5. Game Development - Easter Sprint

> March 31

For the next four weeks I, and members of my team, have a target to get our game ready for play testing. Each of us have an allotted task list but all must complete these tasks to our best ability in order to fulfil this sprint.

My tasks are:

1. to implement assets into the game to create a visually pleasing play area and make use of the assets we have produced.

2. to create a title screen

3. to assist Owen if any issues occur with the characters' textures

The first actions I took were to research the Unreal Sky Sphere BP so that I could implement my own cloud images I have created earlier. It seemed to work quite nicely at a first glance so when I have the actual game file at home I can quickly recreate the effect and edit accordingly.

> April 5

Today I worked on the title/start screen splash art. I made many variations of Which I shared a few with the college Discord to get feedback which to my surprise revealed the first design I made as being the favourite. (Of these few I showed the Discord, the top right was the favourite.)

> April 10

I have begun to texture the bamboo bazooka. James has unwrapped it really nicely. My goal is to make it appear scratched up and lit through a sun dappled canopy.

> April 12

I have finished the bamboo bazooka to a degree I'm somewhat happy with.

Using Unreal Engine's in-engine skysphere as a reference, I created my own cloud textures to plug into the blueprint. The cloud images I made to generally replicate the ones already in the Sky Sphere BP so I spent more time fiddling with nodes to change the opacity and placement of the clouds in the sky so that they best resembled the aesthetic 'anime' sky. I changed the sun to be larger and the clouds to move faster.

> April 15

Now I am at home with the most up to date Unreal project file I am able to implement the changes to the environment and place assets. A lot of the assets have been modelled and textured but are just not in the game yet so this is a chance to take time and make sure everything is being used and looks good together. A few assets that I added to the environment were stone wall variations, defensive wood spikes, bamboo, baskets, ferns, planks and produce.

The main changes to the map I made were painting in dirt paths and breaking up the textures to create a more natural feeling between the areas. These paths i made I broke up with planks and vegetation.

I am implementing my chosen title screen into the Unreal start screen map. Using Unreal's widget animation capabilities I was able to make the title move in a satisfying way on start up and looping from there.

Using sequence animation in Unreal I had the title screen animate in a looping bounce. The main transformations inside the widget editor that I used were position and rotation. I used scale and position transformation on the bubbles to make them appear floaty.

The only non looping elemnt to the title screen is the tribal and pirate arms which come in from the side holding their weapons.

> April 25

I created this UI mock-up and got feedback from the group that they liked it so I continued working on the elements ready for next sprint.

User Experience

The target audience of are game children 7 and up to young adults. This type of player we expect to be somewhat familiar with simple shooting mechanics and winning conditions. They might need some assistance with controls as every game is different and winning conditions should be clear during the game. To ensure we meet these user experience pointers I have developed a clear and in-theme UI set with controls to play popping up before the match and win conditions presented by the barrier's movement and a status bar at the top of the screen.

I was in charge of UI design and creation with Abbie in charge of implementation. I wanted a neutral theme that combined elements of both pirates and jungle tribe so I concepted some wood hand painted popups with leaves. The main pieces we needed were a screen pause menu, ammo slot, stamina bar and timer.

For the ammo we wanted to convey that the player can only hold 3 balls in a clear visual way. I thought showing empty slots when ammo would show this perfectly.

The UI is visually pleasing as it complements the colourful gameplay whilst not taking up too much room on the screen.

This model made by Owen I textured for the pirate characer.