For our team project, We created a bowling alley hotel for robots that's based thousands of years past humans' extinction and created for the purpose to simulate human culture. I helped come up with the idea and I designed all of the architecture for the scene. Here are some of the pictures of the architecture design as well as the layout that I created.

I did a lot of research for this project, as did everyone else. Here is a link to our Pinterest board that we used for references (my name and picture is on each idea that I pinned):

https://www.pinterest.com/dstricklandart/robo-bowl/ 

Additionally, I took everyone to a couple of bowling alleys to take some more reference pictures. Here is a screenshot of pictures that I took that are uploaded to the group drive:

I modeled almost everything for our project. I modeled and UV'd over 70 props for our bowling alley hotel. Here is the list of all of the props that I created:

Ball-Return

Shoes/Feet

Check-in counter

Couch chairs

bar stools

Swivel Chairs

Big dining Table

Small Tall Table

Pool Table

Air Hockey

Bowling Shoes Rack

Bowling Alley Counter

RJ

Some Trash

PinballMachine

Score screens

Arcade Machines

Television

Other Trash Can

Ashtray

Cigarettes

Skeeball Machine

Basketball Machine

Change Machine

Vacuum-cleaner Friend

Bowling Ball Rack

Kitchen Door/Doorway

food bar

popcorn machine

small fridge x 2

Coffee Maker

Food Display

Coffee Pot

Jars x 3

Stacks of Cups

Soda Fountain

Condiment Dispenser

Chili/Cheese Dispenser

Drink Stand

Futuristic Cash Register

Utensil Trays/ lid and straw dispenser

Stack of Lids

Napkin Dispenser

Neon Lights

Robot Pad

Hotel Elevator

Hotel Neon Tube Lights

Bed

Desk

Museum Displays

Small Shelf

Drapes

Wall Clock

decorative plants

lava lamp

doorway

new door

Lobby Elevator

dresser

old telephone

radio

future phone

computer and keyboard

light fixtures

statue decor

Windows

Tattoo machine

I also helped with organization and made sure that the right props went to the right area. I created a chart of areas and props:

Here are examples of the models that I created as well as the UVs:

I also created a character for our scene, RJ, who is the Robot Janitor that you play as. Unfortunately, we did not have time to add animations of the character into the scene. 

I helped oversee the creation of the bowling alley carpet by picking the icons and color scheme and picking the color scheme of the entire alley. I also helped create the wall texture step-by-step and created the background color for the wall texture on Substance Painter. For the carpet in the hotel room, I created the pattern; I also helped created the pattern for the general Hotel/Museum area flooring. I decided what materials and colors should go on each of the assets. 

I asked my friend to do the voice acting for our game because I knew he was very passionate about it. He was excited to help us, so I drove the group out to the home studio of Jesse, our sound engineer. I oversaw the creation of the sound bytes and the lines. Here is a link to the drive folder of all of the audio sounds (BB stands for Boss Bot and RJ is the janitor who you play as):

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4-TaI2ErBRiQnNuLTZBVTc3WVU

I also drove everybody to Oncue for late night coffee and snacks during our group-wide all-nighters over the weekends. Everyone worked extremely hard on this assignment and we went above and beyond the requirements. We worked very well together and accomplished an incredible amount for this environment. 

Here are the requested high-quality images:

Here is the video of my 1970's-style post-apocalyptic laundromat:

Additionally, here is a video that Masato and I made of him in my laundromat:

 

We started doing tutorials in Unity. There are a lot of things that are different from Unreal, but also a lot of similarities. The biggest difference is that Unity is a lot more technical and does not have the blueprint system like unreal; you have to script everything. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that yet.

We had to create three different environments while following three different tutorials.
The first was a collecting game where we learned how to create an environment, prefabs, materials, a basic UI, and some very basic scripting.

Next we did a puzzle game that was a little more interesting. This tutorial did focus a lot more on scripting and logic. I don't like scripting.

Finally, we did an incredibly long tutorial from 2012. I don't really want to talk about it right now.

For my Unreal project, I created a 1970's style laundromat. When I saw that option on the list, I immediately saw flashbacks to playing Fallout 4 and seeing all the retro styled buildings and tech completely destroyed in the post-apocalyptic era. That's the direction that I decided to go. I figured everyone would probably be trying to do something realistic, but I wanted to have mine a little bit stylized. In my 3D Modeling 2 class, I added textures to my models that I had drawn on myself, and I really liked the look that gave it. I decided that for my environment, I wanted to create as many of the assets, materials, etc. that I could myself instead of downloading things, because that would look much better in my portfolio and I could have everything styled exactly how I wanted. Here is the list of things that I made for my scene:

Washer

Dryer

Trashcan

Trash (candy wrappers, soda cans, crumpled paper)

Ceiling

Ceiling Fan

Light Fixtures

Long wood-paneled wall

Vent

Short concrete wall with small window

Bulletin board with pins and papers

Chairs

Tables

Magazines

Ashtray

Cigarettes

Front wall with large windows and door

Floor with drains and puddles

Soap dispenser machine

Laundry carts

Laundry baskets

Detergents (bottles and boxes)

Clothes

Quarters

Change machine

Clock

I created this list after talking to my father for a very long time about his experiences in laundromats during this time period. Here is a list that I wrote during our conversation:


I also used a Pinterest board to gather inspiration. Here is the link to my board:

https://www.pinterest.com/nicoleshay153/laundromat/

Here are some of my preliminary sketches of the scene:



I modeled everything in Maya myself and textured them all in Substance Painter. The only things that I did not create myself were the grass textures, the sound effects, and the particle effects. I made multiple different versions of several of the items, so there are about 30 different assets in my scene so far, and I'm hoping to include several more when I further prepare it for my portfolio. I created animations for the ceiling fan, flickering light, and washing machine door that opens and closes. For my portfolio, I would like to add more animations, including starting a washing machine, the clock ticking, and being able to look at the magazines (which I drew myself based on real magazines) and maybe a few more things. I also added some particle effects, such as dust floating around, a dryer smoking, and then that dryer exploding and bursting into flames. I would like to add rain as well when I improve my scene later. I have sound effects for the lights buzzing, the ceiling fan squeaking, the door creaking open and closed, and the explosion and fire sound effects. I think it would be cool to add a dryer or washer sound effect once I animate one working, but I don't think it would be logical to put one in until then, because I would want it to have an attenuation and be coming from a specific source, but you can clearly see inside the machines and tell they are not working. I would also want a rain sound effect when I do add rain as a particle effect.
Here are some pictures from when I was creating the textures for my scene in Substance Painter:

Here are some pictures from my scene just before it was finished:

(I took all of the photos on my phone to show to my parents)
In the next post I will upload a video of my scene.

Environment 3:
The first of these videos was created based on the "Quick Start to Unreal Engine" tutorial series by Joshua Kinney. The application that I was using doesn't allow me to record the sounds from my computer, so I turned my volume all the way up and hoped for the best... unfortunately, the sound effects are still very difficult to hear, but they're there! I enjoyed playing with the lighting and going more in-depth with the particle system of unreal engine 4.
Here is the video of Environment 3A:

The second video was created based on the "Introduction to Blueprints in Unreal Engine 4" by Joshua Kinney. I definitely needed this tutorial, because the blueprints system is very complicated. I'll probably watch it multiple times in the future as I try to create my own projects with blueprints. It was a very interesting experience trying to add interactivity to this project.
Here is the video of Environment 3B:

The third video was created based on the "Introduction to Matinee in Unreal Engine" tutorial by Joshua Kinney. I also followed a tutorial by Unreal for creating a third person controller with animation. I had a blast creating the animations for this tutorial and watching the scene come to life. I felt very proud of myself when I made the elevator move, and even more so when I blended the animations of the third person controller together and created his state machine. I definitely want to work more with animation in unreal.
Here is the video of Environment 3C:

Environment 2:
This Environment was based off of the tutorial "Introduction to Unreal Engine" by Joshua Kinney. I had a great time following along with this tutorial and learning more about Unreal while making this awesome scene. Ever since playing Last of Us, I've really wanted to learn how to make a particle effect, and now I know a little bit about it.
Here is the video of my environment:

Environment 1:
This environment was based off of the "Your First Day in Unreal" tutorial by Joshua Kinney. It was a lot of fun beginning to learn how to use Unreal Engine and I'm really looking forward to using it more.
Here is the video of my environment:

WARNING! My microphone is not very good! This means that the sound effects in my game are significantly louder than me! For this reason, I created two separate videos, one of my speaking about the mechanics, programming, and animations, and one of the actual gameplay to show the sound effects and everything in action. THE GAMEPLAY VIDEO IS EXTREMELY LOUD COMPARED TO THE VIDEO OF ME TALKING. So, for your own well-being and auditory safety, lower your volume before playing the second video. Thank you, and enjoy.

The first video:

The second video: (Warning, turn your volume down!)

Our first project in Intro to Game Tech was to make a game in Flowlab. It was supposed to be based on our favorite childhood story, but I couldn't think of a single, specific story that I really loved as a child. All I could think of was how I was OBSESSED with Scooby-Doo. I was literally in the fan club- I got books and puzzles and toys in the mail every week. I had Scooby-Doo blankets, all the Scooby-Doo movies, toys, games, pillows... I dressed up as Velma for Halloween several years in a row. There was nothing I loved more. I remember how much I enjoyed watching Hanna-Barbera's original Scooby-Doo series from 1969, and that's what I chose to base my game on. I created five levels, each of them based on episodes from the first season of "Scooby-Doo! Where Are You!". Each level has a different background and villain, though the basic goal and mechanics are the same.
I decided that I wanted my game to be a bit puzzling to fit with my theme of Scooby-Doo, so I created a sort of maze with Scooby Snacks scattered throughout that had to be collected, and a button that had to be pressed to free the captured members of the Mystery Gang and complete the level. There aren't a bunch of dead ends, like in a normal maze, but there are multiple directions to go to collect the Scooby Snacks in different orders, but some of them are more efficient or more time-consuming, so the player has to determine what the best order to collect the Scooby Snacks is. In order for this to matter, I had to create a timer of some sort. But, I also needed a villain, and I didn't really want him to be chasing Scooby around. I decided that instead of making a timer up in the corner that counts down the time until it was Game Over, I would have the villain act as my timer. I made a little path for him at the side with an exit at the end. With the villain restrained to the left side of the screen, it became unreasonable for my game to be a side-scroller; I wanted the villain to be visible at all times. I could have made him run accross the bottom or top in a tunnel to the endpoint in order to incorporate the side-scroller functionality, but I felt that would put too much emphasis on the racing aspect and subtract from the puzzle/maze feel that I was trying to achieve.
Now, Scooby had to collect all of the snacks and free the gang before the villain escaped. But, my button was exposed and I couldn't find a way to make it appear, so there was nothing stopping the player from skipping right to the end and pressing the button before collecting all five snacks. I had to look around at other people's games to figure out how to use the mailbox trigger and the filter logic together to make something disappear once a certain number of messages had been received. I created an item that blended with my background and placed it in front of the button, so that it was invisible. I got it set up so that once all five Scooby snacks were collected, the destructible item would disappear, making it seem like the button appeared out of nowhere, and once the button was pressed, the level would be won. I will talk about the programming, mechanics, and sound effects in more detail in the video that will be in my next post, but for now, I will post the pictures of my characters, backgrounds, and game levels, all of which I created myself.

First off, I started with Scooby and the rest of the Mystery Gang:

I made Scooby a little bit larger relative to the others just for the sake of visibility during gameplay since he is the only playable character and the rest just stand off to the side in their cage and jump and wave their arms.
 I then went through and created each of the villains and their respective backgrounds on their levels.
Level 1 is based off "What a Night for a Knight!" Where Scooby and the gang encounter a black suit of armor that has come to life while searching a museum for clues of an archeologist's disappearance. I created the Black Knight in the program, like the other characters, but the background was trickier. The tutorial I watched was different than the actual program and I couldn't figure out how to change the size, so I created it on paint in order to maintain the pixelated look. I know the background is not to scale with the characters in the game, but I was really going for more of an overall scene photo of the area where they would be that I could darken and put behind the level without anything interfering with the game play. I was worried that if I created a bunch of hallways with small paintings and artifacts in them, they would look like obstacles or things to be collected, which could get confusing.


Level two was "Hastle in the Castle" where the gang crashes their boat on a haunted island and encounters the ghost of a deep-sea diver. I started this background on paint, like the other, but finished it on my friend's ipad so that I could use a touch screen instead of a mouse. He didn't have paint, just Adobe Sketchbook, so I took the finished scene on to Photoshop and pixelated it so that it would keep with the theme.


Level three was "Mine Your Own Business." The gang gets lost in Gold City, an old mining town haunted by the ghost of Miner 49er. This background was created on Adobe Sketchpad and edited in Photoshop.


Level four skipped ahead to episode 10 of season 1, "Bedlam in the Big Top." In this episode, when the gang investigate a haunted circus,  Scooby, Shaggy, and Daphne become hypnotized by a Ghost Clown. (And people wonder why kids are afraid of clowns)


Level five my favorite, based on one of my favorite episodes- "Go Away Ghost Ship." Mystery Inc. sets out to save a local shipping company from Red Beard's Ghost.


I had a lot of fun drawing with pixel art and animating all of the characters and objects. It was difficult learning how to program everything to work properly, but I'm really happy about how everything worked out! In my next post, I will upload a video that goes into more detail about how I programmed everything, and show off some of my animation!