Third Person Game Level - MSc Dissertation Game And Survey

[senor-cojones]

Hey guys,

I've been posting this around the forums in my WiP threads but it hadn't occurred to me to post in the Released Projects forum, so I hope that's ok!

I've been working on a Woods environment for a project and I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to call it done for the time being (until after the survey), and I need to get responses from players to a) give results for my Masters dissertation and b) so I can improve everything from the feedback I receive.

I've been hard at work and I've come up with the following screenshots (bear in mind the darkness as it's lit up by a torch in game);








A video of what it looks like;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-kAP0MT2FU


Regarding what I've done so far, if you could download my game and then fill in a quick survey for my dissertation that would be an amazingly great help to me.

My game is available here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20422466/DE-.../DE-WoodsF.rar

My survey is available here: http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-su...HEKKO_d4fde96e



The game is about 182mb in size and the survey has about 30 questions, but most are multiple choice so it should only take about 5-10mins to complete in total. If you could download my game, fill in the survey and pass around to anyone at all that would be such a great help to me (especially looking for novice game players).

The game runs mostly at a solid 60fps on my PC which is Win7 64bit, Q6600 stock and ATI HD5700, so my pc isn't great and it runs fine, and it also runs ok enough for me to record it, so hopefully it runs fine for everyone else, but if not just PM me and I'll sort something out.

Also if anyone is experiencing a D3DCOMPILER_.dll error when installing or going to run the game then that means the DirectX needs to be updated for some reason. The solution is to download and install the latest update which is located here; http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...a-9b6652cd92a3

If you could play my game and fill in my survey I would be extremely grateful as it will give me results for my dissertation and also help me improve the artwork/design for the future (and I know it needs improvement!).

Cheers
Aaron

[robin1232]

Ouch, that water is ugly. I think you should scale it down a little. The rest all looks decent.

[thorbahn3]

You planning on making a Jason character model?

[senor-cojones]

@thorbahn3 - Haha I'm glad somebody finally noticed the reference! I'd love to make a Jason model, but I suck at characters so I'll probably leave that one out!

[thorbahn3]

That's too bad. Anyways, hope everything works out.

[senor-cojones]

Yeah I'd love a Jason walking around with a huge machete, sadly I don't think it'll make it into this project. Thanks for the interest

[Dvoyles]

As soon as I saw the "Crystal Lake" sign that's immediately what I thought of. Downloading now, I'll tell you what I think so far!

Edit:

Ok, now I'm finished. Some issues I've noticed: F seems to be a bug - the character drops to the floor, however after a few seconds water just splashed on the screen. Also, the reflection on the materials was a bit too high. Finally, the water looked like it was flowing like a waterfall off all of the materials. I'm not trying to be nit-picky, I just hope that someone would criticize me just the same when I release my project.

Either way, very good, especially since it was your first project. The rain, combined with the thunder and lighting really do a lot to create an immersive experience. I'd love to know how it turns out for you.

[senor-cojones]

@Dvoyles - Seriously, thanks very much for honest criticism. I've got to admit that whilst making/testing I had never even considered pressing F... totally slipped my mind, so that'll be a priority fix. I think the reflection issue is probably because I've turned the bloom up a bit, so when the torch hits anything it just lights up a lot, I'll look into toning it down

Whilst this piece is currently 'finished', I'm using the survey to not only gather results but also to pick up opinions on the aesthetics/gameplay so I can work on improving them for my proper final piece so it's a much better, tighter and flowing experience overall.

[Dvoyles]

That's the best way to do it. These people will be your best critics and know the tools well enough to steer you in the correct direction. See what works, what doesn't, and what your capable of. Either way I'm sure you learned quite a bit from it and can carry that towards your next project.

How did you go about laying out the level? Did you have a drawing or design and drew static meshes on top of it, or was it all from your head?

[senor-cojones]

Yeah that's the way I'm trying to see it, I don't mind a bit of criticism as long as it's constructive so I can grow as an artist. I've learnt so much, I can't wait to polish this off and move on to something bigger and better.

I had a few concepts and pictures of real life forests- so that inspired how I laid out the small forest section, but the cabin area was just done on the fly really

[Dvoyles]

I think it all came out very well. Looking forward to your future work. I find the most difficult thing in level design is starting off: That is, making sure everything is to scale.

[senor-cojones]

Thanks very much again Scale is definitely a difficult issue! Anyways regarding this- I'm looking to finish up some documentation on the project and then hopefully I can action some of the fixes/improvements to make the more appealing overall... then I can move on to new things!