Week 4

Overview

 A lot happened this week. We gave our prototype presentation and immediately knew what we had to step up on. We had to get a working boss ASAP and at this time, we are nearly there. Our boss mechanics are programmed in and ready and we also have a game quality model, rigged and textured.

Wonderful job by our lead artist, Trevor Goodwin. 

Our boss size in relation to our player. 

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Personal Contributions

We had a very big obstacle that had to be clarified at any cost. THE MAP. Arco was pitched as an open world, and we just did not have a single map drawn, nor a plan for how to lay out the city. We not only have a map now, but have laid it out in such a way that can add organization and direction to our personal milestones. 

Basic overview of the Arco map and placement of events.
Big thanks to fellow teammate Kristal Nembhard for turning this map out in a single day.   

Arco is laid out in Zones so we can make marked visual distinctions for the player. The zones also aid to assign tasks to the art team that have a clear purpose

Distribution of Unique buildings to 'reuse' buildings. A way to scope the workload but keep our map from becoming a maze of same buildings. 

We first laid out the map to scale on the ground plane in Unreal.
Our lead, Daniel Boisselle discovered how to utilize a mode called BSP.  
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Using the BSP mode in Unreal we can layout the basic shapes of the entire world super fast. 

Artists can export these place-setters into a modeling software, model the final models, texture them, and then place them back into the game. 

These are what I could complete from start to finish in a single day. I was also able to reach a fully complete model for two other buildings. The speed that this workflow adds is going to be key to the success of our project. 

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​I was able to complete, test and implement my ideas for procedural music.
​This shows off my progress with my first attempt with composing for procedural game music. I'm using the Indian theory of mantras. These would be the low intensity parts you hear. The mantra for each location is a constant. When a player enters combat, the intensified, 'song' part of the track is revealed. This high intensity overlay can end at any moment a battle ends and there is no noticeably jarring moment where you hear tracks stop or start. So this is just a demo. and I would like to account for the initial start of combat with a cymbal roll out. I would do this outside of these 2 tracks through programming(blueprints). Overall, I'm glad that all the theory I've looked into is working out! 
I also completed the musical scores for the opening and closing cut scenes we know will be in the game.