Reflection

For this FMP (Final Major Project), me and my team, Joseph Bowman, Alex Needham and Mitchell Whittaker came up with the idea to create a low poly racing game with AI system and different difficulty levels. We had aimed to get this game finished and uploaded to itch.io so that people can try out our game and hopefully give us some feedback. My role in this project was to create all the player and AI cars as well as two out of the 3 tracks to a great standard. My team member Alex Needham created the third track if you would like to check his work on that. This reflection will be covering all of the topics on my website starting from my proposal and time management, working my way all the way up to the final production. I will be explaining what went well, what went wrong and what i could do better next time.

The Proposal:

To start off with, i made myself a plan to be a guide for me to get things done on time. This proposal was there to explain what i was doing, what my idea was and what my role is. I also added a time sheet at the end to make sure i knew what i wanted to do each week, this way i can keep track of my progress and get things done on time. I aimed to get down every piece of information i could so that it is clear enough to people what it was i was doing in this project. 

The first issue i had about this proposal is i wasn't clear enough on my time sheet. In certain parts of my time sheet i would say, "So in this week i am going to do some planning". This to me could've been more clear with explaining things like what am i going to plan on or what software will i use to plan etc. A positive about my proposal i would like to say is that i added a great amount of detail in my planning stages. I made clear what it is that i am doing and what i want to achieve by the end of the project. I made it clear what was my problems and what i could do to improve them, so overall i am happy with that.

Planning:

Moving on, I started with my planning stage. On here i wanted to show off what my best options were for planning and what methods i can use to help me gather a great idea of my project as a whole. I first started with the different planning methods that i thought i can use to help me the most. The methods i chose were, Mind Maps, Mood Boards and sketches. I chose these three specifically as this is what i think make it clear of where you first started the plan to where you are now with it. 

Starting with the Mind Maps first, i thought that mind maps is a great way to plan and my reason for it is you can branch off to so many topics as much as you like and really break down a situation so much. A great example that i used was my own, and i think its the best way to show off how i plan my thoughts. On my mind maps it shows the basics of how a mind map can look and how it breaks things down into different sections. For one of my mind maps i broke down, i did it for the tracks i made. I started off with tracks, broke it down to how many tracks i want, what type of tracks i want etc. This goes on and on.

The other method i chose was Mood Boards. This was my second way of planning as i think it is great to show off what things it is you are looking for. An example of mine would be the cars, I started to look at the cars on the internet to help me come across some ideas. After i found one that i liked, i started to look into modded versions of those. I then tried to look into similar cars within the same class and just carried it on from there until i got a wide range of images that i thought would be good enough to help me start somewhere.

The final method i chose was sketches. Now sketching is a fantastic way to get a start on something because they aren't meant to be final. Sketches are there to help you generate an idea that you are happy with and that's why i chose it. The quality of these sketches don't have to be perfect either, which is what makes it a lot easier to plan as i can come up with a quick sketch off top of my head and then expand from that. 

Research:

adding on from my different planning methods, i went onto researching. The research part of this project is broken down into two sections, Primary Research and Secondary Research. I will first explain what, and how i did my primary research and then evaluate what went well and want i could've done better. I then would move onto my secondary research and explain what i used to help me get to where i am now with the project. Again i will also explain what went well and what i could've done better.

Primary Research

To start off with, i did some primary research to help me narrow down my ideas a little bit more. I made a survey on google forms to help gather me some answers which will help in the future. With this survey i made sure to ask question that i thought would benefit me the most. I asked a total of four questions on this survey which were: What type of cars would you like to see?, What details would you expect to see on a race track?, What details would you expect to see on cars? and What colours would you say match together? The questions i asked got a total of five responses on each one which is plenty enough to get me started. To start off with, question one was a major question as it would really benefit me to narrow down my mood board. With a small section of cars in mind it would really help me find the exact cars i am looking for. Moving onto question two, i wanted to make sure what is the people are looking for on a racing game, so that's why i asked this question. It would help me in the near future to plan on as i wouldn't need such a wide variety of models that wont probably get used in the game. For question three, i wanted to see how detailed i should go with the car models as i didn't want to be over doing it with brake disks or wipers when it wouldn't get seen so much. This was another great question so i could find out what the people want and how little of detail i should put onto each car otherwise id be wasting extra time for something to not be seen. Finally on question four i really didnt think about it that much as i had ran out of questions to ask. Looking back at this now i wish i had asked a better question that would actually benefit me more but i ended up with this one. However this question would give me a wider view on what i want all of my models to look like. With some responses of colour matching i really think this would blend into other models i make that i wouldn't have thought of

Overall i am pretty happy with my primary research as i gathered a decent amount of information to carry on my planning stages in this project. Some of the responses i got really expanded my planning sheet while others didnt do so much. Something for me to improve on in the near future would be for me to think more about the question before i publicly announce it as it may not benefit me in any way. On top of that i would've loved to ask more questions than the four to give me an even wider view on the responses.

Secondary Research

Moving on i went to secondary research. I gathered my primary research, now it was time for me to do the researching. I wanted to make sure i really got everything i needed before starting the models. To start off with i wanted to make sure i knew what i was doing before i starting modelling these cars. As i have never modelled cars like this before i knew i had to look into how to do it. So i went to YouTube i researched people making cars in 3ds max to show me what they do. I had soon realized that they do it the blueprint way which is by putting an image into 3ds max of what it is you are wanting to model and then they trace over it with a primitive. With all that researched i looked into how they set everything up, whether that is placing the images in 3ds max, lining them all up and then actually getting started on the model. I soon realized after looking for some time that they all use a primitive called a plane, which ive been told is the best method to get these models the best they can. The reason being is that you are more free with a plane than you are a cube as a cube cant be moved around like a plane can when you mess with the vertices. This secondary research stage really helped me get an idea of how long it will take me to model each car. It gave me a rough idea of how long i am willing to take on each car and how little time i want on the rest of my work. With the knowledge of knowing that the cars will take up the majority of the time during this project i started to plan on how long i want the tracks to take as well as the terrain.

Overall, the secondary research i did made me feel a lot better and it is the reason why i am happy with it. Without the research into others work then i would've struggled to understand on how to get started and i wouldn't have been able to plan out how long i want to take on each car. The main issue i have right now with my secondary research, is that i didn't go expand on my research enough. I wish i found more videos on blueprint layouts to find out what the best way to do it is, and wish i found different methods of modelling cars to see which one is quicker and which one is most easiest to work with. But overall i do think i did a good job on researching as i got what i wanted in the end.

Production Log: 

Moving on from the research side i decided to finally get started on the production stage, where i get to show off what i can do. The first thing i worked on was the cars, i had a total of 6 cars to model which would really set me back a lot if i didn't get started on these. While i was working my way through the first model i started to think, in what order i should model these as it would benefit my team more. What i mean is if i started with the car models then that is great as all the long work would be out of the way but would it benefit my team at all as having car models is great but they don't have anything for these cars to be tested on. This is why i broke it down to help me with time management as well as helping out my team members so that they can get started as soon as they could. So that's what i did, i started modelling what would help benefit my team more and get this game production done quicker. Moving on from that i would like to think about my production look and if it did its job. I really wanted to explain myself as much as i could with each model so that people would have a great understanding of how long each model took to make as well as how difficult i found it during the progression. I also wanted to make sure i include what i found difficult and what i found easy during this whole process. This was to make sure i got the best i can get and as clear as i can make it without boring the people with words. So moving on i wanted to make sure the presentation was key. As much as explaining my stages i need to make it look presentable, so that would include images, big text, breaking things down etc. With images and big text i assumed that it would grabs peoples attention to take a look at what that page was all about. An eye catching title includes colours as well which is something i ended up looking into doing to make sure i can lure people into my production. Another point i want to bring up is organization. With organizations, it would help me break things into different catogories, so for example i would have all my cars in one section, my tracks in a different section etc. This way it keeps things clear and clean for those that want to navigate there way around.

Over all i am very proud of my production, as i think i gathered as much information as i could show off to the people. I think i explained everything very well and really broke each car down to the little details. The production as a whole is a really big chunk out of my website that i think was needed to explain everything as much as i could. The problem i have with the whole production page is the videos i made to show off each model. I think i did a great job at recording them to show off how long it really took for each model but i think i could've edited them. I think with the videos just being slapped onto the website without any effort of trimming them down or speeding them up makes the whole production look like a slummed up mess. Other than that i think everything else was great throughout.

Final Product:

This whole project as a whole really makes me very proud of how much i have achieved. From not knowing how to model cars in 3ds max to having 6 well detailed cars at the end makes me feel like i have accomplished something massive. With this project as a whole i think it has really improved my sense in modelling and i cant wait for what awaits me in the near future. My whole team members involved in this project were fantastic and supportive and i am grateful for having such an organized team. I cant wait to do another big and better project like this in the near future. I have gathered a few ups and downs during this project and i think that is pretty normal on any project someone could make. The Positives i had throughout this whole project was making the models, i think each model was great in terms of the outcome. I know some weren't the best for example the original BMW i made but that's why i turned things around and made it better. The downfalls i have during this is my skill in time management. As a whole i got everything done that i wanted to get done but i really think that i should try stick to a schedule rather than winging it because i end up going off on my own stuff and then when it gets nearer the end i start panicking and try to cram everything in one week.

I managed to get some feedback on the final outcome of the game which would help for near future issues. It also helped a lot to get an understanding of the main issues in the game. Zak Annetts was the person that gave each one of my members including me this feedback to help us in terms of research. Her below is everything that Zak listed in the game about the goods and the bads. I will make sure to take note of everything her that is aimed towards me and aim to fix it next time.