Disclaimer
As stated before, external factors really are affecting how much I can contribute to the project for the time being, and in all honesty it should just be taken as fact now that I am going to struggle when it comes to my side of the contributions towards the project until at least 13th July 2021. Fortunately, I did foresee these issues somewhat which is partly the reason why I decided to keep my work load lighter than usual. I have expressed my annoyance of these matters to the team and they are being very supportive.
Carry on then!
This week is a continuation of the grey boxing of the hub level containing the Tree of Life which I began at the end of last week.
Even though I mentioned that I would solely be using the Blockout prefabs, I found it best to actually use a mixture of the two. Although, I am using Probuilder mainly for uniquely shaped objects that aren't included in the imported assets pack as there is only so much you can do with them. Annoyingly, the textures of these prefabs had a different renderer and so I had to switch them all to the Universal Render Pipeline so that the game objects didn't appear simply as high contrasted pink shapes possessing hard-to-see details.
Staying on the same page design-wise
It occurred to me somewhat out of the blue that there could be a conflict of different art styles when bringing different assets together or when working on the same scenes within Unity (2021). I suggested, we devise mood boards.
"Mood boards are a useful tool for helping designers effectively collaborate with clients and team members. Boards can be easily created within a tight time frame and turn an abstract idea into a real one. This way designers can effectively share their ideas with others because visual material always works better than fluent phrases." (Boards and Arhipova, 2021)
I tried to make sure that everyone had a say and that the aesthetic influences were narrowed down. The task 'narrow down aesthetic influences' was added to 'in progress' on the Kanban board in Trello (2021). I asked if anyone else had anything more to add, and once it was 100% clear that we were done on this front, I moved the aesthetic influences to 'completed'.
James was the first to add his in which he tried to get a feel for what the Tree of Life would look like which led to further discussion. His mood board consisted of an assortment of different trees found online and one from Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) as I stated that I envisioned the game to be fantastical and tree of life resembling something similar to the White Tree of Gondor. This mood boord led us all to decide that a thick trunked tree would be best.
There was mention of the hub level potentially possessing portals that when unlocked open up new levels which immediately made me think of the central level in Crash Bandicoot Warped (1998).
These portals are thought to be opened by completing miniature puzzles within the hub level itself. James drew how he envisioned the Tree of Life to contain these portals, however, I mentioned that it would be best to have these portals open on different sides and floors of the pyramid to give the player more to do.
I also stated that it would be best for everyone to post specific types of posts in different threads within our Discord (2021) server so that they are easier to find and refer to the more we develop the game. Because of this a concept-art thread was created as well as one for influences.
Next I uploaded my mood board. I tried not to limit myself purely to what the tree would look like, but rather the feel of the game as a whole.
My mood board included aesthetic influences such as concept art from Uncharted 4 (2016) and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018), and stills from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).
Mary was seeking feedback on her drawings of the exterior of the temple. The location in which a simple cinematic is to take place and the player arrives and enters the Temple of Life.
I explained that it is definitely something that we can work with, it is just a case of adding lots of foliage and making it look more abandoned and forgotten. What I am picturing in my mind is that it is to be in deep forest. Amazonian. The exterior of the temple is to be worn and bricks cracked with debris scattered around, although, I am not expecting all of this to be drawn, it was merely me explaining my thought process. The opening cinematic is to consist of panning down and tracking forward toward the temple so only one portion of a scene has to be rendered in Unity. As we have to establish a colour palette, I told Mary about an Instagram page that features lots of colour palettes that have been used for lots of different films (Colorpalette.cinema | Instagram, 2021) which she seemed to take a liking to.
Mary followed on from this suggestion by sharing a colour palette for the exterior which I said would be great for the beginning of the game as it's very colourful and plentiful.
I shared two mood boards that I found on the Instagram page aforementioned (colorpalette.cinema | Instagram, 2021) and explaining that this what how I picture the colour palette to look towards the end of the game. Washed out like a war film (1917, 2019) and over saturated with brown (American Psycho, 2000) to show that the life of the temple is being sucked out of it.
It was decided that in total there should be at least 3 colour palettes in which it almost acts as a three act structure. Mary came up with the remaining two mood boards which were very well received by the team as a whole and will enable me to use them as reference points for the environmental narrative that is to be the level design.
Stay tuned!
A task I have assigned myself from this point on is how best to make our levels fun and innovative by incorporating the established core mechanic of our game, which is the ability to change materials of objects to solve puzzles and affect the environment around the player.
References
2021. Unity. San Francisco: Unity Technologies
Boards, D. and Arhipova, A., 2021. Design Mood. 7 Reasons to Use Mood Boards.. [online] Design4Users. Available at: <https://design4users.com/design-mood-7-reasons-to-use-mood-boards/> [Accessed 20 August 2021].
Instagram.com. 2021. colorpalette.cinema | Instagram. [online] Available at: <https://www.instagram.com/colorpalette.cinema/> [Accessed 20 August 2021].
Crash Bandicoot Warped. 1998. PlayStation [Game]. Naughty Dog Inc: Santa Monica
Discord. 2021. Discord | Your Place to Talk and Hang Out. [online] Available at: https://discord.com/ [Accessed 19 August 2021].
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. 2001. [Film]. New Line Cinema: Burbank
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. 2003. [Film]. New Line Cinema: Burbank
Shadow of the Tomb Raider. 2018. PlayStation 4 [Game]. Eidos-Montréal: Montréal
Trello.com. 2021. Trello. [online] Available at: <https://trello.com/> [Accessed 19 August 2021].
Uncharted 4. 2016. PlayStation 4 [Game]. Naughty Dog LLC: Santa Monica
Unity Asset Store. 2019. Blockout | Level Design | Unity Asset Store. [online] Available at: <https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/level-design/blockout-100388> [Accessed 19 August 2021].