A Pretty Late Mid-Project Update Blog

The deadline for the sidescroller project is looming ever nearer, and most assets are complete or nearing completion. I intended to write this blog earlier in the project but I ended up being too focused on the project itself, so I’ll keep this fairly short so as to leave some things for the post-mortem blog.

We’ve had some worries over the course of the project about being able to meet the deadline, but at least out team is doing well and all the original assets will be finished very soon. The other environment artists in team Scary seem to like jumping from working on asset to asset to keep things interesting and fresh whereas I have preferred to focus on one asset at a time to keep things straight-forward. This isn’t necessarily better practice, especially as it means a lot of my stuff wasn’t whiteboxed very well but it has allowed me to branch out to other things due to getting my complex and more important assets out of the way at the beginning of the project.

I was slightly worried about not getting much experience or input with the engine work, but I did manage to have a play around with particle effects. I’m quite pleased with the waterfall I made as I was quite apprehensive when I decided to take on the task. This is where I am somewhat worried about the final build of the level though, as although I was told the engine artists would be working with particles I’ve yet to see if they can position or make edits to the system independently. I don’t really like not having the ability to go in and place the assets myself without a heavy amount of planning, it wouldn’t be a problem if the engine artist assigned to the project was with our group but since they are jumping between working on two levels this of course isn’t possible. All I can do is wait to see what they give us at the end.

Assets I have produced for the level

I’ve learnt a lot so far in this project, but there’s still more I want to learn. I have still yet to try polypainting so that is one thing I want to do over the Christmas break. I think most of the assets I produced for this project are portfolio-worthy so I’m less worried about that than I was at the start. I’m really looking forward to seeing the end result of everyone’s collaborative effort.