating the basic shape via box modelling, once the basic shape was done i had the use UV unwrap so i can texture it in adobe photoshop, i have used a texture for the walls of the house, the texture was applied whilsed the windows, doors, drain pipe, roof and bush where added by the use of the paint brush tool, i am planning to add the texture to the house in the near future.

Reflective evidence unit 4 Team E-mail Process

Over the past few weeks we have been putting together an e-mail to send to several selected games company's, in this e-mail we decided to ask them for information about the production of a video game trailer/cut scene and on how much it cost's to make a trailer. Last week we discussed on which company's we were to contact, upon sorting out which company's to e-mail. We then set about discussing what to include in the e-mail, we decided upon asking about how much money did it cost to make a game trailer and how many team members does it take to make a trailer, after this we started composing several draft letters before going on to select the one we would use. We then spell checked it the week after before sending it off from the team 42 email account. each team member were allowed to choose a company to contact. i chose railsimulator.com other sites included
Dan chose Valve
Micky chose Bioware
Sean chose Lionhead

Reflective evidence unit 4 Our Objective

the main objective of the project is to create a game trailer for the digital showcase which is on Wednesday 23rd June 2010 between the hours of 14:00 PM and 20:00PM (2:00pm to 8:00PM), people in attendance include students from other schools with there parents, our parents, current students and (we hope) people from professional game's developers, i think the main purpose of our trailer is to get a positive response from the audience.

Reflective evidence unit 4 The Plot

For the game trailer we had to decide on a plot, the genre we decided was a racing game set in the future, now we were also decided what the future would look like so at first we decided on a post apocaliptic based future so i decided on a simple plot line involving a rigged racing competition and a mysterious benefactor, now i did get down to starting adding influences and started creating a storyboard (hand drawn) and started making a character conceptwhen i discovered that we changed the idea to a futuristic racing game (along the lines of the game series Wipe-out), i think my original idea was good but when it would come to making the trailer then thinks would get very complicated. so i had to abandon the original idea and use this, i have only done a colour swatch for the game but that is the furthest i've got.

Reflective evidence unit 4 Team Logo

To begin with we were told to come up with a team name and logo, after much deliberation we decided upon the name 42 (or forty two), once that was done we had to come up with the name of the team we then had to create a logo, the first logo i created was the number 42 but written in the font Dalek and then painted in red with black for a weathered effect, this looked really simple to do and was finished pretty quickly.

The second logo design i did was of both the number 42 and the word forty two, the number 42 was done first with the two digits painted in green and brown, after this was done i then added the word forty two and painted this in a variety of colours, this overall was complex to create.

In the end neither of these logo's were chosen for the team logo, the final logo was the number 42 with a metal fence in the background, this looks excellent and it really stands out on a piece of package art.

game trailer team work

interpersonal skills

communication is important when working in a team, i am OK when working in a team, in the team we have Sean, Micky, Dan and Ben (though there is a problem as he has not appeared much at meetings) we have came up with a team which is 42, which is in the TV show hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is the meaning of life and everything, we decided on the name in a team meeting, we also have designed team logos for the team, in the end we decided on this logo

We have also decided on the games genre and which age group it belongs to, we decided in another team meeting that it would be rated 12 and would be a post apocalyptic racing game, the minutes we write down during the meeting and given to the other people in out group via e-mail. overall the team works well together apart from the problem with timing,






identify the roles in your team.

Daniel O’Neill-Stone: i think the role for him in the group is product manager

Ben Perkins: due to his skills in 3D studio max i thing he would be a artist/lead artist

Micheal Kaye: i think that his role would be assistant producer

Sean: i think due to his skills in adobe photoshop, i think his role would be game designer

Matthew Carrington: i think my role would be brand manager




constraints
there maybe problems through out the project, notably wether of not people can make it to team meetings on time, for example if someone cannot make to a meeting due to the snow, however this can be sorted out by having a telephone confrance another thing that i think that maybe a problem