Alice has left the map

Off The Map: Alice's Adventures Underground

Year 2 has been utterly relentless. Game Art pursues you and seethes into your brain making everything you see relevant to your work, this becomes particularly apparent during the second year and I imagine, even more so in the third. It's the type of profession that blurs the lines between hobby and job and now the second year has come to a close. Here is a post mortem for the last project.

The group project that lasted an eternity and left me to work without a group. Game City and the British Library's Off The Map competition based off of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Underground wherein the task was to produce a 3D game inspired by the writing. Being on my own, my goal was not to create a game of such magnitude as the other groups but rather create a playable environment with emphasis on aesthetics. The project lasted fourteen weeks and was handed in on Friday 7th May 2015.

I jokingly named my 'group' Wildcats so I could shout 'What team?' to myself then answer myself with 'Wildcats'. In all seriousness working on your own isn't that bad. You are your whole team and you have to direct and organise yourself as well as keeping yourself motivated. If you need something changing that isn't working in the level, you just change it. There's no waiting time. Everything is also very consistent because there's not six people clashing ideas together. If you spent a day modelling something and you don't like it, you just remove it. You don't need to pry it's creator from their creation. There's no need for explanation as to why something has to change. Working on your own also lacks structure. With no one telling you what to do, you just do work where appropriate. You often have no idea what day it is or what the current goal is. It just falls into place. It worked in this instance but it's bad practice and not something I would have chose to pursue.

So what exactly did I make and how did I make it? Well, other than saying everything which is the easy answer, I made 86 assets and 97 materials. To put that into perspective, I have one main type of tree which appears on the map 142 times. Two types of grass, one of them placed 99 times by hand. I wanted to make everything unique and ever so slightly different from just the placement and from multiple interchangeable shaders. So the same horse statue will appear on the map three times but each time it'll have a different texture depending on it's environment such as when water is dripping onto it, moss will form more heavily in these areas. I've done this with every unique asset. Most of the unique assets were created using photogrammetry which is essentially photo scanning and worked incredibly well. Everything regarding how the level looks I am pleased with. When it actually comes down to gameplay, it's awful. You can walk around and that's about it. I was aiming to have an element where you pick up a key to leave the gardens, hence the key in the forest area. I couldn't get this to work in time for hand in. I am proud of my framerate though. After a few weeks of optimisation I can get it to run at near 100 fps in certain areas. It should run at 30+ on most computers.

Throughout the project there weren't many drastic changes. I pitched the idea of making a garden which was deemed okay to proceed with by my tutors. I started making the level immediately because it helps with visualising when concepting. The first draft of the level is actually the same as the final, the map being called 'AliceBlock' still. Any severe change was just done there an then. At one point I had a giant chess board where the forest was, but it wasn't working aesthetically so I conjured up a forest. I don't feel I would have done anything differently. Maybe the obvious; I would've worked in a group, but that was out of my control.

An incredibly rewarding group project. I was handicapped from the start, I didn't let that hinder me. And I produced the best thing I have ever produced. It was a little too long (just over three months) but the good outweighs the bad. Year two has been kind to me.