Context and Research
I've gone for the 3D modelling pathway, this is because I prefer to work on the art side of games. I like the idea of the brief because it keeps it contained enough that we don't get ambitious.
This is my gantt chart, this is a rough plan of what I will be doing and when.
Analysing Walking Sims
Here we looked at a game called Everybody's Gone To The Rapture (2015), this is a walking sim set in England. It is a really good example of good world building and environmental storytelling.
Context - When and where is this game set?
This game is set in 1984, England. Its set in a little town in the countryside. You can see this by the building design, the little cottages really gives off the "old English town" feel.
Visuals - How would you describe the art style?
The art style is very realistic, it doesn't have many stylized aspects except the strange ghostly people around the village.
Interaction – What sorts of gameplay mechanics can you identify?
The game clearly doesn't focus on gameplay, it has some very simple mechanics like some basic movement, and interactive objects like doors and lights. These allow you to explore the buildings and uncover more of the games focus, the story.
Narrative & Audio – What examples of audio can you hear and how is it used to convey the story?
Rapture uses a type of story telling called World Building, this is where the player can uncover the backstory of what happened to various residents of the village. It also uses ghost type remnants of the residents around the village, when approaching them you can hear them talk about various things. The closer you go to the ghosts the clearer you can hear their conversations.
Context - When and where is this game set?
The game takes place in the Wyoming Wilderness, inspired by the Yosemite national park. The game is set in 1989, you can see this while exploring the world because the characters use radios to communicate, the character also uses a type writer to write in his free time.
Visuals - How would you describe the art style?
The games visuals are heavily stylized with low poly models. The game uses colour very well, it has very vibrant colours with lush greens and blues for the day time and orange and dark blue for night. The game also only shows other people as silhouettes. This is a very bold design decision that works well. It also cuts down on production costs because they don't need to model characters.
Interaction – What sorts of gameplay mechanics can you identify?
The game has quite a few basic mechanics like walking, sprinting and some navigation cutscenes where you will climb rocks. The player also has a physical map that they can get out to help them navigate.
The main mechanic is the conversations you have with your partner Delilah a fellow lookout.
These conversations take place on your radio, with most items you get a symbol to talk to your partner about the objects, with different dialogue trees and questions.
Narrative & Audio – What examples of audio can you hear and how is it used to convey the story?
Like I mentioned previously the dialogue is the main audio you will be hearing, but there is also a ton of ambient sounds, like trees swaying in the wind, birds chirping and depending on your location water running.
The game has a very interesting narrative that is conveyed through world building and dialogue. As you and your partner get caught up in some kind of mystery that you have to figure out.
Analysing Walking Sims
Here we looked at previous students work and decided what grade they would get, this was useful because we could see what a distinction looks like and what a pass looks like.
SWOT Analysis
This is a SWOT analysis of my Strengths and Weaknesses, this is useful because I can look back at the end of the project and see if I've improved on the topics I said I wanted to.
Strengths
I feel like im confident with my research and overall blogging skills, I am very consistent with blogging about my work. I am actively trying to improve my modelling skills to get more detail in my models. I would say I'm already quite proficient with my modelling.
Because of my powerful computer at home I have access to Blender for modelling and Unreal Engine 4 and Unity for engines. These gives me lots of room to experiment and work on my projects outside of college.
I am very passionate about modelling, I enjoy the whole process, I particularly like the end process where everything comes together because its very satisfying.
Weaknesses
I would say I'm not as strong in terms of the game engine side of making games, although I want to get better with engines I haven't had the best history with them. Particularly UE4 I've had a very unlucky past with using blueprints. I also want to branch out from the low poly art style and add more detail to my models, I especially want to focus on this in this project.
Some personal traits that I want to work past is laziness, I wouldn't necessarily say I'm a lazy person but after a long college day I don't want to go and experiment with game engines, this is mainly because they are very complex. If I work past this and do more experimentation in my free time every aspect of my work will increase. I want to focus on UE4 because I don't know much about the software.
Opportunities
The most important skill I can learn to improve all my weaknesses is Time Management, learning good time management and putting it into practice will give me the time to learn and improve the skills I am not so good at.
I wouldn't say there is necessarily a gap in the market for walking sims but I still feel I can create a detailed enough environment for it to stand out. To make a detailed environment I have lots of recourses to use, Steam is a good place to look at what other walking sims do well and what they do not so well.
Threats
Environment
Covid is probably the main threat to my project, If we have another lockdown I won't have access to college, although I have all the software at home to make my project being in college is very helpful because I can easily bounce ideas off of other people to get feedback.
Time
Time is a big threat because we only have roughly 12 weeks to do the project, but If I manage my time well I can achieve what I want in the time.
This is a mind map of some of my ideas, I haven't decided on an idea yet which is why I made this. Writing down all my ideas and referencing them to specific bits of media is really useful to get my ideas from just ideas to pictures you can reference.
Steampunk
Steampunk was my first idea, I originally picked it because it was very different to what I had made already. (medieval environments) I liked the aesthetic of the copper pipes with their bronze and silver colour scheme.
The main reason I went for steampunk was that it was very detailed, and I feel like to get better at modelling I need to be more detailed. I felt that steampunk was the perfect theme to practice this.
Below are some examples of steampunk environments
The Dishonoured(2012) series also has the same theme of old fashioned architecture but with advanced machines.
I really like this idea because there is a lot of creative freedom and the idea of old buildings with advanced technology is a nice contrast.
I also did some research for Bioshock infinite(2013), I wouldn't say its classic steampunk but similar to Dishonoured its still got that style, its overall visual style is almost the opposite of Dishonored's dark depressing theme.
Art Style Ideas
Smudge Textures and Cel Shading
When talking about ideas with Fraser we got onto the topic of art styles that would work, I mentioned a kind of smudge style texture look that games like Sifu(2022) and Absolver(2017) use, the style works well with the low poly models but because they are textured you can't really tell they are low poly.
Below are some examples of cel shading, Fraser suggested this style because not only would it look very nice it would save lots of time because I wouldn't have to texture anything.
After going home and thinking about my idea more, talking with my family about it, asking them for various ideas one of them suggested Steampunk, but instead of using the kind of Victorian architecture that usually accompanies steampunk use a more eastern architecture, more traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean buildings.
I really liked this idea because it mean I can still do Steampunk, but I wouldn't have to make the generic Victorian buildings which was the main thing turning me off the idea. I did some research of various old buildings from various eastern countries and settled on South Korea. The main choice behind this was because China and Japan are very popular choice when making Asian style buildings so I thought it would be interesting to do something that isn't as popular.
I really like the colours of the pipes contrasting with the whites and reds of the buildings, I particularly like the red and gold combination.
My idea for a environment will be a steampunk mine, the player will enter the entrance with pipes going down into the cave and they will come across a big open cave with multiple buildings insides. It's a simple idea but I feel like it will be a very interesting environment to explore and make.
We watched this video to help us with pitching our idea, I really liked this guys approach to expanding on a idea. He talks about how important feedback is, how just by getting some basic feedback from a couple people you can change your entire idea. He shows this with changing the teddy bear for a panda, how the game would switch from a puzzle game to a fight for freedom, expressing yourself with colour.
Reviewing a Walking Sim
Abzu
As research we were tasked to review a walking sim of our choosing using the Study Diamond Approach, the Study Diamond Approach is when you look at a game for example, and analyse four different aspects of it.
The meaning, Context, Techniques and Effects. Using this approach gives you a insight into the way the game is made, it's a very interesting way of reviewing a game that I have personally never heard of before.
As research we were tasked to review a walking sim of our choosing using the Study Diamond Approach, the Study Diamond Approach is when you look at a game for example, and analyse four different aspects of it.
The meaning, Context, Techniques and Effects. Using this approach gives you a insight into the way the game is made, it's a very interesting way of reviewing a game that I have personally never heard of before.
Q: What effects does the game experience have on you? What does it make you feel or think about.
A: I feel like Abzu has one main emotion that the game nails perfectly. Serenity, Peace, Calm it is a very simple game that will just relax you, I loaded it up after not playing it for a couple years for this review and it really did just chill me out, I forgot about all the work I need to do and I just sat, and swam around the ocean. It makes me think about mindfulness and presence. How its important to sometimes stop what your doing and just experience the present moment. I basically just described meditation, which is interesting because the game itself has a "Meditate" option. You find these shark statues around the various parts of the game and you can just sit on them and take it the surroundings and really just chill out.
Q: Which techniques are used by the developers? In this case, think about any narrative and any imagery used.
A: The developers tell the story mainly using world building, there isn't any dialogue, any text boxes just the world. Murals on the walls of old temples, broken bridges and pillars and dark, colourless sections of world that you have to bring back to life. These all add to the mystery that the player asks as they play the game. "What happened here" is a very common question that is used as a theme in lots of games, not all get them right. This does.
This being a walking sim the developers but most of their resources into the visuals of the game, and it paid off. The game is full of gorgeous environments to swim around and explore, the use of colour is amazing with different places really feeling different. Just in the first 30 minutes of the game you go from a lush green forest of underwater vines to a open coral reef type area, then back to the vine forest but this time everything is a warm orange. The colour palate of this game really helps to add variety to the ocean.
Q: Are there any aspects about the context that needs to be considered? Who made the game, where it was made and why?
A: Matt Nava was a art director at Thatgamecompany, he worked to make the game Journey(2012), which is a game very similar to Abzu, a game that focuses on the visuals and music more than gameplay. In 2013 Nava left the company to start his own studio called Giant Squid. Giant squid are a small indie team based in Santa Monica, California. They have a team of roughly 18 people.
On the wiki it says how "Nava wanted to change to a more vibrant and populated setting for his text title" he even started creating the pitch for Abzu before leaving Thatgamecompany.
I like how Nava wanted to change up his games and not do the same thing over and over like a lot of games do these days.
Nava and Giant Squid also went on to make The Pathless, a game where you play as a archer who runs around a vast forest to dispel a dark curse that grips the land.
Q: Ask yourself about the meaning of the walking simulator - what you think the game is about and if it's trying to convey some kind of message.
A: I would say walking simulators and visual novel games are the closest in terms of game genre to films. They are really meant to be played once, offering up a "experience" more than a "game".
Different walking sims have different objectives, for example Firewatch's objective is to tell a interesting story that the player can experience, Abzu's story is pushed to the back, where the games visuals and music take centre stage. On the steam page for Abzu it states how the game is a "beautiful underwater adventure that evokes the dream of diving". and I feel like there is no simpler way to sum up the game.
When playing I originally played Abzu I didn't think there was a message behind the game but after doing some research I found this video that talks about the story and what it all means.
Abzu's underlining message is a cautionary tale about how society and nature coexist, just like the antient civilization who destroyed their oceans trying to more efficiently drain power from them we humans can also destroy out world for power, money and various other things. But the other half of Abzu's message is its not too late to try, the players journey brings life back to the ocean and defeats the machines that once sucked it dry.
Today the issue of Global Warming is very prevalent and only recently is has been acknowledged.
In short Abzu's message is to respect nature and what it provides, and to not get too greedy.
But it also states how its never to late to try and fix things.
This can be seen today with Global Warming.
Researching Steampunk - Steamboy
I watched a film called Steamboy(2004) over the weekend as research for my project, I heard about it when doing basic research into the steampunk genre. It's made by the same person who wrote Akira(1988), a popular anime film that was praised for showing the world that cartoons across cultures could address larger social issues. Its a very popular film that is still relevant to this day.
Now going back to Steamboy. I had been interested in the plot of Steamboy, everyone is trying to get their hands on a "steamball" a machine that can pump out a seemingly endless amount of steam.
After watching the trailer and seeing the very appealing art style I decided to give it a watch.
Although the films stor wise wasn't that good I got lots of really cool inspiration in the forms of all the machines they use. From a little steam powered monocycle to a flying castle.
Below are some examples of steampunk contraptions from the film.
Here is the little monocycle the main character uses at the start of the film, I really like the design of it because you can really tell it was made by hand, all the wooden pieces nailed together really adds to that.
One of my favourite parts of this design is how it all makes sense, you can see how it works, the boy is on a bike like seat that then spins the big wheel around when he peddles. If I can achieve this level of detail with my models, where the play can actually figure out how it all works that will be a massive achievement.
There were also lots of more advanced tech later into the film.
These spider like tanks are a massive stand out to me, I love how they look, I want to try and incorporate some kind of machine with legs into my environment, maybe there are some mine carts that collect rocks and walk back to the main forge.
Researching Asian Architecture
I went onto Pinterest and got a ton of reference images of traditional Asian buildings, these are going to help when I get to the early modelling stage.
You can see the full Pinterest page here
I also started to do some research on traditional Asian entrances, this would be the first thing the player is most likely to see so I wanted to make it look good.
With my entrance I have two styles I could go for, big, grand. and more over the top, or smaller, simpler and more minimal, these minimal gates are called Tori gates
Originally I was going to go with the bigger entrance style, although I'd like to make a minimal entrance I don't think it would work that well with the steampunk theme. But after asking my mate Justin for some ideas he said that making a door with visible gears could be really cool, it would tie in the two themes together and would be a good opportunity of animating lots of moving parts.
I like the arch way design, (the images at the bottom left) I feel like I could do a lot with it, I could go with a similar design to the image and have some kind of building on top of it with stairs leading to it. This would add another place for the player to explore.
Making a Asset List
I made a rough asset list of the things I want to make, this includes buildings, props and decoration.
Mine Entrance
Rocks
Trees
Mine Logo
Minecarts or different sizes
Main cave buildings - Forge, Storage
Wooden Bridge going over gap
Steam pipes, multiple variations
Edge Magazine - Walking Sims
This PDF is 10 pages from Edge magazine, looking at lots of different examples of walking sims. It highlights lots of interesting points like how Journey had a big impact on the games industry, especially the walking sim genre.
Starting Area - Entrance to Mine
In my blockout I had quite a wide entrance area, but I did some research and found some examples of mine entrances, these were all in the side of cliffs with rocks around them, I liked how they had bits of the mountain coming up the sides, when making my entrance I changed the rough design to fit this new approach.
Analysing Level Design
Before making my cave and overall layout of my level, I wanted to look at some other games with good level design to see what they did well, this will help me to make a good level that isn't too confusing or just badly designed.
The first game I will look at is the first Dishonoured
Dishonoured is a very popular stealth action game developed by Arkane studios, its a really famous example of a good immersive sim, a immersive sim is a game that emphasizes player choice, and dishonoured does this wonderfully, not only in its mechanics and story, but in its level design.
To demonstrate the level design, I will look at the first level of the game (after the prologue)
Dishonoured's first proper mission is called High Overseer Cambell, it tasks the player with breaking into a heavily guarded building and neutralizing Cambell. What really sticks out about this level is the level design.
This is the main area of the mission/level, I climbed up onto a ledge to get a good view of the front of the compound and highlighted with red circles all the visible entrances. What's so interesting with this level is the amount of variation in how you can approach the level, walk up the stairs at the front and go in guns blazing, sneak through into the basement or shimmy along the ledge and hop through a window.
Now lots of walking sims are not like this, they focus on environment and story over gameplay, but this level is a still useful for my research, it shows all the little paths players might go and how it splits up quite a simple looking building into a vast and fun to explore level. If I can have lots of branching pathways that lead to my main room, like a kind of crossroads with different pathways, one right one left it would add more exploration and a little replayability.
The next game I want to talk about is Zelda Breath Of The Wild (2017)
This image above is from probably the first 10 minutes of the game, after climbing out of the cave you were sleeping in you end up on the top of this mountain overlooking the world.
In my website review I had with Frazer I mentioned how I want my level to have a big chimney sticking out mountain, this is from the big forge that will be in the main room of my cave. The reason I bring up Zelda is because its one of the best examples of games that use what I like to call the "cool thing off in the distance that you can go to" mechanic.
Having a interesting building or mountain or pretty much anything off in the distance makes the player curious of what it is, I feel like this is a really good thing that lots of games, especially open world ones do well. If the player themselves want to go there for the sole purpose of exploration and not for a map marker or objective on their screen. That's good level design in my eyes. Curiosity is really powerful emotion that can keeps players playing games for ages.
Mine Research - Primary
A couple years ago I went to a old mine near St Ives and took lots of pictures for my photography project, luckily they are relevant to my current project.
Below are pictures of the mines and some caves near them.
I really like the look for the slide that the rubble comes down on, it looks really dirty/dusty like its been used a lot (well it probably has) if I can find a similar texture for some of my models it would make them look really good.
Forge Research
Before starting to make my forge I looked around to get some ideas from over pieces of media.
I made a mood board of some fantasy/steampunk forges.
I also looked at satisfactory, this is a sci-fi/futuristic factory building game that isn't steampunk at all, the reason I looked at it is because it has a very interesting rail/conveyer system my building could benefit from.
Satisfactory uses conveyer belts to transport all of its resources around the players factory, because of this each machine that uses conveyers has the same looking entrance and exit on them, like this smelter here. I really like the idea of a entrance and exit in terms of aesthetics.
This is a screenshot of the main room of my cave, as you can see the forge has three separate parts, the two at the front being the entrance and exits. If the minecart rails transported ores in through the left, with the left part dedicated to collection, it goes through the middle forge and comes out the right side that's dedicated to transporting the minerals to the storage room for, well storage.
Level Design - One Way System
Lots of games use a kind of one way system for their level design, a good example of this is when the player falls down somewhere and can't get back up, this technique is used to stop players going back where they've came, making the level smaller.
When talking with Frazer, he said that it would be a good idea to have this kind of mechanic in my cave, and after some thought I decided against it, because my level is quite small I don't want the player to be locked away from some of it.
In this clip at 4:30 you can see a example of this, the players rope snaps making them fall down the slope, this stops the player getting back up.
The "Look" I'm going for
Now my environment doesn't any people in it, so its very abandoned, but I'm not going for the traditional abandoned look, with lots of mess overtime, things decaying and being broken, like a town or building from the Fallout series for example.
I want to go for a look very similar to Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, with all the buildings looking nice and pristine, but with no people, like all the people just disappeared for no reason.
Lighting and Skyrim's Dwemer Caves
When showing Frazer my cave system, he asked how I was going to include lights, and recommended researching Dwemer style caves from Skyrim (2011)
I really like the style they have, the lanterns on pillars is a really good idea that I could use, instead of having lanterns on just pillars, I could have them hanging under pipes.
I also really like the gears turning in the walls, this is a small piece of detail I can add to the caves to make them feel less empty. It also fits in well with the steampunk aesthetic.
I made a lantern design with the style of the dwemer architecture. This one asset can have lots of variation in terms of position, hanging from a support with a beam, hanging off a pipe or leaning against a rock.
Researching Industrial Elevators
In my storage area I made an elevator that would be used to transport cargo around. Before modelling I looked at some examples and made a moodboard of reference images.
I noticed that lots of the elevators had a bit of the wall come out from the rest of the wall, around shoulder height, I made sure to include that in my design.
Similarities To Abzu
I talked quite in depth about Abzu previously and how I really like the game and how well designed it is, and what I've realized is that my game is quite similar to Abzu in terms of what they focus on. Like Abzu I've focused on visuals over gameplay, now you could argue that all walking sims do that, and although you wouldn't be wrong, some have a lot more mechanics than others. Firewatch for example has a lot of mechanics in the game, a full dialogue tree with branching choices and lots of intractability with its environment. Abzu is a lot more minimal with its mechanics, to finish the game all you really need is the ability to move and interact with things.
My game has very few gameplay mechanics, just a couple of working doors and that's about it, I'm focused on the environment and visuals lots, creating a visually pleasing place to explore.
Looking At Steampunk Games Title Screens
I wanted to look at some existing examples of steampunk style title screens to get inspiration for my own. I made a moodboard of some of the examples I found.
I like all of these a lot, some stand out ones being the Frostpunk one with its ice like background to the text and the Steamworld dig one, with each word having a different font, it makes it look very unique and easily recognizable.
I think the Machinarium title screen has to be my favourite, I like the simplicity of it, and how the art of the game steals the show, its got a very depressing feel with the contrasting colours between the sky and the rocky landscape. The font fits that cartoony art style that the game uses.
Making My Title Screen
I went onto dafont to look for some steampunk style fonts and found one relatively quickly.
I like the strange design of this font, the weird angles that the font curves into makes it look very unique.
I put the font into my title screen, and after using some text effects, for example giving the text a outline, the menu and overall text looks a lot better than the previous version.
Before
After
Researching Ambience & Sound Effects
Before adding sound effects I researched some games with good existing ambience and some good sound effects.
For steampunk sound effects I looked at Frostpunk, they lots of good cog sounds when you are clicking through the many menus, I could use sounds like for any mechanical sound, door opening, cogs turning etc.
You can hear a lot of the menu noises in this playthrough
For the ambience, I looked at games like The Forest, The Long Dark, Little nightmares.
I really like The Forest's ambience, I want to emulate this kind of echo the game has when going into caves, it really adds to the immersion.