In response to this week’s theme – Forces, I used Substance designer to create some simple patterns that follows these rules:

1). Start with simple shapes or patterns;

2). Use no more than 4 different functional nodes;

3) Design some symbols of any sort.

I was inspired by Frieder Nake and this concept of Generative Art because it feels similar to what I did in Substance painter.

(Frieder Nake, Matrix Multiplication, Generative Art)

By doing so it helped me to think of using simple solution at start when tackling problems, as this can be the easiest thing to do and sometimes it can have surprising results.

Outcomes:

A sun/eclipse/blackhole

A clock:

Abstract lines:

In response to this week’s theme – Character, Environment and Events, I continued on last week’s work and created a game system that allows the player to change the environment to either day or night sky. By doing so I provided way for player to alter the game environment which can be quite stunning if with better visual effects. Similar example can be found in the MMORPG Rift, when a player opens a rift in game world, the environment player perceived is changed accordingly to fit the rift’s element (e.g. fire, water, death etc.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6YDxfPK_4Q (from 0:13 to 0:30)

Outcome video:

https://youtu.be/rrmTIFzJGvw

Blueprints in UE

In response to this week’s theme Time, I created a day light cycle system in Unreal engine and a clock to display the time. By doing so I simulated the real-life day night cycle that controlled by time and can be used for my project in future. A similar work is the game Grand Auto Theft 5 which has the day night cycle in game too.

GTA5 day night cycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APFy5G7vueA

My day night cycle: https://youtu.be/VT2AjkHW6S4

Blueprints in UE:

Day night cycle BP:

Clock BP:

Studio 2 WIP posts from week 7 to 11, put them here altogether for convenience.

In response of this week’s theme, I built an environment using game-ready assets within a game that has such functionality. I came up with the idea of an old tomb filled with golden legacy left from its owner before he died. The assets are chosen from a pool of hundreds of assets and they are not specifically designed for this environment I built by any means, I just chose whatever fits that idea and pile them up to create this environment. By doing so I was able to create an environment by examining a large amount of different existing assets, it expands my creativity and allows me to understand the relationship between the environment and the objects it contains. Similar work can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFnR43ms1k.  

Assets used (for the middle tomb and its surrounding objects only, not including the floor/wall etc):

Abstract

Games can be a powerful tool for the purpose of educating especially in disciplines that require complicated technique skills such as surgery and flight. However, there seems to be minor focuses on instrument and music exploration using games as a medium. Hence this project is to explore the field of using creative gameplay in video games to express the beauty of classic piano and music theory for those who are interested in further musical education.

The project is a 3D puzzle game that links constellation and piano based on a same trait they share – the proximity in visual and auditory sense, which can be understood as the distance between stars and the pitch interval between notes respectively. The game encourages the player to play out several different notes to form a piece of short music based on their observations of this proximity found between stars.

This technique of observation and imagination is critical in most instrument performance. I hope to use this gameplay experience to enhance the understanding of basic piano techniques for beginner piano learners or even experienced players and achieve a distinction in music educating through the use of games.

In response to this week's theme, I designed a game concept that related to constellations and piano because I found that both of them share the same natural property of having distance between their inner parts. This property lies without human's interference and, personly i think, is one of the reasons of why both of them are beautiful and fascinating. By doing this I showed that the natural aspects of objects can be converted into very interesting and challenging game mechanics. Similar work that inspired me is 'What Will It Be Today?' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3237Tc00a8Q) from our lecturer Max which he showed in the lecture.

Constellation & Piano Game Concept

This is a little 3D puzzle game for child or adults who interested in piano, music, stars and constellations. The inspiration comes from my experience of playing piano, I was really enjoying playing and thus playing without sheet, and I noticed my movement of hands/fingers is just like stars in constellations in the night sky – from one to the other, there is a distance, and that’s surprisingly the same of why we can hear different sounds with different keys from a piano. So I had this thinking of what if we can play out the constellations just like we play piano, or how would a constellation sounds if it can be played on piano. I think it is a very fascinating idea so I want to make it to be a game.

Game mechanics:

The mechanics are quite simple, simply eye-balling the distance between each star in a constellation shown by the game, measure their relative distance compared to each other, then play the virtual keys according to this relation of distance to make a piece; for example:

The Big Dipper constellation:

Blue number is the order to be played on keyboard (will be defined by the game), red number is the relative distance ratio through eye-balling, so the Big Dipper will be played like this on piano:

A -> F -> D -> B -> F -> B

since:

Two stars will be chosen at the start of the game to indicate the start position as well as providing the base unit of distance for eye-balling, for example in the above instance, star #1 and #2 will be given at the start of this puzzle. Also the first piano key will be given at the start to tell the player where to start from, for example, the A key above.

And if the ligature of the stars goes down, then the keys must be played downwards (to the left) on the keyboard, if it goes up, then played upwards (to the right). The virtual piano keys will be mapped to keyboard to simulate the real piano.

I actually tried this on my own piano with different constellations and it is very enjoyable to hear how different constellations sound, they make good arpeggios. Although for the simplicity of game play, I discard the sharp and flat keys (black keys on piano) and assume all distances between white keys are equal (which is not entirely true in music theory).

In response to this week's theme, I designed a game concept that related to constellations and piano because I found that both of them share the same natural property of having distance between their inner parts. This property lies without human's interference and, personly i think, is one of the reasons of why both of them are beautiful and fascinating. By doing this I showed that the natural aspects of objects can be converted into very interesting and challenging game mechanics. Similar work that inspired me is 'What Will It Be Today?' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3237Tc00a8Q) from our lecturer Max which he showed in the lecture.

Constellation & Piano Game Concept

This is a little 3D puzzle game for child or adults who interested in piano, music, stars and constellations. The inspiration comes from my experience of playing piano, I was really enjoying playing and thus playing without sheet, and I noticed my movement of hands/fingers is just like stars in constellations in the night sky – from one to the other, there is a distance, and that’s surprisingly the same of why we can hear different sounds with different keys from a piano. So I had this thinking of what if we can play out the constellations just like we play piano, or how would a constellation sounds if it can be played on piano. I think it is a very fascinating idea so I want to make it to be a game.

Game mechanics:

The mechanics are quite simple, simply eye-balling the distance between each star in a constellation shown by the game, measure their relative distance compared to each other, then play the virtual keys according to this relation of distance to make a piece; for example:

The Big Dipper constellation:

Blue number is the order to be played on keyboard (will be defined by the game), red number is the relative distance ratio through eye-balling, so the Big Dipper will be played like this on piano:

A -> F -> D -> B -> F -> B

since:

Two stars will be chosen at the start of the game to indicate the start position as well as providing the base unit of distance for eye-balling, for example in the above instance, star #1 and #2 will be given at the start of this puzzle. Also the first piano key will be given at the start to tell the player where to start from, for example, the A key above.

And if the ligature of the stars goes down, then the keys must be played downwards (to the left) on the keyboard, if it goes up, then played upwards (to the right). The virtual piano keys will be mapped to keyboard to simulate the real piano.

I actually tried this on my own piano with different constellations and it is very enjoyable to hear how different constellations sound, they make good arpeggios. Although for the simplicity of game play, I discard the sharp and flat keys (black keys on piano) and assume all distances between white keys are equal (which is not entirely true in music theory).