Aaron Robinson Systems Designer
The adventure team project, is a third person, exploration and platforming based walking simulator. You control a character who explores 4 levels of lush environments, collecting treasures and avoiding pitfalls along the way. Over the course of 3 weeks, my team members and I worked to create a exciting interlocking level, with many dangers and rewards as we could to make an overall fun experience.
"Adventure"
Third Person Walking Simulator
What went right:
1. This was my first chance to work as a team on a single project. So everything that accompanies that, from learning perforce, to communicating over discord, was a new exciting experience. I enjoyed seeing everything come together from start to finish, from the eyes of someone eager to take part in this type of work. I am proud of myself for taking the time to create a discord and attempting to organize daily standups.
What went right:
2. Furthering my skills in blockmeshing, I got to create a more immersive experience through more enhanced detailing techniques. I took what was a mostly empty blocked out castle and courtyard and fleshed it out with details such as furniture, wall candelabras, cages, and artistic interior design touches like columns. All this while still in blockmesh form.
What went right:
3. I got to see my blockmesh iterated further into a fleshed out creative work. I had always wondered how to turn a beast into a thing of beauty. The more I worked, the more I learned, the more excited I became. As I chained rocks together, rotating and moving them along the way, I saw as my initial blockmesh turned into a realistic cave.
What went right:
4. When I first tackled the task of lighting my blockmesh, it was intimidating to say the least. I wrestled with things being too dark and things being too bright. I just couldn't seem to figure it out like I wanted to. With further practice on this project, I learned a few things that made my final product look way better than I could've hoped. From creating candlelight, to adding ambient lighting to my cave, I am now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! Pun intended!
What went right:
5. Decoration is almost equally as intimidating as lighting, but it is also even more satisfying. Learning to hide seams add immersion through little design tweaks, is a fulfilling process. Having something that was so bare bones blossom into an environment with everything from running streams, to a messy dining room, to a royal bedroom feels like an accomplishment that I feel excited to expand upon.
What went wrong:
1. While it was exciting to embark on a journey as a member of a team, that comes with it's fair share of hiccups. Scheduling conflicts, an overall lack of communication as a whole, and one non-existent team member made things less smooth than I would've preferred. While I tried to take the reigns and bring us together, it didn't ever really pan out into a cohesive environment, sadly.
What went wrong:
2. Lighting can be fickle. It has it's good moments and it's bad moments. When building the lighting for my final project, the lighting turned out blocky and strange. It was ugly to say the least. I didn't understand immediately what was going on, but after some tweaking and debugging, I was eventually able to turn that bad into something solid.
What went wrong:
3. When starting Beta, I had some issues packaging a build. I was getting an unknown error that caused it to fail. With some help from the instructor, I was able to fix the problem, and learn some ways to troubleshoot similar problems in the process. I sense a theme developing in that most of my bad experiences had a silver lining in the end.
What went wrong:
4. After migrating and integrating my level, I noticed on an initial playthrough that my level sequences did not function properly. The transforms for the animated assets were not dynamic so they would teleport upon triggering. It was an easy fix, that started out as a small headache.
What went wrong:
5. There were many small bugs here and there that I caught through intensive playtesting. Things like, not removing collision from things like ivy and grass causing you to bounce off them when needing to walk over them or climb up near them respectively. Things like void appearing in spots I had just removed blockmesh because I did not cover the spaces well enough. It shows the value of constant playtesting to catch all of these grievances.
Overall, working this month was a valuable learning experience. I feel through the good and the bad, I learned something from all those experiences that I can take with me and use in my career going forward. The whole month put a massive smile on my face because it made me realize how close I am getting to achieving my dreams. playtesting to catch all of these grievances.
