Portfolio Site is Up and RUNNING!

I've been working on getting my personal website up and running in preparation for GDC!

Please take a look @ www.jordankwexler.com

I'll be attending the conference from Wednesday 03/01 to Saturday 03/04 and hope to meet and learn from a diversity of great developers.

The talks and seminars I am allowed admittance to is a bit limited with my Expo Pass, but there are a handful that caught my eye.

Thursday, March 2 | 10:00am - 11:00am

DOUBLE TAP

Location:  Room 2002, West Hall

Speaker:

Ste Curran (Corridor of Uncertainty)

To make absolutely sure of something you double tap.

Double Tap is about guns, their effect on games and how that changes gamers (and the world). It's an intense, combative talk that asks the audience to reflect on the games they play and create. Are games really fixated with firearms? Is that a problem? Why is the double tap important? And why did lying face down in a bush make someone feel the most human they've ever felt inside a digital world?

hursday, March 2 | 10:00am - 11:00am

GET NOTICED & GET HIRED: UPGRADING THE GAME INDUSTRY RESUME

Location:  Career Theater, North Hall

Career opportunities are abundant within the game industry; unfortunately, so are uncertainty events like layoffs and studio shutdowns. This session, delivered by a team that works "in the trenches" of career services and game development education, will give game developers at all levels of knowledge and expertise, from interns to senior developers, and artists to engineers, the knowledge and tools they need to create resumes and cover letters that will get their applications escalated up the hiring chain.

Thursday, March 2 | 5:30pm - 6:30pm

A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR DOING ETHICAL PLAYER TESTING

Location:  Room 3020, West Hall

Speaker:

Mia Consalvo (Concordia University)

What does ethical player testing entail? Are there things that game developers should never do to or with game testers? How can they be sure that they are being fair to players by informing them of things that might happen to them during testing, particularly if developers don't want to reveal everything about their game in advance? This presentation makes the case for ethical play testing and offers developers a practical guide for implementing ethical player testing. It starts with an overview of the history of human subjects research, provides resources for more information, and then dives into what ethical player testing can look like, and how to implement your own best practices for player testing.

Friday, March 3 | 9:00am - 9:25am

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO RAPID PROTOTYPES!

Location:  Room 2005, West Hall

Speaker:

Mark Barrett (PopCap)

A low-cost, high-speed, guide to how a person with limited ability to code, design, draw, or pay for help, can still build a testable prototype in less than a month.

Friday, March 3 | 2:10pm - 3:10pm

MANY PATHS, ONE GOAL: ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO BREAK IN

Location:  Room 2005, West Hall

Speakers:

Tim Hargreaves (Intel), Michelle Flamm (Independent), Michelle Hill (2K Games), Josh Raab (Big Huge Games), Alyssa Hoey (Voltage Entertainment)

Getting an industry job is simple: get a degree, get an internship, get hired. Right? According to this cross discipline panel, reality is a little more complicated. Between achieving a history degree, prop making, the Royal Canadian Navy and failed projects and companies, learn about some of the paths less traveled in order to achieve the one true goal: gainful employment in the games industry. Hear the war stories of how they got here, and ask questions about how their different experiences shaped how they approach the industry. Sometimes they were lucky, sometimes they worked their hands to the bone, but they all succeeded in an unconventional fashion.

New Mockup Material and Logging Player Location for Heatmaps

So seeing as I was going to be blocking out some very basic shapes over the next few days, I looked for some info on materials for greyboxing. I found this one that has auto-adjusting normals for floors, walls, roofs, etc. It has gridlines that make it easy to see if things are lining up. I adjusted the colors for walls and floors to make it look a bit like Mario.

Found material here:

 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1997866/PublicForForumsWebsitesDONOTDELETE/worldgrid43.zip

You can go with a more serious setup though if you prefer, like this light grey for the walls and dark grey for the floors shown below. Next I'd like to look into dynamic textures with text updates based on actual world-size of the BSP brushes/material tiling... 

Or even combine both with material instances! Like I did here:

HEATMAPS

I was also looking into generating player heatmaps. There are a few 'plugins' I've found online that have all but deprecated with new UE versions. So I started with the built-in analytics plugins and worked on using the updated blueprints to print the player coordinates to the LOG file every second after gameplay begins. 

There is additional functionality for adding various events. Shown here is a "Timestamp" of sorts. Though events could be added into an array and given all sorts of attributes.

Here you see the X, Y, Z world coordinates for the player printed to file.

With the aide of a programmer, we could parse this file, get the coordinates in relation to the actual map layout and superimpose increasing green/red values the longer the player is standing in the 100x100 unit area.

The resulting product might look something like this.

Pre-planning Prototype Levels

In an effort to be more deliberate with my level building, I've mocked up some overhead layouts for several areas I felt might be interesting.

My worry is that I am designing them with the traditional FPS in mind, without knowing how these spaces might work in our capstone game. Only one way to find out.

Thus far the plan of action:

A) I've started doing detailed write-ups on how each area should play - to be included in next post.

B) More detailed maps with each moment, setpiece, enemy location, and things of note will be clearly indicated.

C) Greybox several of the areas out to get a feel for size, sight lines, clutter, player movement.

D) Keep everything very basic.

 35x30

 30x30

 2x(20x20) and 4x(10x10)

 30x30

 30x30

2x(20x20) and 4x(10x10)

Prototype Levels 1-7 Feedback

[4:20]
P1:Tubes/Columns Area: Nice looking set piece, but it plays weirdly. Makes more sense for a breather area, not seeing it well as a combat area. Theres almost no verticality aspects. I like that you were experimenting with the roof. The large oblong circular platform seems weird however, it doesnt mesh well (edited)

 Prototype1

[4:30]
Question: were you doing any write up on the areas you are designing? Like where the space fits in the game, what you feel the intended use is, how does it fit with the planned mechanics

jkwexler [4:32 PM]
The most I've written on it is on my blog. Posted in general chat. I have my own opinions on which areas I think work best. I can do a quick writeup on them if you'd like before you review them.

 [4:33 PM]
I'm sure one of our speakers said it differently, I believe the Fallout guy, but I believe every level in a game starts as a "who, what, when, where, why" type deal

[4:35]
lots of good stuff, and I'll detail what I like the most (especially the later levels) but don't forget to design levels with stuff in mind instead of in a void, some of these levels feel like theres so idea, and some not so much

jkwexler [4:36 PM]
Agreed. That's good advice. I'll do a more thoughtful write up for my levels moving forward

[4:41 PM]
P2: Kind of confused right away at the gap in the wall, should I as a player be shooting through here to start? Seems counter intuitive to movement focus of the game. The next question is why is everyone down in the pit (where i can just shoot down) instead of varying  the positions? Theres no good transition from the pit to the 2nd level, I feel like the stairs are okay but I don't think the player should be focused on stairs with how much wall running and jumping there will be. Are you treating this area more as a traditional FPS or like our game with the tether gun? I don't see any good objects to tether, or good sight lines for the tether gun. I like the addition of the wall running area tho, thats a nice addition, and gives ideas of how we can use verticality to shoot down on enemies. The space feels like it was supposed to be a "go through this locked down area where the enemy is defending it and blocking off the entrance" but then the player can just walk up the stairs and run past, a key issue of "what is this area for?" Is the goal to get to the top of the thing in the middle?

Prototype2

[4:42]
P3: interesting example of a set piece, and looks pretty cool, but not something I can really comment on in terms of level design.

Prototype3

[4:44]
P4: its a cool scale of an area to envision, but its too empty to have a good idea for how I'd play the space. I can say that the first little area with the wall running area gives me the idea of using these wall running sections as good ways to move around enemy set ups (like the walls in P3) and flank them by running around a level. This level highlights a key issue: how does the edge of the level work? Is it a bunch of walls that keep the player in? Can we fall off to our deaths and this is like on a cliff or something? I like the total visual aspect of this level though, especially the main building (edited)

Prototype4

[4:48]
P5: I thought I knew what this was at first, then I hit play and saw the scale. Interesting but this seems like an area of no level I had imagined fitting into the 3 areas we set up (forest-ramshackle-installation). I can't really comment towards the playability of the area in its current state

Prototype 5 (shamefully not pictured)

[4:53 PM]
P6: Right off the bat, I love this level and its def my favorite. A+ quality for a prototype/greybox level. Probably the gold star of pre-pro so far. That being said, I def think there needs to be more wall running considerations, verticallity elements would be great (reference Crysis 3, theres a similar feeling base that I will force you to check out if you don't have it already). The area gives me an idea of how it would play out, what the player would be doing, and even if my idea doesnt fit your idea, it is really good to at least get something immediately. The ladder scale seems off. Is the player supposed to jump into the dirt pit? If the player gets to the top of the structure there isnt any good way for melee to make it up, so I imagine it would be more focused on the flying enemies, but I question how effective it is to make a player stay somewhere defending a hill in a game like this. Why aren't the platforms on the ring symmetrical :anguished:? (edited)

Prototype6

jkwexler [4:54 PM]
haha, i had to toy with that, to be symmetrical i would have had to move some things

[4:55]
it was easier to move the walkways then the central structure for purposes of showing the "run up the side"

[4:55]
it can easily be repurposed

[5:00 PM]
P7: LAGGY oh jesus. I think it has something to do with lighting. I have a feeling this fits too much in standard FPS and not as well in this game. Doesn't feel like theres enough thought towards multiple options in moving up and down verticality, especially using wall running. I like the alleys because it provides interesting sight lines, but they don't feel quite right with how I imagine our character controller. I like them, and they can work, but need to be explored further. I would definitely reference the favela level of one of the call of duty games, https://youtu.be/y3fm1c-Zxmw?t=640

Prototype7

Capstone Prototype: Shantytown and Modular Kit

I wanted to give creating the shanty town a shot to play with layout, walkways, each individual 'hut' size (and varying sizes), playing with a focal point for the player, and adding some verticality by having the town built into the hillside.

I used the reference art from our capstone mood board and tried to recreate something similar. I have not yet added any buildings along the right side of the stream.

I picked out what looked like lots of repeating shapes and made a modular toolkit for myself to build with. There are a few things I improvised along the way, so this is not totally complete, but it represents the bulk of the "most used" items.

I "fully furnished" the front door of this particular hut, but did not add facades to any other huts, stairways were always placed differently for each hut and thus proved difficult to make facades modular -- they should all be unique anyway -- corrugated steel, cloth, boards, lattice, vines -- each hut should have its own personality.

Walking under the bridge focuses the player's eyes dead ahead and to the next POI.

A walkway down to a larger building -- no saying what it is yet, but it could be something of interest for the player.

It was important that there be at least a few stacked huts, to give the feeling of clutter.

Along the upper level walkway, there is an "alleyway" of sorts. There is another on the lower level.

I thought it would be cool if there was a mini "amphitheater" on the right (the half circle) -- where maybe some robots could be playing robot music. 

The giant crane/magnet is clearly important -- perhaps a place of worship for the robots? Or the location for someone of high status with the community.

The view from the top!

More modular kit shots:

Capstone Prototype Level - Mining Behemoth

I was trying to create a somewhat smaller space than some of my earlier prototype levels...

Instead I created a large drilling machine.

It has 4 large "arms" or "legs" depending on how it is operated. They can:

A) act as a support for the central drill, holding onto the uneven ground and rotating or moving when necessary.

B) act as large claws to pick up errant boulders or rubble kicked up by the drill

I thought it might be a cool twist to have the legs require a "recharge" every so often, where they would have to plug into one of the side units.

This would give the player the opportunity to run across the side and up to the upper control tower.

So although this is meant to be a large drill/rock sorter machine -- there are a lot of different routes it could go in. Each of the extensions could detach and become their own threat, or maybe the entire machine is a crazy big boss fight...

Capstone Prototypes: Week 01

Industrial Building 1 

 Industrial Building 2

Robot Arena-fight 1

Robot Stronghold 1

Robot Dam-base 1