Project 3 – Luca's Blog

For my project 3, I decided to create a space environment prototype game that demonstrates space flight, planets, and various lighting effects to create a basic but effective area for the player to play around in. I did various research on games that I thought were relevant to what I wanted to create so I looked at games such as Ever space which I find to be very visually appealing. While doing the research for the environments, I had to do research on spaceships to come up with a new unique ship idea that I could use as the model you fly around in. I created my model in mind with it being a lot better than the basic one I created for my project 1. I created textures for the skybox, spaceship and the planets and used the software Substance Painter to create the ship and planet textures as they gave me a lot more options compared to the basic features of photoshop. I used a program called Space scape to create the nebula skybox and I found it very useful to form my own unique take focusing on the colour purple.

Monday 14th January 2019 –

We were introduced to project 3 and were tasked with either continuing from our project 2 work or actually starting completely fresh. I decided that I would continue from my project 2 and improve heavily on things such as the user interactions, models, and visual effects.

I plan to research things such as scripts so I can try and make my own form of spaceflight in my game and also to look at various games that use spaceflight to try and gather different perspectives from games. I also want to plan to look at various light effects to try and create something that would look appealing in my game.

Tuesday 15th January 2019 –

I did a bunch of research on things such as environments set around space and looked at various games such as Ever space and No Man’s Sky to try and get inspiration for what I want my environment to look like. I also did some research on different spaceships as I’m currently planning to make a new spaceship which is heavily improved from my first spaceship design used in project 1. While looking at spaceships, I also did some research on spaceflight in unity and looked at a video that demonstrates this in Unity and it also provided the scripts used in the video. I’m currently planning to learn from the script to try and incorporate this onto my game.

Thursday 17th January 2019 –

I started work on creating a new asset for my project 3 by looking at my spaceship research. I decided that I would want to create a much more detailed model compared to the one that I made for my project 1 by adding a lot more detail in terms of polygons to make it look more appealing than just some very low poly ship. My goal was utilize the skills I’ve learnt in blender to start making a ship to fit for my improved level.

Monday 21st January 2019 –

We started experimenting with textures in unity. We created a asphalt texture in Photoshop and then used a website which created multiple images consisting of ambient occlusion, normal map, specular map, and the displacement map. These are all created to give the texture a more realistic feel to it. We also used various settings in unity to have the texture looking perfect in terms of quality and also by keeping the performance down.

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 –

Start forming the wings and overall shape for my spaceship and improved it from its basic state. I’m currently planning to do the back of the ship to form the thrusters. I also need to start planning to create some textures for the ships and have come up with ideas for what colour it should be. I’m currently planning to do either a dark grey or a dark blue with hints of other colours

Thursday 24th January 2019 –

I did some more work on my model and formed the thrusters and i’m also currently planning to put some more detail at the front and to form a rear wing. The design and construction of the ship is at the end and the only thing I need to start doing is forming a texture for the ship and instead of doing it basic like my previous project 1, I want to put a lot more effort into it.

Monday 28th January 2019 –

We did some 2D work and learnt how to form a 2D environment in unity. We created some sprites in Photoshop also. Even though my game is in a 3D environment, it is still a good idea to learn how to do 2D sprites if I ever decide to do a 2D game in the future.

Tuesday 29th January 2019 –

Finished up my new spaceship model prepped for my level. I’ve also started doing the UV mapping on it and have imported the UV to substance painter as it is much easier to do instead of Photoshop. Substance painter is a much better alternative to Photoshop and has many more options that would suit for what I want to do.

Thursday 31st January 2019 –

Today I’ve planned to do some more research on spaceships to get a proper feel so I can understand how spaceships are supposed to look. I’ve decided that I would also look at the material of the ships also like if theirs damage or scratches on the spaceships and most of the time in movies and games, they’re never in perfect shape. I’ve also debating whether if I should continue to use Photoshop to create the texture as I have a lot more knowledge in the program, but the features are very restricting for what I want to do. Or, I can either try and learn how to use the program substance painter which is a lot more friendly and easier to create advanced textures from a UV layout.

I’ve also created a very low poly planet that I’ve placed in my environment and I’m currently planning to allow the player to be able to land on it with the ship and explore the surrounding area. I’m also currently creating a material for the planet and want it to look slightly bumpy in certain areas like the moon.

Monday 4th February 2019 –

I’ve progressed a lot further in terms of texture work. I’ve use substance painter to create a basic texture for my spaceship and have made a nice looking texture for my planet. This was my first time using substance painter correctly and the result has come out pretty nice.

Tuesday 5th February 2019 –

I created a simple animation in blender to simulate the front section of the spaceship opening up. This is only meant to be a placeholder to test out how the animations will work with scripting in unity.

I created a camera switch for my ship so that in the future I can implement an actual first person camera that is inside the ship. You can switch between 2 cameras currently, but changing a couple lines of code you can add multiple cameras with different key presses.

I’m currently forming a script which allows the user to get in and out of the ship with the included animation above being shown once the user presses the use key (E) on the spaceship. In order to create a script like this, it would require me to have a camera that is attached to the side of the ship so when that you press the E key, it will teleport the player to that camera and to the controller and remove all control from the ship so it doesn’t follow the player around.

Thursday 7th February 2019 –

Coming to the end of the first week of February, I faced a couple of problems with certain scripts used in my game for e.g. using the camera switch script was a little bit tricky as there are a lot of things happening at once and having the switch was messing things up. I found the solution online when looking at a unity tutorial online and took the information from there and put it onto my script.

Monday 11th February 2019 –

I’ve currently starting forming my script which allows me to enter and exit my spaceship by pressing the E key. I looked at a YouTube video to understand how the process actually works as I firstly wasn’t very sure on how to start it. The video demonstrates the user/player getting in and out of a car, but I’ve actually changed the script to instead reference it to the spaceship which isn’t very hard to do. I’ve currently finished the script and i’m currently planning for tomorrow to import it onto my unity project and have everything setup.

Tuesday 12th February 2019 –

I optimised my game by reducing the amount of asteroids present in my area to improve the performance as there were a lot of particles before. My environment/prototype is very large in space and everything is constantly rendered and as I wouldn’t want any pop-in on my game. By having these optimisations it allows for the game to be consistently smooth with plenty of detail. The asteroids are currently a basic low poly sphere with bumps in them to be a placeholder but I also plan on changing the model into something that more resembles an asteroid.

Thursday 14th February 2019 –

I looked at this video to better understand lighting in unity and how it can be used to produced some decent lighting. My game only has very basic lighting and looks very basic but my goal is to improve the lighting drastically from studying the techniques used in this video. My game is set in outer space so i could try to incorporate better lighting on my spaceship or have some form of a sun to try and produce a very strong aura of light that projects onto every object. This could cause performance issues if not done correctly but i’m looking to improve my game in every aspect.

Plans for next week:

Make the script to get in and out of the spaceship to work
Change the asteroid model
Improve the lighting to be more slightly advanced
Add sound effects

Monday 25th February 2019 –

These are some different spaceships that I’ve looked at. I particularly like the low poly models and think that I could create something like this as I previously created a low poly spaceship for my project 1. The reason I’m not using that spaceship is because it was very basic and i would like to make something a bit more advanced and unique looking also. From gathering all of these spaceships, I’ve decided that I would make a ship that combines something from each individual ship to try and create a unique looking design that would fit in the environment.

The spaceship above is what I created for my project 1 and clearly is very basic in polygons and in design. My goal is try and create a much more detailed ship for my project 3 that visually looks very unique and appealing. I would also need to create a very convincing texture for the spaceship.

Above is my newly created spaceship that I’ve used for project 3. I used inspirations from the research on spaceships above to create my unique take on them.

This is my finished spaceship with the applied texture that I created in Substance Painter. The texture is basic but gives the basic idea off that it is a spaceship with the blue glass on the front. The texture is a metallic grey with light bumps you can see up close. I found it a lot easier to create the texture in Substance Painter rather that using Adobe Photoshop as the tools for making a material isn’t as good as Substance.

My mood board consists of various images that I want my environment/area to look like. I want to try and create asteroids that fill the playing area. I would want them to be random sizes to add to the variety. These environments I’ve gathered have very strong lighting effects that I would love to achieve because there will be a lot of different sources coming from the open space like planets, stars and various things like asteroids.

The two images above show my space environment with a sky box I created using the program Spacescape. Spacescape is a program which allows you to create nebula’s very simple by changing certain values and it also allows you to randomise everything for a unique look. By gathering all of the research from my mood board, I formed my own sky box and I think it turned out pretty good.

Project 3 is essentially an improvement of our current Project 2 by adding more things such as user interactions, textures and other visual effects. such as lighting I want to try and incorporate advanced scripts into my level so that more interactions can happen so it isn’t restricted to very basic scripting. I want to be able to create a script which allows the player to be able to go into a spaceship and fly around the level with keyboard controls and is very advanced for me currently with the knowledge that I currently have on scripting. I currently have a model ready and would only require a correct script for it to work. Basic flight/movement would be the main focus and then in the future, worry about the visual effects.

I looked at various games for the inspiration for the space flight and found that the method that No Man’s Sky uses it similarly to how I want it to be in my game. Despite the negative reviews from the game, I can admit that this is one thing that they got right and will be studying a lot to try and replicate the movement. The whole method of actually getting into the spaceship and instantly being able to fly, is something that I want to incorporate into my own game so that the player is able to freely explore at the touch of a button.

Currently right now, I’ve been looking at a YouTube video that demonstrates spaceship flight in unity. The creator of the video also provided the scripts for people to view and use and alter in their own ways. I’ve currently created a test environment with a space themed sky box to see exactly how my idea of the game would look like. The YouTube video also shows cubes that hover in the sky similar to asteroids. The script for this is also linked in the description and I want to also learn on how it was created because it gives the option to allow the user to choose how many cubes can be in a certain area and also change the range as well.

I ended up using the spaceflight script from the video as it was open source and i’m planning to change a couple of aspects like how fast you can go and the overall look of the HUD also.

Bibliography: http://www.starcitizen.org.uk/images/sampledata/Starcitizen/screenshots/ArcCorp_001.jpg

http://www.nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03-03-at-2.58.07-AM.png