Off The Map: Death by engine

This week has been a stressful one, lets just say a lot of work happened but it doesn't necessarily show. Me, Denzil and Braden have spent the entire week trying to work on engine things; lets just say this was all of our faces at one point this week...

Denzil continued working on his water for the rest of this week and it has not been easy; after many issues, errors and a crash he has finally got it working. It still needs a few tweaks but it is almost perfect and he is ready to move on the waterfall; that Freddy has already done the texture sheets for.

On Friday Denzil also went down to London for another Library visit, and he has brought back a lot more reference and texture photos which will be brilliant for some of the new books Freddy and myself have been working on. Whilst he was there he talked to the judges and showed them what we have been working on; they seemed enthusiastic and excited about to see our outcome, hopefully they will like the end result.

New book texture reference (Taken by Denzil)

New book texture reference (Taken by Denzil)

Braden has also been continuing with his UI; however the majority of the week has been spent trying to get the HUD to only be visible in certain areas; this week has been a real strain on mine and Braden's blueprinting knowledge and capability. At least it looks pretty and the start screen and pause pages work. Hopefully next week Braden can start working on some finished designs to polish up the UI. 

HUD preview

This week for me has been helping other people, for example making sure Freddy is on track with her texturing, helping Braden with blueprinting and helping fix Luke's scaling issues. I have also been messing around in Engine making sure everything fits and making material instances for the books so that the turn from sepia tones to colour throughout the level. I have also helped Freddy by doing the normal, roughness and emissive maps for all of the books. Next week hopefully I will be able to model the rest of the environment; so that the level won't look as sparse.

Freddy has been working on texturing books, a titleable waterfall for Denzil, a sunflower, sun, clouds, tree and grass for the background planes. If all goes well me and Freddy will be working on a modular titleable texture for the rocky areas next week. By this I mean a texture the tiles side ways or up and down, it also has a corner piece so that everything fits together seamlessly. This should hopefully help us with the large areas we have to cover with planes; for depth and detail. I will also set up the material in engine so that the hue and saturation can be edited so that it can be used throughout the entire level.

End of the level; show casing Freddy's texturing.

Luke has be working on making lots of assets and has now moved on to working on particle effects for the level. He wants to create a light beam/sun rays effect and a smoke/fog for the mushroom area at the end.

Dan has been busy sculpting our Alice; and I have to say she looks amazing. I am really impressed with the detail Dan has managed to get on the model and I can't wait till she's finished.

Dan's sculpts.

At the end of this week I have felt stressed with everything; I have to manage my time and other peoples, therefore I am a little on the angry side. Hopefully next week I can get some timetables made of when exactly I need everything done by; just to keep myself and everyone on track.

How I feel at the end of each week.

Finally here is a quick run though of our level at the moment;

There should be more improvement by the end of next week, just got to keep on pushing forward!
Cheerio for now.

References:
Crying .gif: http://theodysseyonline.com/uga/ugas-midterm-spring-break-survival-guide/92017
Fuck this cat .gif: http://9gag.com/gag/aBKOP72