Jason Rubin – A man after my own heart

With my current investment in VR it’s no surprise that I am very much interested in the professional development of the platform. Today I stumbled across an interview with the man who co-founded one of the greatest gaming studios to have ever graced the industry, Naughty Dog. The man in question was of course (as you have seen in the title) Jason Rubin. Jason is currently the head of content at Oculus, and is in charge of the experiences that are produced for the platform. In the interview I mentioned (with IGN), Jason talks about starting in the industry, starting Naughty Dog, leaving Naughty Dog, his role as a key speaker in the industry during a time that wasn’t pleasant for developers, his current role in Oculus and his predictions and hopes for VR as a platform and a development tool.

Rather than gushing over and over about this guy I will leave the video below and let you find out for yourself.

I will say this however that in a very controversial speech at the D.I.C.E summit in 2004, Jason highlighted key issues with workplace ethics in the industry, which is the main topic for my dissertation so that speech is very important to my research and bibliography. WIN!!

So what does this discovery mean for my project? Well one point is that it has inspired me to be more creative and experimental with how I use VR, knowing that industry veterans have taken major roles in the platform and are working to produce experiences that can define and cement VR as a major development in gaming. Another point is that with the constant improvement and development for the platform, any issues that I may run into with production will have a higher chance of being experienced by others who know how to fix it, hopefully making it easier for me to deal with the problems too.

FMP Update Thoughts

So, over the past week I have managed to make large strides in the development of my FMP. I have decided to go with multiple platforms in my environment, this has added a vertical aspect to my game which, in VR, is spine tingling. However, at this moment I’m not 100% sure how to effectively integrate it with my gameplay; for now I’m using it like a resting space for the player to regain their composure before throwing themselves back into the fray.

For now I need to focus on the more visual aspects of my game. The environment is going to have influences from the Romantic era (late 18th century), with hints of New Romanticism (formed around the 1980’s). The characters will also be in the New Romantic theme, focusing more on the punk aspects of the movement.

Developing for VR

Yesterday I started the development phase of my FMP using the HTC Vive; already I’m running into issues with the motion controllers. My main issue right now is getting the models I’ve created, to represent the controllers, aligned with the actual controllers in the way I want them to; it’s not a huge problem, but it’s still a problem worth noting as it will take some effort to fix.

I already have a potential fix in mind. If I take a model already aligned for VR and then align my models to that it may fix the problem, hopefully.

There are a few other issues but one problem at a time.

Experiencing Virtual Reality (HTC Vive)

So recently we were lucky enough to get a HTC Vive (Steam VR) in our studio; and I must admit, the experience is amazing. I’ve mostly had experience in the design program Tilt Brush, which for fast, easy designs that can be made to scale, it’s amazing. VR as a design tool can be developed to become something incredible, and I hope it gets a much wider adoption in the digital art community.

I’ve also had a couple of experiences in the gameplay possibilities of VR, the immersion is unbelievable, whilst playing you really get invested in the environments and the interactions you have in each one. However, with this kind of physical immersion comes the physicality of the gameplay; whereas with a normal game the worst injury a player can get is carpal tunnel, in VR the amount of physical exertion required to play the games means that players will most likely have to warm-up and stretch before playing for a long duration of time. If VR can become more accessible to more people then I believe we can truly have an amazing development in technological capabilities, and a definite increase in quality products/design pieces.

We just have to be careful not to end up in a situation like The Matrix!

Client Work: Rabbit Heart

As part of my client work for this year I was tasked with designing and creating parts of an environment that have already been initially designed, all of the original work can be found HERE.

The idea behind the environment was to have an abandoned laboratory that was setup inside a cave; it was to have also previously been inhabited by an ancient civilisation that harnessed an energy source hidden beneath the cave.

I decided that I was going to create a rabbit head that can be changed and spread across the level to make it look like a production line that had been abandoned in a hurry, I started by using the designs that were already there (found HERE) and used ZBrush to get the organic shapes of the rabbit head and the ears, I then used blender to retopologise the high poly meshes. From there I used 3ds Max to model the rest of the head and used Substance Painter to texture it; here are the results of my first attempt.

A big issue that arose while producing the first version of this was the sense of scale from the textures created, in this first version of the the model the size of the eyes, with them looking almost Spider-man like, made the whole piece look like a children’s toy. In the later versions I made the eyes smaller to display a larger sense of scale to the model.

So I adapted the textures to make it look more like something big and menacing (as that’s what the original design intended) so I made some adjustments, added more damage and changed the shape of the eyes so that it looked less friendly.

Now I started to make some more final adjustments to the design, this time I decided to make it look more militarised/robotic; adding vents, cables, machinery and a maintenance hatch. I also adjusted some textures to add warning signs and other character building details.

Finally, I tweaked the textures some more to get this final design that I am mostly happy with, if I had more time with this project there is more that I would like to try; hopefully I can get the chance to come back to it later on in the year.

3D Practice

Today I’ve been having a chill day before the last big push to finishing my second year of uni. So I decided to do a bit of modelling (because I can’t relax anymore without being creative) and modelled Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Lightsaber from Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

You can fine the model HERE. (for some reason embedding doesn’t work)

Game Theory – Mirrors Edge

Here is the final game review where myself and my friend talk about what makes specific games “addictive” and “fun”. This video is a review of Mirrors Edge and some of the theories and gameplay elements that are used behind the scenes. This video was written and recorded by myself, my friend is featured to add a dialogue to make the video more interesting.

Game Theory – Just Cause 3

Here is the fourth of five game reviews where myself and my friend talk about what makes specific games “addictive” and “fun”. This video is a review of Just Cause 3 and some of the theories and gameplay elements that are used behind the scenes. This video was written and recorded by myself, my friend is featured to add a dialogue to make the video more interesting.

Game Theory – Devil May Cry

Here is the third of five game reviews where myself and my friend talk about what makes specific games “addictive” and “fun”. This video is a review of the Devil May Cry games and some of the theories and gameplay elements that are used behind the scenes. This video was written and recorded by myself, my friend is featured to add a dialogue to make the video more interesting.

The Street – 3D Realisation

As part of my 3D Realisation module I was tasked with researching a typical high street and designing, and modelling, a building that could be found there; the model is to be used with Unreal Tournament 4 so player accessibility has to be taken into account. I have already posted about my research, you can find the main post HERE.

The design of my building is based on two separate buildings, both of which are located around the city centre in Hull (my home town). The first building is located on Humber street named “The Warehouse”. Its architecture is from the mid 1900’s and has been used for many different purposes over the years; I chose this building because of it’s simplistic architecture, but mainly because I knew I could make an interior with it.

The second building is located near the train station. I chose this building because of its derelict and abandoned façade.

I liked the idea of having a run-down garage type building and decided to mash the two together (kind of like a Frankenstein’s Monster but in building form; just imagine lightning cracking behind me when I drew the image below).

Originally my design was to supposed have a tree that wound through the middle of the building, however this proved too difficult for the player to climb so I scrapped the idea and went with boxes instead. The exterior of the building was subject to some change over the modelling period, adding things like bins and rubble to make the scene a little busier.

The model itself is to scale of a 2 story building in height, and twice as wide as a typical store front (roughly 10 meters).

Another issue I had with my model was that I was only supposed to use 2 materials for the whole building; I, however, used 24…. This is an issue I’m going to have to resolve for future projects. Because of the large amount of materials the model broke when I put it into Unreal Engine 4, causing the lighting to break over the entire model; I have tried to rectify this issue, however, it was unsuccessful, so this is something I’m going have to keep in mind when I model in the future.

Below are renders of my final building, they show both the exterior and interior of the model: