August 20, 2024

Starting with the game demo, I came up with the idea behind the game before my class had officially started. Knowing what the class entailed, I spent a lot of time drafting storyboards to come up with an idea that isn't saturated, and followed consumer interests. One key element in this whole process was taking in customer sentiment about certain game design and features, and seeing what other games are doing.

One feature players seem to dislike is microtransactions. While most game companies push out free games with in-game purchases, the overall sentiment is that most players prefer working towards unique and interesting items, rather than opening a loot box, purchasing a reward track, or even outright purchasing cosmetics. I had originally intended the game to not include in-game purchases, but to cost $30. Another sentiment players seem to have is receiving a game worth its price tag. One example of a game not achieving this would be Destiny 2 by Bungie. With each expansion, it seems that players express frustration with the lack of content, even though this extra content costs about as much as another game would. This can cause strife between the players and the game with some customers purchasing the additional content, getting exclusive items that improve their character, while other players who refuse to purchase the content miss out on better equipment. 

August 26, 2024

After attending class for a week and getting the general feel for what's required of me, I began learning Unreal Engine 5 as my engine of choice (we had to pick between a few options). The class wouldn't officially teach UE5 until the last few weeks, so everything had to be self-taught. 

The hard part of coming up with a game idea was done, I just had to learn how to implement it. Starting with character design, I picked up Blender, a free open-source program that allowed me to use hard-surface modeling techniques to create characters, assets, and textures.

October 21, 2024

This marked the halfway point of the semester, I had basic character models completed and animated and started the process of implementing systems and control features.

December 5, 2024

The demo was completed and presented in class. A title screen was implemented along with a settings menu with options to change the game visually. Once the player loaded into the game, they were able to move around, activate the character switching, and use an emote button. 

January 6, 2025

My senior seminar class has started, and we were given directions and guidelines for our cumulative projects. At this point, I was undecided on whether to continue working on the demo, or to create a cinematic to exercise my communication skills. 

January 20, 2025

I had decided to go with a cinematic and had created a rough draft for how the animation will play out. I took this opportunity to silently compete with my classmates, it wasn't entirely a competition, nor was it out of malice. Giving myself certain goals to reach on a self-guided project was a little difficult, mainly because I didn't have a timeline fully realized and I didn't know where I should be progress-wise. 

February 2025

 At this point, I had a script and storyboard of what I wanted, I also had the scenes blocked out to get a general feel for scale, and what shots to implement. I prepared two sets for recording, one of a forest, and one of a town. Two different feeling places gave the animation some depth and layers, whereas having one set would've made the overall story boring and monotone. I had also picked up Adobe Substance Painter 3D as another program to use. This program gave me better insight into the pipeline for texturing and implementing textures across all programs. 

March 2025

My nose was to the grindstone. The days starting from February started to blend together as I worked on the cinematic. While I had other classes that required my attention, this project took not only extra class time, but also my free time as well. A project of this scope typically has a team working 40 hours a week to get this project done, whereas I only had 3 months total to have it completed. By the end of March, the textures were complete, the models and environments were done, the only thing left was to record and edit the scenes.

Totaling 12 separate scenes, some unused, I managed to record each scene in a matter of hours, by far the quickest part of the project. One benefit of using Unreal Engine 5 is the real-time rendering, what you see in the editor is often times what you see through the camera. This circumvented the traditional render time of days to a matter of minutes (something I had shared in my class previously that had helped other students doing similar projects). While this helped my project immensely, this also helped my classmates and the quality of their projects skyrocketed. Going from freshman level animations to attention grabbing technical animations. My one-sided competition had then worked its magic, with other students shooting up in quality, it forced me to meet and exceed their levels. 

April 2025

April marked the last few days of instruction, meaning one last chance to have my work critiqued. At this point, I essentially had a final draft completed (the video above). This draft was well received and had exceeded my previous expectations. While there was a department showcase this same month, I had submitted this project as I completed it, and it was quickly accepted. The overall support for the project was immense, even attracting the attention of a local game company interested in its future progress.