Making a game is hard.
Making a game while managing seven people is harder.
Making a game while managing seven people and being the environment artist is really really hard.
BUT when have I ever backed down from a challenge? Never, regardless of how unrealistically difficult it is.
The newest film draft:
We've decided to add more arm animations into the ending so the quarry slip doesn't look as anomalous. It added more work onto me, but I managed to get it done, so now it just needs to be implemented.
Tree fall:
Quarry fall:
Sinking from climax to reflection dream:
Here's the storyboards and animations for the game cinematics too:
Phone grab for first cinematic:
Phone grab for last cinematic:
I still have to do the animation where he grabs the door handle, but I'll be doing that after writing this blog.
I've been doing a bunch of stuff I've been putting off, like texturing boring assets I haven't gotten around to and fixing the window asset.
Like I said, pretty boring.
Also, this dreaded goddamn tent I've been putting off for a semester and a half.
Which turned out to look pretty sick (Idk I guess I'm talented or something.)
Speaking of other sick things, I did some more set dressing this week!
Here's the new reflection dream:
People seem to like it, and I think it needs a little work but it looks pretty good. I feel it gets the same point across without looking lame and anti-climatic.
I am enjoying working on the forest though.
Added all the cliffs I need.
Now it's just filling the rest of the space. Which will take ages but, what else is there to do?
I'm ALMOST there with lighting. I was messing around with it yesterday and got some solid results. Previously, I was having issues with the color not showing up unless it was in direct light and the shadows were way too dark. I was able to fix it by adding a visual environment override to my global volume and it fixed so many things.
You can SEE!
The only problem is that it's affecting the HDRI sky weirdly. I haven't had time to really mess with it since I looked at it last, but I think I'm close to getting some good lighting.
Sean has been doing some solid work on the quarry too.
He added some lighting and put in the new assets and created cliffs all around the base. There's still work to be done and I'll need to go in and finagle with stuff, but it's really coming along!
Sean came to our meeting with Rockstar yesterday and they gave him great advice for the quarry and how to improve it. I'm so excited to see what he does with it, and I think he enjoyed the meeting.
It was a great meeting. I got a lot of positive expletives ("That looks f*cking awesome" in reference to the forest,) and they said if they had only glanced at my forest screenshots, they would have thought it was a photograph. I also just received a ton of great advice and I feel really invigorated about the project.
Project Management:
We added a new member this week as well. He worked with Hammer and I on CaRPG and he will be doing the sound effects and UI design. We weren't really scrambling to get new team members because we are behind, but the extra help has eased the pressure on Sean and I.
The big thing I'm struggling with is trying to get all the pieces of the project happening smoothly, but because it's a two part thesis and so many people are working on it simultaneously, I couldn't figure out the best way to do that.
Here's a graphic I made because I was stressed out.
With the help of my boyfriend, who was really kind to me and worked with me to start a plan for the rest of the semester that I then finished, I got more organized. It helps me to have lists in different formats of what needs to be done, so I have a word doc and the trello to help me keep track now.
We had a meeting with everyone from both the film and game side of things on Wednesday, and I made a great powerpoint and took charge of the discussion topics. My developers were very helpful answering questions and destressing me about things I felt insecure about, like managing the unity files and avoiding merge conflicts. I made a discord for everyone to communicate on, because at this point I was the main hub of communication and it was starting to wear on me.
I also made a handy tutorial for my music and dialogue person to learn how to use Github, and I'm realizing I miss writing tutorials. I don't have the time for it, but I really want to return to my Substance tutorial and work on that more. :(
This is getting way too long and I'm tiring myself out too much for my capstone meeting coming up, so I'll do more reflection on project management in another post. Overall, I'm feeling confident about the project and I think we're on track to finish by the end of the semester.
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