Global Game Jam 2017

Bam! I'm returning from my modelling hiatus by participating in the Global Game Jam which happened in mid-January.

In case you're unfamiliar with Game Jams, the aim is to create a workable game within 48 hours based on the theme given.

The theme this year was "Waves" and so we created Beat Wave

We had a group of ten artists and two programmers. We decided to cash in on the amount of artists we had and made the project visually-focused.

Some menu screens:

The game was created using Unreal Engine.

The gameplay is such:

2 - 4 players

The aim of the game is to knock the other players out of the ring

The characters can walk and run with the left thumbstick. They have two "wave" attacks activated by the left and right triggers. Attack #1 is a circular ripple that comes out from the character and pushes others away. Attack #2 is a directed wave which pushes in a specific direction, aimed with the right thumbstick and shown by the coloured arrows near the characters.

My main role in this project was to manage the creation of the level. This involved:

- Making the greybox

- Designing the look of the scene

- Lighting the scene

- Creating the large assets for the scene: the roof & the pool

- Importing and sorting the meshes and materials

- Placing all the major assets, the rocks decorating the edge and around the pool

- Dressing the set with all the minor assets

- Balancing the materials, altering that clashed in the scene using Unreal's texture nodes

My work also included contributing some of the decorative assets

Progression snapshots of the scene:

Not including the final shot. Coming soon.

The three character cylinders were a remnant of our initial idea - a game with a very different set of mechanics that involved only three player characters. This was changed through the development due to the time restrictions.

I also designed the fountain that made its way into the final product, placed the rocks just so to direct the particle effects into the pool.

(The actual particle effect was created by one of the programmers on our team.)

The fountain spawning so far down on the rocks in the menu screen is a glitch. Ideally, we wanted to have a rotating camera panning gently around the environment. This was cut due to time restrictions and replaced with just a static camera.

Other programs used for the project:

Maya, Mari, Photoshop, MuseScore, Audacity

Complete 360 video of the environment coming soon.