The Level having gone through the Beta testing, its about time to review the decisions i have made throughout the project. As with every project i like to remain flexible. This allows creations to meander and evolve naturally. I have always found this method of working productive and things can sometimes take on a mind of their own. This digression can also be hazardous as if there is no narrative within the concept, it would lose its meaning, or a potential client may not see potential in a product. Its important to maintain a decent level of plasticity, that is to say that there should be details within the concept, or brief that are not compromised. This could be a motif or a style, or something as obvious as a brand logo or companies signature in terms of branding.
The most apparent point in this project where this happened was when i made the audio. In one of the original concepts, i was looking at incorporating a 'steam punk' motif. This in terms of audio, i felt meant lots of steam and static, industrial noise and interference. So when i started creating the audio this is what i pushed forward. But i creating the sounds and layering them up, it started to feel like more of a techno-dystopian world as opposed to the victorian steam punk idea. The image i saw in my head after involving myself with the sound was more barran and dark juxtaposed against brighter colours and intense vibrancy.
This visually fitted the initial research i did looking at Doom, Heretic and Duke Nukem, however the soundtracks to these games are either Kistch heavy metal or dark, naive synth music. Again really different to the sounds that i had made in Ableton.
Therefore, aesthetically i have attempted to realise a more 'tech-savy' style, and the audio is in keeping with the feel of this motif, not the steam-punk, analogue feel that was previously in mind.
One of the main reasons the audio ended up sounding how it did was due to what i investigated in my case study. The development of audio within games, and in particular for the sound of my level, the use of MIDI. The ability for games to have 128 different sounds and textures.
All of the noise and audio, apart from the radio transmissions (taken from Prelinger archives) were all synthesized with layers of midi notes. I experimented with drum racks and layers of samples, different patterns of textured static, effects such as reverb, bit crushing, delay and gating.
In retrospect i should have looked at a wider variety of games, especially contemporary games. But these things do not interest me. I wanted to use games and styles that i knew something about, and also that i liked the aesthetic style of a lot more so than newer games. It was a conscious decision not to really look at modern games, but to look back at older games because i wanted my level to look like those games. (Duke Nukemm Heretic, Hexen, Doom, Castle Wolfenstein)
Due to unforeseen circumstances i was late in starting this project and neglected to do a Gant chart or reference time management un till after the first crit. As a response to this, i sorted a production chart and guidelines for time keeping and although i have slipped in areas and i can still improve, i feel with this project that has improved greatly. If i had not had exterior issues, i think this time my time management would have been nearly spot on. In the up coming self directed study module, i feel i will have no issues with time management. Perseverance and disciplin have been learned the hard way over previous projects and i am now confident in my ability to get work sent through on time.
Doing what ive done again, i would have got concept art and textures sorted out earlier on to allow more time for Photoshop work, made sure i had schematics and scale floor plans before starting production as this time it slowed me down interms of construction and importing it to unity.
I would have also done loads more unity tutorials and made use of its features. I feel in re engaging with Maya, i left a lot of Unity work on the back burner as Maya is time consuming and ultimately involving.
Things left to do - Import audio to Unity, bake out animation files for reaction animation and idol and import into unity and refine a few of the textures that were effected in the transfer from Maya to Unity.
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