This week we welcomed two new members to the team: Ella and Brett! Ella is a 3D artist and Brett is a Sound Designer (who will also take over narrative and some 3D art). Over the next three months, we will continue to develop the hub and later beginning production on Level 1!
This week is devoted to organising the scope of our vertical slice and flow, as well as onboarding our new members into Discord & Github, and continuing asset production from last trimester.
We began brainstorming ideas for a finalised hub layout. This level is important, as it is the first gameplay the player will see. It needs to be straight forward and easy to understand for the new player, while also displaying the start of the story. This simple layout allows the player to see their immediate goal from the start, and work towards it whilst learning the mechanics of the game. When exiting the tutorial, the player will get a glimpse of the path they need to take to continue level 1, and once finishing talking to NPC's at the hub, will see a glimpse of the path to level 2, which will only be unlocked after they complete level 1. It's important for the game to have various side activities in order to let the player practice their skills and get rewarded while doing it. This approach to playground style levels instead of completely linear / hallway designs will be present throughout the entire game.
Narrative:
First drafts of the narrative have been made, keeping the plot loose at this stage, focusing on characters and allowing back and forth within our group. The skeleton of Tilly and Declan's relationship has already been established as it is the driving force of Tumbletail, however we want to flesh out their relationship more, giving the player more incentive to follow Declan through the bush. The game will start with a cutscene starting in Tasmania, framing their relationship through play. Declan will bait Tilly into chasing him, running into the forest out of her sight. The narration alludes to 'monsters' which are yet to be designed and will be based on invasive species; as well as mentioning that humans are gone. This can also be explored in later levels. As she follows him, she gets magically teleported to the arid area of the pub.
At the pub she will meet Johnno, the pub owner, who lost his drinks to Wazza, a wallaroo. He promises that if the player helps him then he will help her find Declan. Some alterations need to be made as the barkeeper's species changed and a few set changes need to be added, such as meeting Wazza at the top of the 1st level. At this stage we are focused on facilitating gameplay such as explaining why Declan and Tilly end up at the mainland and why Tilly continues to level 1, however we are very interested in including representing the variety of groups and cultures in Australia in the future. At the current moment, we do not have enough characters to show any true representation, but we are especially interested in including Indigenous perspectives and cultures in the future. They are irremovable from our rich tapestry of history.
To facilitate satisfying platforming, we developed a character spawning function, allowing the player to respawn at a set location if they die. This allows players to immediately retry a platforming segment without retrying the whole level, improving their skills without damaging the flow of gameplay, making the experience more enjoyable and dynamic than punishing. We also added controller support, allowing the player to use either keyboard or controller. Playing the game with controller allows for precise movement as well as opens opportunities for cross platforming in the future.
This week we made steady progress on the environment concept art, specifically further fleshing out the back area of the pub which houses the hotel area where Tilly stays. In this area there will be the shop, manned by a sketchy ibis, peddling wares through the storage room that he's occupied to Johnno's dismay. Here the player will be able to buy upgrades using the coins that they get from the trash in the levels. Up the stairs is the player's room where story beats will occur and trophies gained on Tilly's adventures will be displayed. The remaining rooms are reserved for characters that you meet along the way, providing services and quests from their rooms, and a hallway leading to the balcony upstairs. This opens up opportunities for future services like a clothes shop or characters offering quests.
We begun adding variance to some of our previous assets, starting with the original bottle cap, bottle and crushed can. Various new textures were added as well as a new system to how the textures were made, allowing for new variants to be created and simply imported in.
Some new 3D tree models were also created to start filling the outside environment. 10 different variations of tree designs were created which were individually textured using the same method and similar colours to ensure cohesion without looking too repetitive.
In addition to this, work began on the 3D model for Declan, the younger brother character, who is planned to help drive the plot. Many aspects of modelling have been a bit quicker compared to when working on the Matilda model due to having gained more experience in the process. The topology for the model should generally be better now due to not having a change in art style partway through modelling, going from having three-dimensional eyes to having two dimensional drawings for the eyes.
The animations for Matilda (main character) were imported into engine and incorporated into the main player controller blueprint. Some technical issues arose when exporting and importing from Blender to Unreal, as scaling became inconsistent with the skeletal mesh, and the animations were not playing correctly with the animation blueprint. These issues were fixed, however some combat animations still need to be completed, as well as cleanup for the jumping and running animations. Regarding eyes for the main character, since it is a 2D plane texture, a future task will be to have an animated shader/material that will depict the eye movements & blinking. Moving forward from this, the next set of animations will be focused on Declan (younger brother), once the model, textures and rig has been completed & the introduction cutscene involving both characters.
To make the atmosphere livelier, Brett added music and ambience for the pub scene, including more Australian animal sounds into the mix, albeit mostly birds. Because the people in this world are animals, normal restaurant ambience can include kookaburras laughing and other bird calls.
The playable area surrounding the pub is a synth wind sound with once again plenty of Australian birds included into the mix. In the future, a loop of music with Didgeridoo and possibly a wobbleboard may be added to further the presentation of Australian culture. These were made with Reaper and Audacity, however over the next few weeks more research and experimentation will be done in FMOD to fully immerse the player.
Ambience and music for a possible cave scene was also created. We can still use cave ambience and /or music for the cave as a trigger if the player moves close enough. This will flesh out the level more without having to create this new area.
This week we welcomed on Charisma! She's an environmental concept artist and a 3D artist. We spent this week onboarding her and introducing her to the style for our game. Meanwhile, we implemented the final player mechanics before the year 3 students leave for Europe.
In order to cater towards our target audience (families and kids), we've decided to scope back the current plan, moving from the open zone focused environment to separate areas selected from the level select / hub. To get a head start, we will be focusing efforts on improving the grey box level from last trimester, as feedback for that area was majorily positive. This new level will start at the bottom of the tree from which the player works their way up, opening possibilities for interesting vertical platforming.
This week I designed two NPCs, Johnno the pub owner and the sketchy shop keeper in the back of Johnno's pub. Johnno will give the player quests and the ibis (who is yet to be named) will give the player upgrades in exchange for money.
These new characters were a perfect chance to explore different body types other than Tilly and Declan's skinny build. Koalas lean very well towards a squatter build, as well as an exhausted attitude very fitting for an old pub owner. Koalas must sleep from 18-22 hours a day to digest their diet of gum leaves, so this reputation is not unfounded. I exaggerated this feature by using subtle shading to hive him a five o-clock shadow.
Meanwhile, the ibis is not a mammal, producing interesting challenges in anthropomorphising a bird to fit with the other mammals. Their bodies are very balanced, having a large rear and tail that is hard to adapt. His outfit is tinted brown to make him feel dirty, like an ibis that would steal your sandwich in a city.
Both characters represent iconic Australian animals to different audiences, the Koala is easily identifiable for international audiences, however the ibis is an inside joke among Australians. This links back to our focus of being interesting to both Australians and non-Australians alike.
Johnno the Koala
The Sketchy Ibis
Size comparison
We started to fill the pub scene with various landscape elements. A variation of rocks and cliff faces were made to create the environment borders and the scene was filled with rocks and the trees made the previous week. The current texture on the cliffs was made with a Landscape RVT Material in engine, which allowed for blending of colours with noise maps, and made it easy to implement with the landscape painting tool in Unreal. The current texture is a temporary plain dirt colour that will be replaced later.
The 3D model for Declan was completed this week, with parts such as the hands, feet and hair being added to the model, as well as the clothing. Minor adjustments were made at the request of other team members, such as fixing up the collar of the shirt slightly.
The vine climbing mechanic was incorporated this week which is a core mechanic of the game, opening up more platforming opportunities. It allows the player to climb up surfaces that contain vines as they are climbable ladder-like plants which lead to paths and different areas.
We ran into one small issue when the character moved on the vine to the left, it created a right movement instead, however this was fixed after adjusting the inputs. With this implemented, we can create grey boxes for level 1.
Level loading transitions and a dialogue system were also created.
SFX:
Some Foley was created for planned sounds like punch, so that multiple stems can be made to layer sounds enough that they can be altered later as needed. These sound effects were edited with Reaper, a new program to our sound designer, Brett, which he has explored further with training videos research. After research, it was found that Reaper is better for games according to many industry leaders during research. Using this knowledge a library of sounds was created for this project, making sure that they are under Creative Commons 0 if downloaded.
Animation:
After discussing with team members about the current status of animations, we decided collectively that more cleanup work was required for the animations to better fit our 3D platformer style game. Therefore, the focus for this week was further developing the main character movement, such as the walk cycle, jump, and idle animations. As part of the upcoming level design, we decided to create a Wall Jump and Vine Climbing mechanic. While working on these in Blender, the animations were further worked on in Engine to ensure integration with the animation blueprint and thus the player controller. Some issues arose with the blending of animations, and when the combat animations were introduced for left & right punch. For combat, animation montages had to be used instead of sequences, resulting in the combat montages being run in code/blueprint directly. After finding this out through enough trial & error, these animations were successfully incorporated, and a consistent blender file was made specifically for animations to make exporting & importing into engine easier, and therefore making our workflow more efficient.
This week we welcomed yet another new group member, Olivia! She is a programmer and 3D artist. After inducting her into our group's internal communications and GitHub project files, Olivia has started working with our other programmer, Andrew. The year 3 students leave at the end of this week (Ben, AJ, Charisma and Ella), meaning that production will slow for the next three weeks.
This week's focus was to complete the Tilly animations and implement into Unreal Engine before the 3rd years left for the Europe Trip on Friday. A lot of work was put into the Animation Blueprint for the Tilly rig, where states were set up in the locomotion graph to make the animations blend and flow nicely into each other. Variables used in the main player controller blueprint (BP_PlayerBase) were called and used for the transition rulings between states, such as Move Speed and Is Climbing. A mixture of both single animation sequences and blend spaces were used to smooth the flow between each movement, and to make the player controller feel more holistic. As the rig and model was completed for Declan this week, the first goal once we return from the Europe Trip will be to complete the IK/FK controls for animating him.
I also made a blink animation for Tilly with more expressions coming soon.
Tilly's blinking was implemented with a simple event that gets called 'on event begin play' and loops upon itself, with a small amount of variability in order to make her blinking seem more lifelike and less robotic.
In addition, this week the checkpoints of the game were added which saves the player's progress at certain locations so they can resume the game without having to start all over from the beginning. This will make our grey box playtestable.
This week the rig for the Declan model was completed. Initially there was concern that the rig would not be completed before the third years went on the trip to Europe, but fortunately this was not the case. Notably, the automatic weights for the hands worked nearly perfectly, meaning very little adjustments needed to be made to them afterwards. This rig was passed onto the animator to create the IK/FK controls to make animating the model easier.
SFX:
Reaper training and sound design iteration for game sounds continued. Not much was produced but I have established a workflow and more research has been completed. Some sounds have been created and inserted into game, although just basics at this point.
Outback pub scenes music and bar atmosphere has been created and placed. The background music for the mine stage was created but the mine stage may become something else so it was put near where the potential mine will be in the outback scene.
Further exploration of sound workflow for video games.
Over the past two weeks, I developed pose and expression sheets for Matilda and Declan, focusing on getting across their playful attitudes and showing them being active as the game is a 3D platformer. Declan's pose sheet is less in depth as Matilda's, showing him doing more basic running, climbing and jumping poses, because he is yet to be animated. Meanwhile, Matilda already has some animations, so the poses are more to get her personality across for cutscenes. These expression sheets will be used to make eye decals for Matilda and Declan as well as for cutscenes in the future.
A title and logo was also designed for Tumbletail, including a white version that is being used on this site. Many Australian themed games like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger include a lot of oranges, so purple was used to contrast our game from the competition and to match the main character, Matilda. The stripe pattern is the pattern on the numbat, an endangered Australian marsupial that we plan on including in our story!
We've finally implemented an animation for Tilly's wall slide, with a separate animation made whether she has her hand on the wall or not. We swap between these animation based on a Boolean that is decided from a small collider near her head that indicated whether the hand should / should not be touching.
After finishing some polishing of what we had previously from last trimester, I began working on extending the level. Currently, we are planning for three zones, with two small transitioning areas between zones, with what we have now acting as zone 1. Having now finished the transitioning part between zones 1 and 2, next week will be focused on creating zone 2, with a focus on making it more difficult then the previous area.
After a talk with a playtester, a camera assist mechanic was developed where the camera follows the the player's movement inputs and return to behind the character if left untouched. This helped younger players play, as they would often forget to move the second joystick and leave the camera looking away from the action. Whilst implementing this mechanic there was a problem when the character turned 180 degrees, the camera assist would jitter like a small spasm back and forth. This problem will be addressed in the coming weeks.
A controls and options menu was also added this week. The options menu only consists of two volume sliders to adjust music and sound effects separately. Whilst this system worked it required the players using an apply button after adjusting the volume to work instead of updating straight away. This will be changed in the coming weeks.
SFX:
Background music and ambient sounds were made for pub/outback area and entered into the Unreal game build. Bird calls and some ambient sounds were also made for Level 1 and will be the foundation of the soundscape. Australia has a lot of iconic birdlife with diverse calls that we want to represent within our game. More sound effects have been created and placed into the growing library, ready for use.
Having gotten a lot of feedback on the project this week, we've decided to descope level 1 slightly, now focusing on just 2 zones rather than 3. This was due to both time constraints and what we already have taking a decent amount of time. With this change, we can really focus on making the smaller level much higher quality, as well as this, we will have less assets to create, which has been seeming like a daunting challenge, especially with some many of our 3D modelers away on the Europe trip.
This week the grey box of level 1 has been completed. Even with the changes made to the scope, the core concept is still there, Tilly makes her way from the very bottom of the tree all the way to the top, collecting a drink for Johnno the pub owner. The main gimmicks featured in this level are wall climbing as well as boulders that the player can hit in order to open up paths. This being the first level, platforming and puzzles are still kept quite simple due to Tumbletail being targeted to all ages.
This week marks the completion of the last pieces of concept art for the pub area and UI. The bin is where the player will insert bottles and caps to convert them to money and open doors, such as in the vertical slice from last trimester. The bright green leads the player's eye to the bin, making them walk up to it without being told. Four buttons and a controller diagram were made for the programming team to use for the options menus.
Containers for change inspired bin concept art
Pub tree concept art
UI Buttons
Controller diagram
This week the health mechanic as a hit point system was added to the game in the HUD, indicated through five hearts which decrease if damage occurs, typically by the character being hit or falling into water. Likewise, the health or number of hearts can increase to demonstrate healing when the character arrives at a checkpoint.
The options menu was also finished this week after changing the volume settings to update straight away more settings were also added. Resolution, graphics and screen mode settings were added to allow the player to customise their video settings.
SFX:
As per the week before more sound assets created in Reaper and dispersed into the game. Some flavour audio was created like the sound of a TV playing in the upstairs of the pub with some daleks from Dr Who and a AI generated David Attenborough voice speaking about the extinction of humans. Jump sounds for different stages of jumps, normal, double, wall were also created and paw-steps were added as events to animations.
This week, the year 3 students returned from Europe and our production returned (mostly) to normal!
This week I developed the outside of Level 1 and UI. Level 1 will be set in a decaying tree, covered in a strangler fig, a short walk away from the Hub level. Players enter level 1 by running into a large hole in the front, teleporting into the first level. To reduce workload, I made the tree the exact same as the pub tree but differentiated the two trees I wrapping a strangler fig around it; it also introduces audiences to strangler figs.
I then designed multiple platform variants, some moving, some stable and some breakable. The moving platforms are contraptions, implied to be made by an unknown group of people that inhabited the tree. The stable platform is a glowing mushroom modelled off ghost mushrooms, one of Australia's only bioluminescent species.
The heart UI is based on a sticker that Tilly would own. I made sure that the empty and full heart have subtle differences in detail and tone for colour blind players, such as a shine one the full heart and a gradient on the empty heart.
We developed the first two areas of level 1. The first level will be very dark, illuminated only by bioluminescence to guide the player through the level. The glowing blue water is based on bioluminescent algae found off the coast of Brisbane, the mushrooms are based on ghost mushrooms found in South Australia and Tasmania. We have a focus of displaying and adapting real plants species, teaching audiences about Australian flora and fauna outside of the typical marsupials.
At this point we've started adding polish to the level, particularly making parts of the game visually appealing. To start, we added a simple checkpoint sign that spins and changes image once the player activates the checkpoints.
This week the 3D model for Declan was textured, with some slight improvements to the overall texture in comparison to the Matilda model due to now having more experience with the style.
The Level 1 tree was also modelled after concept art had been completed. This model was placed in the Pub level to give players a clear landmark that would teleport them to the start of Level 1. Some retexturing was required to better suit the concept art & game style after group discussion. Once incorporated with a black plane to teleport players to Level 1, our overall game loop was starting to take shape.
A 'Game Over' screen for the player was created, signaling the end of the current play session, often prompting the player to either restart or continue from a previous check point. The screen gives the player the option to retry or quit the game.
In addition, there was time this week to iron out some of the bugs such as with the camera assist. The jittering was fixed by creating a 'boolean' that checks if the player is looking at an 180-degree angle.
After testing the game with the new video settings, it was decided to also add a Vsync setting. Some other bugs were also fixed this week in the options menu which allowed the player to interact with pause and main menu buttons after entering the options menu as well as tweaking the resolution settings.
There was a slight issue when building the game before week 8 beta playtesting, where the player would get stuck on the vine walls, and only be able to jump up and down. This soft-locked our players into being stuck midway through the level, and not being able to complete it. This was discussed with the programmers quickly after discovering, and a hotfix was created in time before playtesting so that the players could experience a full game loop.
SFX and VFX:
A waterfall and a texture/material for water was made. Background music for level was also created, alongside UI music to help players select the right volume. There were complications in adding the UI music but it is stored in the music folder for when it is needed. More animations and ambient sounds were made relating to in game items such as crumbling platforms, moving platforms, wall breaks, boulder punches (subject to change) and save points.
Animation:
This week with the Year 3 Students returning from their Europe Trip, further work was done on the animations. The focus on Tilly's animations was cleanup, as they had been implemented into engine already, as well as completing the IK/FK controls for the Declan model in Blender. These controls are to be used for an upcoming cinematic we have planned for the Intro Cutscene to our game, and therefore the blender file was passed on to the responsible team members. Further tasks were created in Flow to make a Death animation for the level, and to make a Dash/Rolling animation for faster travel. These are to be completed in the coming weeks, with higher priority tasks given to 3D asset creation for our level.
A new roll mechanic was added this week, allowing players to quickly move forward with a small turning radius to travel faster over longer distances. This mechanic helps keep the player more engaged in the experience where they can traverse quickly from one objective to another.
Another feature developed this week was the connection of the Hub World and Level 1 to create a game loop for the player to properly explore the game. The button texture was also implemented, with more button widgets needed to be made in order to create variation on the menus.
Feedback from playtesting suggested more polish was needed for the player controller.
SFX:
SFX for item pickups, sign spins and water SFX were added, focusing on creating a deeper player emersion through a richer more complete and layered soundscape.
Feedback from the playtest was generally positive but a more thorough soundscape is still needed. This will be ongoing until the end of the project, as new elements and animations are added.
With majority of programming, concept and level design done, it's now time to heavily focus on creating assets. Various models have been created over the course of the week, with the following being some of the highlights:
A series of wooden platforms were created with horizontal, vertical, swinging and damaged variations to fill the level 1 area. The platforms are connected to the level through ropes and hooks which are attached to the walls of the hollow tree trunk. There is also a mushroom asset being used as a normal platform as many organic elements are being used to fit the level style and setting.
In addition to these, this week the 3D model for Johnno, the character who owns the pub, was created. The model features a technique where the data transfer modifier in Blender is used to blend the normals for curves onto the main mesh, giving the illusion of seamlessness. This greatly helped in making the model look accurate to the original concept art.
After discussion in meetings about the level design, the plan was to encase the level within a hollow tree, so the main goal for this week was to create encasings around the greybox level we already had completed in Unreal. Some tests were done for scale & sizing, before the main wooden trunks were modelled in 3DS Max and textured in Substance Painter. Not all encasings were able to be completed this week, and therefore next week & moving forward will be focused on completely encasing Level 1, and removing as much greybox as possible that's currently in engine.
This week we designed the moving wall jump and the checkpoint. The moving wall jump is two moving verticle platforms moving horizontally into two waterfalls. When the platforms move into the water, it becomes slippery and the player cannot hold on. The checkpoints are based on street signs, to lure the player towards them without taking up a lot of space.
Moving Wall Jump
Checkpoint sign
Lighting, Narrative and Sound:
Most SFX and music have been finished other than a few sounds that need to be dictated by the final objects that are not in the game yet. A lot of environmental SFX was added this week., such as the rock punch was lightened to plant punch sound. Lighting has been started but is still in the experimental stage. After consulting Henry Sun, his advice was to bake the lighting and post processing, ensuring that overall performance is optimal. The narrative had a small rewrite that aligns with the intro story board.
End of Level 1
This week we wrapped up the final pieces of concept art to focus solely on asset production. The top of level 1 is where Tilly picks up the keg that Declan stole. We wanted to show signs of Declan without him actually being there but not just through the typical mess he leaves behind. I included some drawing of him and Tilly, further displaying their relationship as a cute small detail. The top of level 1 is alluminated with glow worms, also naturally occuring in Australia.
Over the last few weeks we have created multiple variations for the bougainvillea, an invasive species blocking the player's path. The player is blocked by the large flower on the right and must find the "heart" of the plant (The designs on the top left) by following winding vines. Upon punching the heart, it will remove one large flower from the main clump until there are none left, destroying the mass of bougainvillea and clearing the path. The pink parts of the bougainvillea glow, making them apparent in the dark for level 1.
Finally, we created dust effects and multiple blinking animations to be used in a future opening cutscene.
This week in programming the roll mechanic was adjusted by using inbuilt player variables to limit the turning radius of the movement.
In addition, it was discovered that we had to create our own killzones for the player so that we could control what happens when the player dies and we also added the death animation for when the player runs out of lives.
Implementation of a save system was started this week to allow the player to save their progress and have multiple different save slots. The system only saves through a button on the pause menu, however this will be changed in future to save automatically when discovering a new checkpoint.
3D Art:
Further 3D art was implemented into the level in Unreal. The final encasings were completed this week, along with floors and roofs which fully sealed the player within the confines of the Level. Stump models were also done in 3DS Max & Substance to replace a lot of the grey box models in Unreal. The focus for this week was to get as many models polished as possible for the public playtesting that will be conducted Week 10 Monday.
Using the wooden platform models created last week, a lot of grey box was able to be replaced within Level 1 in time for public playtesting in Week 10. Platforms were animated using blueprints, and a lot of 3D assets were easily incorporated to the level design. Some changes will have to be made, such as animations for platforms, and some platforms outside of the main tree body that still have grey box models. As for progress, Level 1 is starting to take final form in visuals & aesthetics.
This week the 3D model for Johnno was rigged and textured, leaving the model mostly finalised and ready to be put into the engine.
The model for the first bougainvillea was constructed, with basic colouring, to replace the grey blocking for the upcoming playtesting - the bougainvillea hearts and vines have also been started. I wanted there to be more green around the giant bougainvilleas and more pink for the hearts, making them feel more vulnerable. In the future I would like to add more detail as I believe the model is too low poly. Moving forward the bougainvilleas will be unwrapped and textured properly, so that all the colours are on a single material.
Animations:
This week, the rolling & death animations were completed for Tilly, after being put off for 3D art in the level. These were incorporated into engine fairly smoothly, with the only issue being in reworking our death system. After discussing with the programmers in our group, we found that we had to implement our own killzone blueprint in Unreal Engine, rather than using the default killzones as these would cause issues in destroying the main player actor. However, this issue was resolved in time for playtesting on Sunday, with the death animation sequence being incorporated into the main playerbase blueprint.