Side Scroller Project - Post Mortem Positivity

It's finally over. 

This post mortem is a little overdue, but after the amount of work I put into this project, I needed to recharge. The final result is something I'm pretty damn happy with and, seeing as I took on a slightly managerial role as well as being an environment and occasional concept artist, I feel some responsibility for the entire project, not just the level I worked on.

As you know, I worked on the Scary Level and, honestly, I've got a few problems with it. Out of all of the levels I feel like it was the least polished and there are many reasons for this. A lot of is, unsurprisingly, revolved around time management. Due to this being the first large group project where we've been working as a large team, as well as part of smaller teams, actually figuring out the pipeline process was difficult.

Many of our issues stemmed from the fact that we spent a lot of time worrying about Game Design rather than the art side of the project. As I've shown before, we had some fantastic concepts, all the levels did, but some of that awesomeness didn't transfer in the way we wanted it to because we were focused on gameplay elements and how the levels would play out. This can be partly attributed to some miscommunication between us and the tutors. Due to this project being somewhat of a work-in-progress, we got slightly confused as to how much we needed to focus on in terms of designing the levels. From the feedback we gave, next years third years will have basic levels set out with some blueprints provided and the placement of the platforms set up for them as well. 

Another big problem we had was communication within our team and with the engine team. Some of this is down to me. Because of this managerial role I sort of adopted, I spent a lot of time managing all the other levels. It meant that, even though my communication with everyone overall was great, the communication within our smaller team wasn't so fantastic due to my attention being diverted elsewhere. Some of my other team members were quiet which meant that there was no strong leadership, other than myself. They weren't so good as making sure they were working in sync with the engine team, which meant that a lot of time in which assets were needed to be was wasted on engine work that we couldn't actually implement. We also had some personal issues that somewhat impacted out ability to work as fast as other teams, but we still managed to get most of the work done.

In terms of my own problems with this projects, there were a few. Ignoring any personal problems I had, the main issue was I was spread too thin. I realised that, closer to the end of the project, because my mind was on the game overall, my focus on our level was fairly limited. In the last week, my focus was back as I paid more attention to our level rather than the overall game. 

Although there were many issues we faced, there was plenty that we did well. 

I was particularly proud of many of the assets that I made. The altar that I sculpted was one of my favourite assets I've ever created and something that I'm planning on remaking for my portfolio. Using Karol's concept, I sculpted it in Zbrush, retopologised and textured it with a panning emmisive to highlight the details. 

Karol's concept

My WIP sculpt

Retopologised altar front wireframe

Retopologised altar side wireframe

Altar baked down and textured in engine

There is plenty more I'd like to change with the model, the bricks for example, and the textures. I'd also like to change the shape slightly. Mike Kelly did a quick paintover for me, showing how to emphasise the shape slighty and make it more interesting, although admittedly he got a little carried away.

The other strength I found I had in this project was management. I spent a great deal of time organising things, talking between groups, and setting up meetings and scrums to make sure everyone was on track. I also kept minutes and updated the tutors with the progress of the project, speaking with them when people had issues. It was a shame that my own work suffered a little because of it. It's definitely opened my mind to a more production/managerial role within the industry, although I still would like to continue on this environment art path. 

There are many parts of the level I would like to change, looking over it. Due, again, to my more managerial role, I very much left the overall look of the level to the other team members, something I regret quite a bit. I feel like, with a bit more of my own input and more input from our concept artist, we could really have improved the overall look of the level. 

The colours and the lighting were the two big problems in my eyes. From the very beginning we knew that our colour palette was very monochrome and we needed to add in more colour; reds and blues are great, but we needed more purples and yellows to really highlight things. Looking at the final build, there was far more that we could've done to make that happen.

The lighting really could've done with another pass. Our values were really shot, things were just blending into the background, which is not what we wanted at all. A lot of this was because of, again, because of time management. Many of the assets I made were placed in relatively late, and they needed tweaking to fit properly with the level.

I did a paintover of the level , attempting to fix a few things that I would've changed. 

Original Screenshot

Value Paintover

Value Paintover with Waterfall

Colour Overlay Paintover

Colour Overlay Paintover with Waterfall

Colour Overlay Paintover with updated levels

Colour Overlay Paintover with updated levels and Waterfall

The main changes that I made were just figuring out the focal points, like the alter and the city. I changed the crystals, which were taking away from the focal points of the level, as well as the eggsacs and mushrooms I made, which were far too emmisive. The crystals, as Elliott suggested after speaking with him, would have been better with subsurface scattering or opacity, like how the stalactites in the cold level were done. I also put a lot more colour and saturation into the level, looking back to our original Trine influence. 

All in all, although there is much I would change about our level, I am particularly pleased with what we managed to get done as a team, and as a year. Our game looks fantastic, and producing something of that quality with barely any experience and only 6 weeks is something to be proud of.