April Plan

It is now just about to become April so I have created a plan to help me get through the month and complete all my work at (hopefully) a relatively stress free way.

April Plan

As you can see from above, I have tried to plan out April as best as I can as I know it is going to fly by. By the end of week 1 I aim to have the basic draft of dissertation done (Intro, Main, Methodology). and have my Alpha game completed. I also want to start looking at my showcase and planning that with regard to business cards etc.
I will organize a meeting with my supervisor this week to help me plan out the next few weeks. I will especially need some help with my dissertation and my exhibition.

Dissertation Start

So the other day I set out my dissertation headings but it wasn't until today I actually began it. To begin with I finished off my Visual Dissertation Document to a standard that I was happy with to use to prepare my dissertation:

Visual Dissertation Document

This help me start my dissertation by adding in the relevent headings:

2.0 Contextual Review
2.1 Psychological Horror In Games
2.2 Player Experience
2.3 Environmental Storytelling

I have gone further with this and created a more direct link between my dissertation and visually planning it:

Dissertation Plan (Main Body)

So this shows roughly how the main body of my dissertation will be (the part in-between the introduction and the methodology).

I plan to continue this on Wednesday and finish an extremely rough version of it. I will then speak to my supervisor about help with the methodology before continuing with the dissertation over the weekend.

Personal Notes

At the moment it is extremely rough. I have pretty much just gathered quotes and placed them in semi suitable places. I would like to have a completed rough version done by Monday next week. I am also going to plan the month of April tonight as time is very valuable at the moment and must be used appropriately for all aspects of the project

Media Test - Level Streaming

For a while now, my game has become very slowly which has been very frustrating. I have been trying to figure out ways of fixing this which has taken me such a long time. The frustration has also slowed my progression in development as I have felt irritated. However, I have now found a solution and have finally fixed this problem!

Level Streaming
Level Streaming is an effective method to make a game much more efficient. It enables you to easily load in or out certain parts of your game. This means that if there is an area that the player cannot see, you can save rendering process by loading this part out and only loading it in when the user is going to see it.

Finding the Issue
At first I thought my level was slow due to so much lighting. I ended up deleting a lot of lights to help improve my game. This helped only slightly. Thankfully, it did not effect the ambiance of the environment too much as it was after all a horror game in which, darkness always entices atmosphere. After further reading I read that fully opaque materials can use up a lot of rendering process. With this in mind, I changed all my opaque materials to be fully visible, however, nothing much improved.

I then looked into level streaming and thought that this actually may end up solving my issues. I found this really helpful tutorial on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqdz9n-7H_A

Using this I quicky tested in by splitting my environment in two. Apart from lots of errors to due coding links being broken etc, it worked perfectly. My game was running so smoothly I couldn't believe it!
I then went ahead and decided to split up all the extra rooms I have and have them stream in nad out depending on where the player is (via trigger boxes).

Media Test - Level Streaming

This has helped dramatically and the only issue  I occurred was in relation to blueprint references and matinee's etc. The reason being, I could not find a way to call these functions/variables in different levels. It was easier for my to just make the assets in the room that were not referenced in blueprint as the level's pieces. E.g with the levels that are not loaded in (the assets are not there) trigger boxes and matinees still sit there.) thankfully these to not take up much memory so it is ok to leave them there.

Personal Notes

This has been an extremely annoying hindrance for my process (the slow frame-rate). I am so glad that I have fixed this using level streaming. This does mean I am a little behind plan but at this point, I am not overly fussed as I am happy to have just solved this major issue I was having. I still aim to have an 'Alpha' version of my game completed on Monday, as well as starting my dissertation.

Media Test - Linear to Non-Linear Story

All along I wanted this story to be experienced in a non-linear fashion. However, I felt best to approach the development of it by creating it as a linear story and upon completion, converting it into a non-linear story.

Linear
To begin with I created my story events in a linear process, which would result in the playback of these events, happening in a linear process. I had 5 events:

1. Gravity Law
2. Mother Issues
3. Death Of A Soldier
4. Fire At Orphanage
5. Family Death

These were created in this order and therefore occured, in this order. I wanted to convert this so that you could experience events 1-4 in any order with event 5 being the conclusion/ending. In order to achieve this I needed to 're-wire' my level blueprints in order to accommodate some complex calculations.

Non-Linear

I got started on attempting to make my story non-linear and was happy to find it not overly difficult. The main concern was that in my linear story, each event, triggered some sort of change in the environment. This worked well, however, if I was to make it non-linear, I would still want the environment change to happen in the order I chose. The order being:

1. Environment De-saturates
2. Roof changes
3. Walls/Floors become a Half-State (Hotel/Asylum)
4. Walls/Floors compeltely change from Half-State to Asylum
5. Game ends

This required some careful though but it was easily managed after much consideration:

Media Test - Linear to Non-Linear

As you can see in the image above, the 'Linear (before)' image shows how each event looked before converting it. They each had a trigger boxes that would trigger the event and change the environment. Very simple and very effective. Now, the two images below that, show how it has been converted into a non-linear story. All the different trigger boxes link into the same switch node. This helped manage what environment change would happen as it would cycle through them in the correct order, alternating the environment correctly.

In order for the correct event to happen (not shown here) I had to insert a 'call function' node just after each 'doOnce' node. Each of these functions were different and would reference the different events that would happen in the story. E.g player hits trigger box ('TriggerBoxMotherIssues01') then this would call that event and play it, and then the environment would change depending on number the 'environment change' was on. So if this happened to be the 3rd event triggered in the game, it would be the 3rd environment change that would occur which is the Half-State.

Personal Notes

I was really happy to achieve this all so easily. I really enjoy using the level blueprints as it is very similar to hard coding which is something I have enjoyed in the past. I am playing a little bit of catch-up with my blogs as things have gotten slower this past few weeks. The main reason being that my games frame-rate has gotten extremely slow and has been frustrating to work with. I have now fixed this issue which I will discuss in the next blog.

Supervisor Meeting - 10

Student Name: Christy McLaughlin
Supervisor: Ryan Locke
Date: 20.03.15

Agenda

• Visual Dissertation Doc worries
• Game running slow issues
• Dissertation start

Progress Report

• Do not worry about this too much - it is merely a guide to help with dissertation/research
• Look into framerate options/other techniques to perhaps distract the framerate issues
• Start asap! Look at example dissertations to help get a start

Agreed Action Plan

• Start dissertation - look at other examples to help get started (with headings etc)
• With regards to dissertation - look at Vis Dis Doc to help although change it about so that 'horror' is the main thing to talk about
• As for game - look at frame rate, post process techniques to perhaps mask any issues/enhance game
• Look at UE4 examples and study the material nodes to see how exactly their materials/assets look so good

Personal Notes

This week the meeting took place over Skype as Ryan is unable to get himself into university. This will probably be the process for the next few weeks. It worked really well and we ended up having much more time to discuss my project. We are now approaching the end of March and I am still at a decent point in my project. It is now time to begin my presentation and come April, think about sorting showcase stuff and preparing for final hand ins. I will re-draft a plan of action at the beginning of April but for now, in the last week of March, I have some things I'd like to sort first:

For Next Week

• Start dissertation - headings (perhaps very very rough draft)
• Have game finished to an 'Alpha' level - ready to test, polish and finalize
• Possibly some more research

Event05 - 'Family Death'

This is the concluding event of my whole game. This is where the player will understand a lot more fully what is going on and who the people in the story are and their relations too each other. As I polish this up there will be a lot of changes as the story is not up to scratch so far - a lot of changes are needed in the parchments. This scene plays reference to Roseanne's fathers death, as well as me implementing her death and the foreshadowing death of the user, Dr. William Grene.

What Happens

1. You hear some sort of sound coming from a room (music/voices). You approach door and enter.
2. You enter into a room of two closed coffins and one open coffin.
3. Upon exploring the coffins, you establish that one is for Roseanne McNulty, and the other for her father - who have been referenced throughout the game.
4. You explore the last open coffin and discover it belongs to you, Dr. William Grene. You also discover much more to the overall story
5. Lot's of weird things happen at this point as the environment looses control, after a few moments, the game will end and credits will role.

Event05 - 'Family Death'

Personal Notes

This is the last week I am giving (in-a-way) to developing my environment. I want to have the level complete by Monday and therefore the rest of March and April to polish it. I am a little behind at the moment but still easily within my target.

Supervisor Meeting - 09

Student Name: Christy McLaughlin
Supervisor: Ryan Locke
Date: 16.03.15

Again, this week Ryan was absent so I was unable to see him. I do have a few concerns regarding my project so I will perhaps email if I feel the need to see him before next Monday. I wish to discuss the practical issues I am having in which the game engine is running slow and frame rate is very low. I am also concerned with my Visual Dissertation Doc as I feel I want to start writing my dissertation but not having this complete is hindering that.