CS Research

My group's idea is to look into story driving characters, characters that drive the story along.

It's a pretty simple project and, other than narrative theory, I can't think of much second hand research that could be done simply because it's looking into how characters can push the story onwards. After a few searches, I haven't found anything on the subject either, so this is mostly personal experience and observations based on games that I've played.

Story driving characters is really the best way we can describe what we're going to be talking about. We're looking into characters that help push the story along by guiding the player in the right direction and giving the player purpose to their actions and direction. Most characters do this, but there is almost always one character that seems to have this specific purpose. They are normally a companion that guides the player and aids them along the way by helping to solve puzzles or helping to fight the enemy, or they can be a character that narrates to the player and points them in the right direction without getting directly involved. In other forms of media, every character drives the story forwards, even just a little, by directing and aiding the main protagonist. Everything is in a set direction. On the other hand, games are a bit more lenient. While story driven games do still have a story, it's not in such a set direction as other forms of media due to the fact that the player can explore and interact with the characters and environment. The player can choose their own pace and experience the story in their own time and as such the game needs characters that guide the player.

Early examples of such characters can be found in the 80's where games were becoming more in-depth and complex and started to include characters other than the player that wasn't enemies. Characters started to appear that would give the character quests and items that would compel them to carry the story on. Without them, not much would have happened. However, they sometimes didn't have much interaction with the player that was beyond telling them to go to the next area or giving them equipment. More recently, as games have become more complex, these characters can do much more. One recent example is Elizabeth from Bioshock: Infinite. Elizabeth is the main part of the story as her abilities and who she is are the very reason for the existance of the storyline. Often, she will tell the player what objective needs to be done next, such as going to a specific building or destroying an obstacle. Of course, she always pushes the story along, informing the player of the backstory of events, some of the lore of the game (such as explaining how Columbia stays afloat through what could only be described as quantum levitation, or explaining how the Lutece twins, who are both story driving characters themselves, exist). She has a direct influence on driving the player forwards as she can bring in objects from other universes, such as a skyhook or cover or weapons, that allow the player to progress further on. To add to that, she is also able to pick locks at the player's command, which unlocks additional places in the world as well as the next stage to the game. And in terms of finding secrets, she can also decode cyphers that occasionally appear on walls, which lead to additional secrets. Elizabeth's overall goal changes across the game. First she wants to get away from the main antagonist Comstock, then she wants to get away from the protagonist Booker DeWitt after she realises she's been betrayed, then eventually she turns to wanting to kill Comstock. Across the game, you see her evolve into a more hardened character. She can take care of herself, as the game tells you, as she tends to hide in safety when enemies are about and can pass you ammo, health and money when you're running low and the aforementioned summoning from other worlds. These mechanics make her not only an interesting character, but also make her a useful asset to the player. She is the most important character for driving the story due to her knowledge, her personality and her position.

As I said before, you get characters like Elizabeth who not only drive the story onwards but also help the character directly, and you can also get characters that direct through narration. One such character is Wheatley from Portal 2. A comedic character who is met right at the start of the game, he guides the player from one objective to the next, telling the player where they need to head to. As he cannot directly influence many things, he needs the player's help so he can help the player. This will be things such as activating switches, or plugging him into a terminal. However his character is very dim-witted and pretends to know what he's doing for the sake of dignity (despite being a complex A.I. System). Often, this leaves the player to solve the mystery themselves, which can be objectives like cutting pipes with a laser. It's quite a unique way in driving the story forward as the player comically watches Wheatley attempt to do things before giving up and wandering off to do it themselves. He'll do things such as hitting random buttons and pretending to know what all of them do, or he'll be optimistic every time he hits something such as getting excited when the lights come on. He'll also have moments where things will be “a little embarrassing” and he'll ask the player to turn away for a moment while he tries to open doors. The first instance, he opens a side panel rather than the door and the second time he just smashes the window. These actions not only give a clear purpose and direction for the player, but also gives the game comedic value. Later on, when he takes over as the tester of Aperture, he'll start trying to build puzzles out of scraps in an attempt to keep the player moving, his purpose being that he “has an itch for testing” now. He's a juxtaposition of the main antagonist GlaDOS who is intelligent, sarcastic and uniform in her decisions and Wheatley's complete opposition adds a certain light to the game that makes it that much more compelling as the player is driven onwards in two different ways by two different characters, kind of giving the player both sides of the coin.

Ref:

“Bioshock Infinite” Irrational Games 2013

“Portal 2” Valve 2011

Landing Pad

This is the blog entry for my level design. My idea is that of a simple futuristic landing pad for small crafts to land on. You'll also be able to cross a bridge off of the pad and enter a building. It's simple and I worry a little that the models will be very basic, but to start off I want to keep things simple so I don't end up taking too much time.

I started off with laying out the basic floor plan of the map, as well as extruding out the platform and altering its shape to make the basic shape I'm after. I can't really think of anything that inspired this except maybe a few scenes from Star Wars films and games, but nothing really inspired this scene, it just came to me.

I started to add a building that you can walk in to. The door itself would transfer the player into the next part of the game. To make the whole in the wall, I made another smaller box and put it within the wall, using the booleans tool on the box to make the hole.

Started to add some detail to the bridge, adding in a bannister to stop the player from walking off. I think I will make them look like the hard light bridges from Portal because their aesthetics would fit in pretty well with the scene.

I rescaled the bridge, comparing the bannister size to the body. Additionally, I made a box that will later become a crate that I can dot about the map to add to the scene. I also added in some balconies up above to further add to the scene, as if passers by can watch ships come by and the like.

The first attempt at UV mapping. It went much better than I anticipated, considering my previous attempts at UV mapping were terrible. I put the barriers over each other because it would make it easier to texture, as they'll look the same from either side.

Started UV mapping everything else, with the exception of the landing platform as the circular shape was giving me a bit of trouble, so I'm going to wait to get some help with it later. Also created a texture for the bridge, using some effects and a square brush to create the effect (below). The hard light barriers were a bit confusing at first because I didn't know how to get the transparency, but quickly figured out that I needed to create a transparent background and save the file as a .PNG.

 

The art style used for the floor was created using a square brush that I painted using a graphics tablet and Photoshop. The style was inspired by a quick sketch video on YouTube. I know I've seen this same technique used in a game before as well, but I can't think for the life of me where.

It turned out that the booleans technique that I used actually breaks the face, so I had to delete and remodel the building. While I was at it, I decided to add more diversity to the map by adding a second floor to the building, as it was all on one plane and wasn't very interesting.

Finished making the second floor and created holes for the balconies using the split polygon tool.

Also trying to add some more variation to the blocky form of the buildings. Think I'm spending too much time on this though, and not enough time on the textures.

I've been trying to make a way to make the textures consistent with each other so that they can transfer seamlessly to one another. In hindsight, I should have set up a set palette before doing this really. I also tried making an overlay texture to try and ease the process. This was inspired by a process I found on Google when looking for appropriate textures that could help. I put solid barriers rather than hard light barriers along the front of the walkway because it just didn't feel right to me to have the hard light barriers there.

I keep having to rework the UV Maps because of so many things. Redoing objects because the faces are broken, UV just doesn't seem to be in the right place or doesn't want to work. Think I finally have it right now though.

Been experimenting with the colours a bit to see what kind of style I want. I know I want it to have a kind of digital look to it, like a cyber world or something. Trouble is, I'll still need to remake some of the textures because of the inconsistent colours. Also had to change all of my files from .PNG to .TGA as I hadn't realised that that was supposed to be the file format.

Figured out a way to keep the colours consistent, although I still need to fix the platform. The inside and out is done now. My biggest concern is the fact that everything is monochromatic because I couldn't think of a way to make everything consistent at the time. I think the textures could have used a complete rework because it still seems pretty bland, but I don't have the time to redo any of them, so I think I'll have to let the engine and the normal map try to make some more diversity.

I tried baking ambient occlusion on the objects in Maya, but all it did was made the entire object really dark, which wasn't what I wanted. The bridge also seemed not to work because the texture would disappear entirely and be replaced by the black and white occlusion map.

Moving on to exporting everything to the UDK engine. It took a while to figure out, as I had to export the objects as an .FBX file. It took a while to figure out because I couldn't get the textures to import to UDK or export to the .FBX file. It seemed to be both because, after checking a few boxes linked to meshes, textures and materials I finally managed to get the textures in. I was also confused by the scaling. I didn't realise that the objects had to be centred in Maya to have the pivot centred in the UDK. By this point I was pretty stressed so I didn't bother centring the objects and just moved them into the correct position. I forgot to document the process though.

The finished product on the UDK engine. Forgot to document the normal mapping as well, but I basically stuck the textures into CrazyBump, adjusted the settings a little and applied them by going into the materials editor of the objects and attaching the normal map to the object, as shown below, using the platform as the example.

The image below is the lower floor of the interior. I put some more boxes inside to add to the aesthetic and to the left I tried to add in a wall computer panel, but due to the size of the object and the texture size it didn't translate as well as I'd hoped.I also added light sources inside the building because I felt it was too dark near the entrance from the shadows of the building. I did the same to the upstairs, only I had added actual lights in the texture for those.

My biggest regret about this project is the textures. At first, painting was a good idea and the style fits to some of the objects, such as the bridge, the platform and the solid barriers, but not so much for the building.It also all seems monochromatic which isn't really that engaging. If I could redo this unit, I would make something that I could add real textures to, if only because it would be more engaging than what I've made. I don't think the textures themselves are considerably bad, just it doesn't seem as engaging as I would like it to be.

This is really bugging me. I can't seem to make these barriers translucent. The whole in the centre of them is created by the alpha channel in the texture file. This whole is supposed to be feathered around the edges so that it fades into the colour rather than having this sharp edge. I can't work out what's going on, but I'll assume that UDK can't handle the alpha channel the way I want it to because it works fine in Maya. I can't seem to find a solution anywhere either.

Below: A walkthrough of the map, trying to show off everything.