WORK PROGRESS

Artwork 4: Unreal Game

After creating the open world with PCG, I began by designing four spots within the map:

Arc Building
Mirrors
Cliff
Lake and the portal

I established the basic structure and placed major assets on the map. I ensured they were large enough for players to see them from afar at the starting point. These spots are located in the four corners of the map and feature different objects/actors for player interaction. The outcome of these interactions will either increase or decrease the health or energy bar.

With the basic map environment set up, I proceeded to implement an interaction system for the Random box and two types of roses.

The Randomness

The key concept of the interaction, and the entire environment, is randomness. The meta rose project's message revolves around life's unavoidable, unexpected, and inevitable thorns, such as a box of chocolates where you never know if your next piece will be sweet or bitter. However, you still have the choice of which aspect to highlight more.

To effectively convey the inevitability and unpredictability, randomness is integrated into the game's interaction system. Despite this randomness, players still have control over their health/energy bar, and the outcome of interactions depends on their choices.

The Random Box + Random Spawning

Once the game begins, I designed the random box to spawn randomly throughout the map, with a random number between 20 and 30. They have physics so they can be correctly placed on slopes or hills. When players approach and interact by pressing 'E', they animate to open, accompanied by a sound effect.

Two types of Roses + Weapon System

There are two types of roses: Pink and Chrome, which spawn randomly in terms of their total number in a box and the chances between the pink and the chrome. I scripted the chances of pink roses to be slightly higher than the chrome, hoping that this also holds true in the real world.

Once they spawn, players can pick them up by pressing 'E' to interact. Players can hold two roses: one in the back slot and one in the right hand as an active one.

Once players pick up the roses, they can be used as weapons to shoot energy to either cause damage (with the Chrome rose) or to heal (with the Pink rose). The game is designed as multiplayer, allowing players to influence other players' health bars or NPCs'. After they are used to fire energy or bullets, players can drop them on the ground by pressing 'G'.

I’m attempting to make them destroyed once their bullets are out, but strangely it wasn’t working. It would be better if they get destroyed automatically so it’s obvious for the players that they need to pick up others and don’t have to drop them, which might seem confusing if they can't reload. I didn’t want them to be reloaded, as there are going to be a set number of roses available with the boxes throughout the map.

New Map/Level

I noticed that my FPS performance was really low and tried to find out why the GPU/CPU was spiking so much. The majority of the problems stemmed from the PCG, and the lighting and shadows were generated from it.

Additionally, the third-person player controller, or the movement of Mintie, became strange. Instead of moving forward, Mintie was almost flying into the air when she should have been walking. I spent a lot of time trying to solve it and discovered that it worked perfectly fine in a new normal map, not the open map I was using before, with the same player controller. So... I scrapped the map/level again and built a new one, reverting back to a normal level instead of an open world. Yes, I had to place all the assets, materials, and functions all over again.

INDUSTRY ENGAGEMENT

Ableton User Group Melbourne

7:00-9:00pm, Wednesday 17th April

https://www.artscentremelbourne.com.au/event-archive/2024/play/ableton-user-group-melbourne-apr

I found out that there is a bi-monthly Ableton User Group meetup in Melbourne at the Channel. Dave Machine was invited to talk about the use of AI music production tools and UK-style production techniques. It was interesting to see the kind of software musicians are using these days for making music utilising AI, such as Suno. I would love to continue joining more of these bi-monthly meetups!

Thursday Ableton Jam Session on Fridays

1:00-4:30pm, Friday, 19th April

Since we started the Thursday Ableton weekly meetups in digital media, we’ve been talking about having a jam session to produce some music collaboratively. We gathered in the black box with our instruments, pedals, guitar, microphones to have a fun and exciting jam session. I’m so grateful that now we have this great community for musicians and sound artists. We got to experiment with our sound using vocals with other instruments!!

SOCIAL MEDIA

Another collaborative reel/post with a fellow musician featuring how we were creating harmonies on the spot. This reel has by far the most views, about 1000 views.

The other post was a 3D art piece based on the original photo on the right. It was my grandmother’s first memorial day, and I wanted to commemorate it with my art.

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