What is a Game Engine?

A game engine is a piece of software that is used by developers in order to create video games. Previously, all games were created from scratch each time, requiring a rewrite of the same kind of code for displaying the graphics, accepting input, processing sound, managing gameplay elements, AI, etc. This was especially aggravating when creating games similar to each other since that would mean writing very similar code over and over again. Furthermore, before game engines, creating and designing content using assets was often-times hardcoded which meant most level design was done by programmers who typically have a poor track record for being particularly artistically minded.

Of course, after a while of doing this, some bright sparks had the idea of creating a stable base, which contained all these non-specific game elements from which games could then be created from.

Nowadays game engines are often created in house for the specific needs of the company and the kind of games they create. Despite the frequent specialisation of company's towards certain genres and types of games, the engines themselves are designed to be quite generalised. This is due to a few factors, including the rapidly changing desires of the market and also the possibility of selling licenses to other companies. Epic is the most obvious example of this. Creators of the Unreal Engine, Epic frequently sells the right to use the engine for other companies to use for their own games, from which Epic takes a cut of the sales. This has provesd quite lucrative and most games released by Epic are closer to tech demos and advertisements of the capabilities of their engine than actual commercial ventures in and of themselves.

But I digress, because first we should discuss what the engine does.
The most noticeable thing that a game engine handles, from a consumers point of view, is the graphics rendering. This is done in real-time (meaning every second thirty frames are rendered) because of the interactive nature of video games. This means games engines have be fast.
The next part the game engine handles is the player input, from a mouse, keyboard, controller, joystick etc, etc. This is what allows the person in front of the screen change what is happening behind the screen.
After receiving input the game engine has to simulate everything in the background. This includes AI, physics, triggers, event, loading and unloading and changing variables. In simpler games the game simulates these things every frame. However, for more complicated games this would cause massive amounts of slowdown, lowering the frame rate and making it an unejoyable experience. As such, many game run the simulation at fixed intervals and the engine then interpolated between the two simulation snapshots, displaying this interpolated information through the graphics. Of course this comes with its own set of problems such as AI not updating to new stimuli often enough or physics being inaccurate but for the most part this method works well.
AI is "artificial intelligence", a routine in the game program as a whole that controls nonplayer characters and allows them to make decisions. It often determines where the AI can and will move (with the aid of path nodes or a Names) and when it will take certain actions.
Physics are a part of the simulation that tries to mimic the natural movement of objects due to unscripted forces. There are actually pieces of middleware such as Havok that is "plugged in" to the engine and handles the physics itself without the programmers having to write an entire physics engine from scratch. Physics also handle any of the collision of a game, making objects solid and preventing the player from running through walls or falling through the floor.
Loading and unloading is part of the optimisation that game engines make so that the the designers can create larger and more detailed levels without massively increasing the computing requirements. Another part of this optimisation is back-face culling. The facing of a polygon is determined by the order in which it's points are defined and so anything that is designated as a "back-face" is not rendered at all saving massive amounts of computational power. A similar idea to this is called occlusion culling in which the game engines determines what the player can and can't see and then doesn't render anything that can't be seen.

Once all these simulations have finished or the game has determined the where everything is on screen through interpolation, the game renders the graphics, processes the sound and displays the output to the player, ready and waiting for more input.
Of course some game engines do more or less than these things and different aspects are emphasised or removed depending on what the engine will be used for.

An important thing to note is two distinct types of game engines. Again, of course there are more and different combinations of styles of engines can be made. But for now, an part of designing a game engine is deciding on its dimensionality: should it be 2d or 3d. The difference between the two is, in a way, small. A 3 dimensional game simply as an extra coordinate, z. There are.things that are affected by this change but for the most part that is the difference between those two types.

11 Seconds - Animation Overveiw

Animation: 
Creating an illusion of movement by rapidly display a sequence of images. Derived from the Latin Animatio, "the act of bringing to life", which is a combination of Animo, "give life to", and -atio, "the act of".

History of Animation:

Earliest Examples
Examples of attempts at conveying movement using two dimensional images date back to the stone ages. Borne from a survival instinct of sharing information, humans love telling stories and sometimes images painted on the walls of pre-historic dwellings pictured animals with multiple sets of legs, presumably in an attempt to depict motion. These, of course, aren't actual animations, but they do demonstrate a clear desire for it.

Recent History
-Thaumatrope, created in 1824 by Sir John Herschel. It was used to demonstrate the "Phi phenomenom"(or the persistence of vision). It is a double sided card with a string from the top and bottom in the center. When the string is spun with sufficient speed the images on both sides of the card appear to combine into a single image.
-Phenakistoscope, created in 1831 simultaneously by Joseph Plateau and Simon Von Stampfer. Consists of a disk with a series of images and a correspoding set of slots. The device is placed facing a mirror and then spun, the veiwer looking through the slots. At it spins the image the veiwer can see changes, creating the illusion of movement. The animations created by these devices are looped so that it ends at the beginning, allowing it to repeat indefinitely.
-Zoetrope, a similar invention created in 180 AD by Chinese inventor Ting Huan, the modern version was invented in 1834 by William George Horner. A cylindrical spinning device with a set of images on the inside and slots above that. As it spun the veiwer would look through the slots and the image would spin. It was superior to the Phenakistoscope due to the lack of mirror requirement and ability to allow multiple people to veiw it at once.
-Flip Books, a simple idea patented by John Barnes Linnett. It is a book of particlarly spring pages on which the edge opposite the spine of every page would be an image, each one a series of the animation. As the name implies, the veiwer would hold the book by the spine and flip the pages sequentially, making visible each image in order, creating a moving visual.
-Praxinoscope, created by Charles-Emile Reynaud in 1877, it was the first animated projection. The project slides were notable for actually being hand drawn animation on transparent strips.

Traditional Animation

Animation was first done in what we now call a traditional style at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Silent Era
In 1908, Emile Cohl created Fantasmagorie, a two minute animation with each frame drawn by hand. Due to the short duration and simplistic visuals, this was possible by one man. Traditional animations of a grander scale required teams of artists working in tandem.

A stop-motion animation called The Humpty Dumpty Circus was made in 1908 by J. Stewart Blackton and Albert E. Smith. Stop motion involves taking pictures of real life objects and then moving them frame by frame, picture by picture. Then the set of images are strung together and produce the illusion of movement.

Influenced by Emile Cohl, Ladislas Starevich created a stop motion animation using dead insects with wire limbs called The Cameraman's Revenge which is cited as the first example of an animation that contains a detailed and complex story with multiple characters.

Commercialisation of these more detailed, traditional animations, was not viable until 1914 during which an employee of John Bray Studios, Earl Hund, patented the cel technique. This involved animating moving objects on transparent sheets when were then placed over a static background and then photographed which reduced the workload massively and allowed a team of animators to create a series. A further innovation that eased a transition into commercialism was the creation of rotoscoping, invented by Max and Dave Fleischer. The first merchandised cartoon was Felix the Cat in 1920 who soon became a household name and the first animated feature film was Adventures of Prince Achmed created by Lotte Reiniger and Verthold Bartosch in 1926.

The Golden Age of Animation
In 1923, Walt Disney's studio Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupt. Despite this setback, Disney decided to try again and opened a new studio in Los Angeles. He later went on to create the animated character, Mickey Mouse, a household name and also the first successful feature length animated film.

Seven years after Disney set up the The Walt Disney Company, Warner Brother's Cartoons was put together. In contrast to Disney, the animators working at the company were allowed much more freedom and expression which meant different people gained distinctive personal styles. For example, Tex Avery introduced The Loony Tunes characters which appealed to a much wider audience than Disney's children-specific demographic.

Modern Animation
Animation created in recent times is still often done in the traditional way. Computer technology, however, has revolutionised the way animation is created and has also paved the way for a new technique of animating: CGI animation.

Animating on the computer can take two forms: two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Two-dimensional computer animating is often similar to traditional with some of the limitations removed whereas three-dimensional animation is actually similar to stopmotion. A digital model is created, and then a skeleton is made, and the model is rigged up to the skeleton. Moving the skeleton bone structure moves the vertices composing the model. This is still a painstaking process and is slightly more limited than handdrawn animation but allows for aspects such as perspective and scale to always be correct.

11 Seconds - 3D

Research

Since Maya was really the only available 3d animation suite available to me, no research was required to figure out how I was going to create the animation. After finding the rig I wanted to use (Max from the 11secondclub website), I set about creating the actual animation. Once again the 12 basic principles of animation I found during my research for my 2d animation proved invaluable. Whilst some of the principles were difficult to apply to 3d, I tried to apply some of the others specifically, including Anticipation, Follow Through and Overlapping Action, Slow In and Slow Out, Arcs and Secondary Action.

Brainstorm

Storyboards

Download here.

Creative Process

First step was importing the rigged models. I found a slight issue with rotating the entire character, especially without a master controller, so instead imported a copy of the character which had been duplicated in the negative X. Then I colour coded them in red and blue, to aid the audience in differentiating between the two characters.

Evaluation
Here is the link to the final animation: link.

Overall, I think the animation looked relatively good. A lot of the motion was smooth and realistic. The faces of the characters accurately conveyed my intended emotions and looked appealing. Also, the subtle secondary animation with the red character rotating his finger really helped to create anticipation which I feel worked really well. Unfortunately, whilst the detailed movements and facial animation works really well, the larger movements of the body are very reigned in and could really be pushed more to exaggerate the movements and increase readability and appeal. Also, towards the end of the animation (around 00:07 onward) the movement is much more robotic than the rest of the animation. This was caused by a lack of planning which meant I rapidly ran out of time. Moreover, because I didn't have great planning, I relied on straight ahead action rather than using pose to pose which meant, as I mentioned previously, that the larger movements weren't exaggerated adequately.

11 Seconds - 2D

Research
My time researching was categorised into two different areas: tools and principles. By researching into tools I was trying to determine what programs or types of animation would work best for me, considering things like the learning curve, ease of use, features or range of what is possible as well as the quality that could be produced. Here are some of the options I found available to me:

• Stop motion
• Paper
• Clay
• Leg/Toys/Objects
• Hand Drawn (Traditional)
• Adobe Photoshop 
• Adobe Flash

Due to personal preference, I eschewed the thought of doing stopmotion- while simple and easy to learn, timings things to a soundtrack with it is actually quite difficult to do and since I knew I wouldn't have much time (just 3 weeks from beginning to research to final animation) I didn't want to risk getting stuck trying to line everything up only to run out of time. Furthermore, due to the lack of computer generated interpolation, I would be limited to a maximum number of frames by the amount of time I had available. As such, the animation would never be as smooth as I could get it by using computer software to aid me.

Despite the thought of an entirely hand drawn animation being impressive, I also recognised it would be time consuming with many of the same issues as stop motion and so I began looking into two-dimensional animation packages on the computer.

There were two major options, both from Adobe. One was the ever popular Photoshop, designed primarily for photo editing and manipulation with basic animation as one of its features, and the other was Flash, built for, among other things, animation from the get go.

Tutorials for animation in Photoshop were few and far between and searching for them meant sifting through tutorials about the main focus of the program. Despite being mostly intuitive, the interface was frustrating because a few things weren't intuitive. Moreover, I struggled to find a way to easily control the frames of the animation and there was no way I found that allowed me to import the sound file, meaning synchronisation of the audio and visual components would be difficult and the final result would have to be manipulated in a different, external program after the fact, an idea I did not relish.

Flash, being something I had dabbled in slightly a few years back, was much easier to pick up and go. I'm sure there were many inefficiencies and silly decision I did make in Flash that could have been remedied with the proper application of some of the automation tools that Flash provides but I found simple, frame by frame animation worked fine for my needs and Flash allowed me to do that intuitively. The onion skinning feature was invaluable and towards the end of the animation I wanted to experimented with motion tweening, in an attempt to emulate the smoothness of camera movement and Flash was much easier in that regard. With time running short I chose Flash.

After my research into what kind of animation I wanted to produce I then wanted to look into how to actually make animation that looked good. My first search actually came upon an invaluable resource which I had heard of time and time again in the past: Disney Animation - The Illusion of Life by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. It sets out twelve basic principles of animation that animators use to create interesting and good looking animation that is believable:

-Squash and Stretch
-Anticipation
-Staging
-Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
-Follow Through and Overlapping Action
-Slow In and Slow Out
-Arcs
-Secondary Action
-Timing
-Exaggeration
-Solid Drawing
-Appeal

This information proved critical in order to achieve to quality of animation that I did reach; without it my animations would have been much more basic and amateurish.

Brainstorm

Storyboards
Link to storyboard here.

Creative Process
Creation was done entirely in Flash, using "Pose to Pose" animation rather than Straight Ahead Action

Evaluation

Horror Project

WORKFLOW

Inital Brief:
-3D level
-Use UDK
-About a single phobia

Pre-Production:
-Phobia Research
-Horror Research
-Art Mediums
-Inital Sketches
-Detailed Concepts
-Final Concepts
-Layouts

Production:
-Create Assets
-Layout Test
-Build Main Sections
-Import assets, define details, materials
-Light Level
-Kismet/Script Level

Post-Production:
-Feedback
-Evaluation

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Pre-Production
Phobia Research

Fear is a primal feeling of dislike, a desire to run, a instinct to protect oneself. This means that fear occurs under rational circumstances, where danger is present. A phobia is typically an irrational fear, where the same emotion is felt but there is no danger, simply something which the experiencer is scared of without reason.

Examples of common phobias:
-Spiders
-Clowns
-Heights
-The Dark
-Being Alone
-Small Spaces
-Large, Open Spaces
-Snakes

More esoteric phobias:
-Cotton Wool
-Being Touched
-Mouths
-Being Ridiculed
-Throwing Things Out (Hoarding)
-Sex

Evaluation of usefulness per phobia:
Spiders: Very typical, used often, sublety is difficult. Personal fear of spiders is detrimental to working on this.
Clowns: Same as above, easier to be subtle... interesting designs, may require lots of face models
Heights: Same again, once more easier to be subtle, not much room for different aspects of horror/terror
The Dark: Unsurprisingly, common phobias are commonly used. Probably overused, new directions difficult.
Being Alone: Difficult to convey without much conventional narrative.
Small Spaces: Easy to demonstrate, possibly difficult to create tension with, without other elements.
Large, Open Spaces: Again, maybe use in conjunction with other phobias without explicitly naming it?
Snakes: See spiders.
Cotton Wool: Would probably require yet to be invented periphals that convey the texture of a surface to the touch.
Being Touched: Possible difficulties similar to cotton wool but maybe less so... also, not easy to convey or maintain for an extended period.
Mouths: Unusual, possible difficulties with sublety, scope is mild, overall promising.
Being Ridiculed: Initial ideas require recording multiple sounds, though staging possibilities seem interesting. More narrative based.
Throwing Things Out (Hoarding): Probably too specific to sufferers. Discarded for the most part.
Sex: Requires a maturity and a great deal of understanding that I feel I lack. Also probably requires extensive modelling at a high level.

The most promising phobias appear to be Spiders, Clowns, Heights, Mouths or Being Ridiculed.

Pre-Production
Horror Research

Consider the difference between horror and terror. Horror is the feeling of revulsion or disgust after witnessing a frightful occurrence, terror is the anticipation, the feeling of unease before the actual act.

Typically, in a horror game, gore and blood and scary things are used to induce a feeling of "horror" in the player. However, terror is most often claimed to be more effective by horror enthusiasts. They believe that horror is a cheap scare, and really, the more satisfying of the two is the insidious paranoia brought on by a feeling of terror.

Horror Games:
-Silent Hill 2
-Amnesia: The Dark Descent
-Fatal Frame
-System Shock 2

It is also useful to examine films, the closest entertainment medium to games we currently have.

Horror Movies:
-Psycho
-Saw
-The Ring
-The Shining
-A Nightmare On Elm Street

Pre-Production
Art Mediums

During the production of the concept work for my level I experimented with various different mediums, in effort to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each. The four mediums that I used were pencil, Copic markers, charcoal and digital (Photoshop).

Pencil
The standard, basic material that works decently well for almost every situation.  It's good for creating clean and detailed work, has a wide range of values for creating shadows and is also great for giving surfaces texture. It's relatively forgiving as it is easy to lay down light strokes and erase mistakes. A slight disadvantage is a the relative difficulty in laying down silhouettes in comparison to other mediums which makes it marginally less useful in the initial concept stages.

Copic Markers
A set of monotone markers ranging from a dark-as-night black to a barely-there pale grey, these each have two tips: at one end a flat headed marker and the other end a standard tip. These are perfect for initial concepts and the flat headed ends are perfect for silhouetting out interesting shapes. I use the standard tip for detail and it works quite.  The one negative to using these markers is the lack of a sharp point that makes fine details more difficult to achieve. Still, the ability to create good silhouettes, blend different values together and some capacity to do detailing make these a pleasure to work with and situationally useful.

Charcoal
Of this, I am not a fan. I find it messy, difficult to control, inconsistent and not very effective in the way of creating details. On the more positive side it creates what I feel to be quite dank looking environments, with lots of soft, dark shadows, which create a sense of mystery on the page. For this horror project, that effect was ideal and as such, despite my personal distaste for the material, I did, on occasion (read: once), manage to make it work enough to create a piece that worked well.

Digital (Photoshop)
My personal favourite of the bunch, working digitally is the most forgiving and requires the least amount of artistic skill to produce something that one can be relatively happy with. Much like pencil, it requires very little effort into learning the medium itself. One can simply jump in with a brush and start creating. Furthermore, the nature of digital means I can work non-destructively, always tweaking, changing things without having to worry about mistakes. It allows me to experiment more openly and push further than I would feel comfortable doing in traditional for fear of ruining a piece.

Photoshop is versatile and allows for creating many different styles of work. It does have some difficulty imitating real life mediums and so loses some of that texture and unevenness that can prevent an image from becoming too clinical. However, adding actual texture to a material in an image is much easier and less time consuming. Overall, an incredibly powerful and relatively easy to use tool.

TL;DR - It's amazing and I love it and it's great.

Pre-Production
Initial Sketches

Brainstorm about aspects of the different phobias

A quick set of digital paintings to explore the variety of environments that each phobia gave me.

A mood board to stimulate the brain and provide accurate, detailed information about forms.

A mood board to stimulate the brain and provide accurate, detailed information about forms. There is not mood board for spiders because despite the fact I did look up reference images for some parts of work, my phobia of them begged me not to have a file on my computer containing nothing but images of them. Unprofessional, maybe, but even still... not happening.

A quick greyscale set of thumbnails to determine a style and tone to try and keep consistent. Also worked well as a warm up to get the brain thinking in the right sort of way for a horror concept.

Initial set of concepts of a few aspects of each phobia to decide what was actually scary about each one. The detailed mouth image actually inspired one of the set pieces in the final level.

Pre-Production
Detailed Concepts

These are the more detailed variations on that mouth idea from my thumbnails. I tried a few different variations before deciding on the bottom left line-sketch design with a tongue and flatter teeth which is less realistic. I coloured it to get a better sense of the depth of the image and used it to base my final concept off of.

Pre-Production
Final Concepts

One of my final concepts was done in photoshop so I can demonstrate it here. The other two were done in Copic markers and charcoal and are physical copies.

One of my final concepts, this was used as the design for the "ScaryFace" set piece.

Pre-Production
Layouts

After designing the set pieces I wanted to include in the level, I set about creating a flowing environment in order to piece them together.

Layout 1 : Basic Layout

Explanation
In this first layout I started simple. Lining them up, one to one to one, linearly. This, of course created a very disinteresting map but I decided I wanted to start on the basics so I could figure out which pieces should go in what order. The "TallRoom" is the spawn room, and from there, the four corridors split off, three being blocked and one leading directly into the "SquelchRoom". From there, at the top of the jumping puzzle goes directly to a normal corridor which ends with "ScaryFace". At the back of his throat is the "TableRoom" which then constitutes the end of the level.
Evaluation
The "TallRoom" as a beginning point has both positives and negatives. Firstly, it works because of the scale, which induces awe immediately. Also, the broken rubble blocking of more paths creates the sense of a larger area, a more real place than just a box room created for a game. It has problems, however, because the lack of a real build up. It doesn't provide any context and also feels slightly random, disconnected compared to the rest of the level. (Note, this could be a result of a poorly designed set-piece that doesn't fit with the rest of the level, rather than an actual problem with the order.)
The "SquelchRoom" also doesn't really fit, connecting straight from what is quite obviously a man-made structure to an organic environment. I feel as though it should go behind "ScaryFace" as this lead up makes more sense and provides greater context.
Next up is the corridor to "ScaryFace". I feel that going from inorganic, to organic, to inorganic, to organic once again is a poor order of things, without a clear build up, chopping and changing between two environments and doesn't make much sense.
Finally, the "TableRoom" makes up the end of the level. This, I feel, kind of fits, with the reveal of the words at the end.


Layout 2 : AppearingFace Layout

Explanation
The second time around I wanted to explore more interesting possibilities, as well as try and fix some of the issues with the first layout, especially the order of the set pieces. In a familiar set up, the level will start in the "TallRoom". Then into a generic corridor leading up to a trigger which replaces it with "ScaryFace". This then leads to the "SquelchRoom" and then to a final corridor which terminates in the "TableRoom".

Evaluation
The same problems exist as before, as well as the advantages.
From there, the available corridor leads to a few doors, some of which are locked, some lead into empty rooms and one to another corridor. This second corridor will have a door at the end. As the player works down the corridor, the lights will flicker off and during the darkness, "ScaryFace" will stream in, and the doors at either end will disappear, forcing the player in the desired direction. From his throat will lead into the "SquelchRoom" and then the table room once more.


Layout 3 : FallingDown Layout

Explanation
This time I wanted to try an idea I'd had where the level is essentially an infinite loop. The player would end up at the beginning and everything would reset and there would be no end. I wanted this to increase the feeling and despair and feeling lost. The player would start in a variation of the "TableRoom" that looked perfectly normal. Upon trying to leave via the only exit, the floor would disappear from underneath them and they would fall, landing into a copy of the "TableRoom" that was more disturbing. from there, a corridor into the "TallRoom" in which the only exit available would lead to "ScaryFace". From there to the "SquelchRoom" And then the exit of that would take the player back to the normal version of the table room for everything to reset.

Evaluation
Starting in a normal version of the "TableRoom" actually works really well to juxtapose the scarier version against and I feel it would heighten the feeling of unease in the player. Also, I really liked the idea of the player falling downwards, a similar idea to "falling down the rabbit hole". Going from there to the "TallRoom" made sense thematically, and helped me link the two separate environments of a normal building to the innards of a a person, introducing coherency in the level design and making a subtle narrative with the actual level design itself. From there a door opened to "ScaryFace" which set up for the "SquelchRoom". This, I felt was the weakest part of the level as the reveal for "ScaryFace" wouldn't be that scary. The exit of "SquelchRoom" would lead to the player falling once again into the normal version of the "TableRoom" so the level could start again. Initally I though this would increase the feeling of despair and feeling lost but in practice, because the level was so long and there was only one route, it because boring and repetative without increasding the tension at all.


Layout 4 : Final Layout

The layout that I decided to use in the end was a version of "FallingDown" with a few small additions from "AppearingFace". The overall layout would be pretty much the same as "FallingDown" except the corridor to "ScaryFace" would be the same as in "AppearingFace" and it would make the face appear in the same way. This negated the problem I had with the face not being a particularly big reveal in Layout 3. Also, I had hoped to include the rooms alongside the corridors but due to time constraints had to cut them. Creating additional assets for optional areas was extra time that I didn't want to take, instead focusing on polishing the level up as much as possible. Finally, because I felt the never-ending level idea would actually detract from the levels scariness, I cut it, instead opting to end the level when the player got to the end of the "SquelchRoom".


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Production
Create Assets

For this level I created a lot of assets, all UV unwrapped (to varying degrees of quality), textured and some even have custom collision meshes. Here is a list of everything I created:

-Curved throat piece (with custom collision)
-Straight throat piece (with custom collision)
-Chair
-Door
-Planks to bar the door
-A fake wall
-A small floor transition to hide the seam of floor textures
-Picture frame
-Pillar
-3 different platforms (each with custom collision meshes)
-Ramp
-Rubble
-Scary face (with custom collision)
-Eyes
-A set of teeth (seperate meshes, top and bottom)
-Tongue
-Uvula
-Squelch room (with custom collision)
-Table

This totals an overall count of 22 custom meshes created in Maya. I also experiemented and took the Picture Frame model into zBrush to make a highpoly version and bake out a normal. It worked quite well and although zBrush is deep and complex tool, it was easy enough to use the basics of and gave me decent results even from a newcomer to the software. The actual textures were mostly created from images composited from cgTextures and altered in Photoshop, with the majority of normals created using the diffuse map in a piece of software called SmartNormal, which often doesn't give the best of results. Furthermore, I created 7 tileable textures (again using cgTextures) all with normals from SmartNormal.



Production
Layout Test

For the SquelchRoom I needed to prototype the jumping section so that I knew how well it worked, whether it was even possible, readjust the layout, then evaluate the difficulty, readjust again, over and over till I felt it worked well. The UDK is ideal for this because of the inbuilt BSP system that allows for rapid creation of simple environments that are easy to test and then adjust.

The layout didn't change dramatically from it's first incarnation. I focused mostly on refining the difficulty of the jumping which I felt at the time (and still do) was a necessary mistake due to time constraints.

Production
Build Main Sections


Defining the main areas was a simple task. Normally, I would endeavour to create the entire layout in BSP and then see how well it flows, how good the pacing is and then be able to tweak or evening re-imagine as needed. However, due to the scope of my level and all the detailed assets creation required, I ended up forgoing this and simply creating the base rooms out of BSP. Essentially all the walls and floors except in the "SquelchRoom" are BSP with materials and so all of that was done at this step.

Production
Import Assets
Place Meshes
Materials

Importing the assets was time consuming but, thankfully, due to my extensive, vigorous and consistent naming conventions and folder organization, I could do it efficiently.

Placing the meshes was a simple job since I  had planned out the layout before hand and knew where everything went. At this stage I put in some height fog to give great depth and atmosphere, especially in the "TallRoom".

Materials was a simple enough job, much of it consisted of just plugging the right textures into the right slots for the decals it was a bit more involved.

Production
Light Level

Lighting things went smoothly for the most part. There was a skylight to kill any pitch black areas and I tried to use lights one where I had put light sources but in the end I needed a few to highlight doorways and also the "SquelchRoom" had no light source. Thankfully, it looked okay since the walls looked as though they believably glowed sufficiently to light up the room.

Production
Kismet/Script Level

The main sequence of Kismet in its entirety. Has four parts (clockwise from top left): StartOfLevel, EndOfLevel, FalseCorridor and False Room.

The second sequence, stored in a streamed level, this used a trigger to start a matinee which opened a door, whilst playing the correct sound at the right time.

StartOfLevel: When the level intially loads, I make sure that the FalseCorridor and FalseRoom levels are also loaded and visible. The wire exiting the bottom of the image initialises the normal music. Once the player is spawned, using console commands, I adjust the FoV, change the players walking speed and turn on godmode. In the future I would probably also hide the player model at this point.

FalseRoom: When the player touches the trigger, the normal music is turned off, a sudden sound plays in effort to make the player jump and creepy music starts playing which feeds back into itself to ensure it loops. And most importantly, the FalseRoom level is hidden and then unloaded so that the player falls down as desired.

FalseCorridor: Touching this trigger  turns of the lights around the player and plays a sudden sound. When the sound finishes, the lights are turned back on. To do this I used a delay but I should have just used the finished 'trigger' from the Play Sound node. "Trigger_2" also hides the FalseCorridor and then unloads it, simultaneously loading in the ScaryFace level and making it visible.

EndOfLevel: Finally, this trigger is used for the end of the level. It disable input from the player, preventing them from moving and then hiding the player model (I should actually do this at the beginning of the level). It also activates a matinee sequence uses a camera to fade to black. After that completes, I make sure the streamed levels are invisble so that the players screen remains black, signifying the end of the level.

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Post-Production
Feedback

An important part of the creative process is receiving and taking in feedback and applying it. As such, I created a small questionnaire designed to hone in feedback that would be useful to me. It had to be concise, specific, with no closed questions. This is what I came up with:

-What was your overall impression of the level?

-What do you think the theme of the level was?

-What do you think didn’t work very well/could have been improved in the level?

-What were your favourite moment(s) in the level and talk a little about why you enjoyed them.

Here is a link to a copy of my original set of feedback and also a corrected set, which retain the exact same feedback but is slightly easier to read.

Original

Corrected

Post-Production
Evaluation

A horror theme isn't exactly my forte. I know very little about it, have very little interest in it and don't understand much of the nuance required to do it justice. However, researching into it did lead to some interesting discoveries that enabled me to concentrate on certain aspect that while I knew were important to the genre, previously wasn't too familiar with. Some of these things include introducing normality and then taking it away or the criticality of sound design and music in creating tension.

Concept work for this project flowed relatively well, especially after acquiring a graphics tablet and Photoshop my working at home. I find the digital workflow much more intuitive and allowed me greater creative possibilities. Furthermore, experimenting with different mediums, while interesting, didn't inspire me all too much.

The creation process itself was, as expected, lengthy. The creation of a face mesh was really difficult and the result really isn't great but at this time it is acceptable. Experimenting with level streaming went well and I think a lot of the level did work the way I wanted it to.

As for the level itself. I think it was creepy, it was tense but I'm not totally confident that it is scary. As Josh S. pointed out, it's very easy with no semblance of a failure state. As such, there is nothing in the level to really be afraid of. On further iterations I would correct this, though thinking of creative ways to punish the player that fit the phobia I chose would be difficult. The presentation of the phobia itself was subtle... so much so that not a single tester guessed it correctly. The closest was Georgia L. who guessed, "Being eaten alive". I am unsure as to whether I am pleased or displeased with this result and what, if anything, I would change. I didn't want the phobia to be obvious. If it were too clear then the level would be dull. However, I may have simply been unsuccessful at communicating the fear that I had set out to create and so may have failed in that respect. A few small errors in the level such as the Uvula not being static etc. would obviously need to be fixed.

Overall, I think the level worked well but had, as is usual, some room for improvement. The music I feel was a particular strong point and the lighting worked well. I also feel as though the jump scare was good and unexpected. The falling down portion of the level didn't work quite as intended since it was player and therefore the player had no sense of movement or direction. A few solutions come to mind though testing would be required.

Virtual Exhibition

Part of working within an artistic field is understanding where ideas come from. Knowing why things are the way they and what came before is key to creating meaningful and interesting visuals. Furthermore, recognizing the importance of how information is imparted to an observer is a critical step to creating a subtextual or inferred narrative which lends a great deal of grounding to a world or character.

During the production of our curated museum of a decade me and my team considered these things, as well prioritising information: what was necessary for the viewer to understand the significance of the decade we were exploring.

We chose the 1950’s as our decade primarily due to the prevalence and induction of Pop Art. For me, this was an interesting movement because I see it as a realisation of the direction commercialism was taking us, leading to the world as we know it today. Furthermore, the music of the time greatly interests me as it is the precursor to much of the music I listen to personally. My own prior investment of these things made it an easy decision as I knew I would produce much higher quality results if working on something that enthused me.

As a team we worked together doing research since that enabled us to give immediate feedback to each other regarding what we felt was most important to go into the gallery. My contributions include the prominence of Elvis in the display as well as the idea of creating the entire area to be a diner in the style of 1950’s diners. This, I felt, would give a greater sense of immersion of the society at the time.

After deciding what we felt would be most important to display we separated to begin creating assets for use. I started work on bar stools to put into the diner. I also created a door, some walls and a table to go along with the bench that Kerry created and UV unwrapped all 5 and then textured them. After that I created a counter for the corner and a plate to go on the tables.

Once we had all the main parts of the diner produced I started work on putting them together to create the scene. After the bulk of that was done I created a few extra informational posters to give context to the objects. Then, with those placed in along with everyone elses hard work I had finally finished and we had produced a 1950s Diner with some information about the decade.

Considerations on the presentation of our work:
I feel as though the work was presented adequately but was not as detailed or thoroughly explained as it could have been. I also feel as though I failed to properly show off the hard work off our team and look at the diner itself and finished up too quickly, a result of nerves. Unfortunately, I also started talking at one point, picking up from where a teammate had gotten stuck a little- which would have been fine if I had then handed over the reigns afterwards. I zoned in, got carried away and didn't allow either Kerry or Tim demonstrate their ability to present or their knowledge.

Bin Final Concept

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-T5e8rbvN7HT0owZXctRGZUVUk/edit?usp=sharing