Week 8: Getting back on track

Progress this week for the team on the Off the Map project, was rather slow. It was the first week back from the Easter break and we had other project assignments due in the upcoming days. As a result, most of our team had to divert their time and resources to the other projects.

With the majority of the team working on PowerPoint presentations, character re-submissions or reflective essays- Braden became the vanguard for the Off the Map project.

From Easter, Braden had spent his time completing the textures for his assets. These consisted of a number of smaller props for populating our level.

Of course, at the start Braden had disliked the hand-painted texturing process. However as he progressed and began to see his improvement, hand-painting texturing is a practice that Braden enjoys very much. Below are a number of texture sheets that Braden created:

Braden's textures

For his assets Braden had the opportunity to high poly bake during the project. Nevertheless, due to time constraints and his fear of the process consuming scared time he decided not to.

Despite being preoccupied by matters of her own, Amber continued to keep the team up to date and organise the team for the week’s following the re-submission and presentation deadlines. She has done a great service to the team by doing so.

After texturing, Braden continued work on the user interface for the level. This consisted of UI animations.

Successfully, Braden was able to make the HUD (head’s up display) ‘pop-up’ like a tutorial, at key moments throughout the level. Although the final result was not exactly as he hoped for, he was able to resolve the issue. The main aim was to make the HUD message as clear as possible- and he did so successfully. Moreover, the HUD is designed for all age ranges of players.

Finished and animated pause screen

New pop up tutorial

New pop up tutorial

Over the Easter break Dan was able to make a few iterations to Alice, by raising her cheeks and giving her a slight smile, this really brightened up her features and maked her stand out a lot more.

Braden has made great progress for the team this week and we hope that he keeps up the good work next week!