Firewatch

Firewatch is a FPS adventure game which was released in February 2016 by the company Campo Santo which to this date is there first game released under the company game, The games directors are Olly moss and Sean Vanaman and was written by Chris Remo ,Jake Rodin, Olly moss and Sean Vanaman then finally produced by Gabe McGill with the artist being jange Ng. The games environment was modeled by Jane, all from a single painting by Olly moss. The inspiration for the design of this game is taken from the new deal advertisements  by the national park service.The games has a small team and the rolse vary between the members, unlike big companys it seem indie developers pitch in wheres needed but also have there main expertise. In an interview with Sean Vanaman he mentions that they are a group of 7-8 developers in San Francisco with a designer/programmer in Vancouver while James the animator is in England. this makes up all the people working on the project, he follows on to say that they normally have around 10-12 people working on the project which to him is rather small but allows them to move at a "rapid pace" and not get "overwhelmed bye their own size and ambition" which seems to be  working rather well for them as and indie studio.

Later on in the same interview they talk about the difficulties they encountered when trying to tell the story of this game without removing control from the player but also at the same time making it so your not walking around in a land without people with no clear goals as they wanted it to be a mission based game making it hard for the two aspects to not conflict with each-over, they got around this problem by having events happen when you on your way to destinations and allowing you to communicate with your boss to talk about the things that you have/are seeing on the way to your destination. I feel having the game visually direct you to the right path with out distorting you from the interest of the game is an importance to game design as a whole as it gives it a more relate able feel to the game instead of having to be told like a child, adding this sort of feel into the game would be a challenge if i was to make and RPG game but i believe its achievable.

The company Campo Santo was brought about Sean Vanaman and Rodkin co-founding the company with mark, Olly moss , before this point Sean vanaman was the co-leader and lead writer for the walking dead. With these team they had basically everything they needed to start creating there own games also soon after the creation of this new team panic announced that they would back their debut game, they where set on their way to creating Firewatch.

In an interview with Sean Vanaman it is said that Firewatch offers an experience that a lot of people have not gone from any AAA video games before. he then continues onto saying that the artwork/3d modelling was made the way it is so that you will remember it without striving for perfect realism this also includes simplified control's and story to allow them to focus on tone to create work that forces a certain feeling across to the player, they do this mainly via the use of vibrant colors.

Game Insperation

The games that have inspired me to make this games heavily comes from Skyrim and Shadows of the colossus with multiple references to RPG itself. The main reason why i have chosen these games are due to the wide expanse of detail the creators went into making them. Skyrim offers a vast expanse of beautiful terrain detailing and the architectural work put into the houses are marvelous but as i look deeply into the landscape it makes me wonder how I too can make landscape as natural and beautiful of Skyrim itself. Skyrim is one of my all time favorite games and that is heavily because of how the game looks. My game will have the same curvy hills and rocky terrain that Skyrim display while paying attention to detailing, from what ive learnt from my previous experience with environmental design is every aspect has a purpose, sometimes designer like to add trees to obstruct the view vision of an aspect of area to give it a lot more depth while also minimizing mad space. These are the things ill focus on making sure I get just right to add a nice feel to the game.

The second game that has inspired me is Shadows of the Colossus this game is a heavy influence in my interest of 3D environments as it has some of the most spacial atmospheres in such small areas, i believe this is due to the camera angles used to allow it to look a lot more bigger than it actually is. These sort of camera angles are what i aim to add into my game specially if i plan to add any significant animation to my game, which seems like a good idea to me. 

I noticed in both games they use fog to distort your vision from the plain thin walls that the game generators produce, i feel this way it allows the game to have more atmosphere and also not look like playdough, if i too can some how use this effect i believe it will give a lot more expansive feels towards the game that im creating.

MoodBoard

This is the environment mood board which shows what elements of design we are going to try to incorporate. 

this is an interior design mood board to get a grasp of how the inside needs to feel.

Colour Psycology

RED. Physical
Positive: Physical courage, strength, warmth, energy, basic survival, 'fight or flight', stimulation, masculinity, excitement.
Negative: Defiance, aggression, visual impact, strain.

Being the longest wavelength, red is a powerful colour. Although not technically the most visible, it has the property of appearing to be nearer than it is and therefore it grabs our attention first. Hence its effectiveness in traffic lights the world over. Its effect is physical; it stimulates us and raises the pulse rate, giving the impression that time is passing faster than it is. It relates to the masculine principle and can activate the "fight or flight" instinct. Red is strong, and very basic. Pure red is the simplest colour, with no subtlety. It is stimulating and lively, very friendly. At the same time, it can be perceived as demanding and aggressive.

BLUE. Intellectual.
Positive: Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm.
Negative: Coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness.

Blue is the colour of the mind and is essentially soothing; it affects us mentally, rather than the physical reaction we have to red. Strong blues will stimulate clear thought and lighter, soft blues will calm the mind and aid concentration. Consequently it is serene and mentally calming. It is the colour of clear communication. Blue objects do not appear to be as close to us as red ones. Time and again in research, blue is the world's favourite colour. However, it can be perceived as cold, unemotional and unfriendly.

YELLOW. Emotional
Positive: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity.
Negative: Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide.

The yellow wavelength is relatively long and essentially stimulating. In this case the stimulus is emotional, therefore yellow is the strongest colour, psychologically. The right yellow will lift our spirits and our self-esteem; it is the colour of confidence and optimism. Too much of it, or the wrong tone in relation to the other tones in a colour scheme, can cause self-esteem to plummet, giving rise to fear and anxiety. Our "yellow streak" can surface.

GREEN. Balance
Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace.
Negative: Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation.

Green strikes the eye in such a way as to require no adjustment whatever and is, therefore, restful. Being in the centre of the spectrum, it is the colour of balance - a more important concept than many people realise. When the world about us contains plenty of green, this indicates the presence of water, and little danger of famine, so we are reassured by green, on a primitive level. Negatively, it can indicate stagnation and, incorrectly used, will be perceived as being too bland.

SRC:http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours

I would use red if i was low on health id flash the colour to make sure the player is well aware that they are about to die, the positives to red are being health packs, usually red can symbolism red. Blue would genuinely be used for investigating something to light up an area that may need looking at or simply something slightly hidden, In anime style games blue would represent intellect so if a character had blue hair they genuinely be smart. Yellow would be more to signify importance or maybe a yellow exclamation-mark for a quest,yellow is also good to catch the attention of players. Green to me would more be health packs and life healing which could also be red too, but genuinely health on the other hand it could signify poison.

During this lesson we went over flexbox's again as the entire class felt rusty in knowledge of flex boxes themselves. Flexbox exercise was rather easy to me however i struggle with comprehending how to implement these exercises as an actual website as i feel it doesnt allow us to build a base foundation in mind to acknowledge the creation of an actual website but it is what it is. Afterwards we were tasked for a whole 2 hours to make a replica website using one of the three resources. My website came out very basic looking but i focused more on laying out the ascetics. There were major placement issues that still need to be addressed but i am happy with the over all look.

Website fixing picture size

Ipad Pro: 2048x2732 px

                                             Iphone 6:  750x1334 Pixels

IPad Retina: 1536x2048 px

This is the web page on the computer and how it looks, I tired making it as a fixed image and have text scrolling over it how ever I could not seem to get it to work. the picture does how ever fix its size to fit the appropriate screen for iPhone 6 and iPad Pro.

The code is mainly HTML the only CSS involve me trying miserably to get the text to float over the image. The HTML we used  

Spacial Story Telling

Spacial story telling is the art of telling a story by using the environment around the game to lead you imagination to create a more unique story to follow the game that you are playing, this is important in games in my opinion as it allows you to be more engaged with the game on a personal level and it also helps make the game more alive, games such as Call Of Duty rely heavily on story telling through forceful means that you dont have time to stop and take in the games atmosphere but with a game such as Firewatch you really get the chance extract the scenery and become more attached to the game through its visual story telling. The new BioShock Infinate game has constant hints during the game through the propaganda poster on the walls in the game and with a keen eye and a sharp mind you could figure out the story plot just with the surroundings and this is a great way of visual  story telling. Some techniques that are involved could be making the camera angle low so it makes everything look larger in scale giving you a small perspective and making it higher would give the opposite effect of everything else is smaller and you are colossal. Hidden Easter eggs is another fun way to add more atmospheric depth to the game while getting some added achievement of finding such Easter eggs however its not always story telling either.

Sticker

Using the  Line tool we created a pattern but only the half then we duplicated it and made a halo sci-fi style pattern and saved it as a PNG. Then went into Unreal and created it as a texture to be able to overlay it onto an object.

During the week we have been learning how to create and smooth our objects but this lesson we learnt how to create a our object and mke away to paint onto it. we first started with an object then we add a Unwrap UVW this allows us to edit the wrap around our object and give it a material. By selecting the object and flattening the mess we

Unit 78

Since the resolution to compression ratio is a constant, to calculate the memory requirements for a texture resolution not listed here, simply multiply the resolution ratios. For example, a 1024x512 texture would be one-half the memory requirements of a 1024x1024 texture.

Pixel:

512x512 - Far Picture

1024x1024 - Mid Pictures

2048x2048 - Near pictures

Import file:

• .bmp
• .float
• .pcx
• .png - Mainly used png as its transparent compatable, speacially invented for internet.
• .psd

• 

  This is the texture i wanted to import but could not
  

  .tga
• .jpg
• .exr
• .dds - Cubemap Texture (32bits/Channel, 8.8.8.8 ARGB 32 bpp, unsigned) See Cubemap Tools for more information.
• .hdr - Cubemap Texture (LongLat unwrap)