Week 9 – Props & UI Design

This week has been solely focused around asset creation, namely for exterior props. I also worked on some foliage, rocks etc. The other focus has been on the UI side of things in which I have been getting the usability of the demo up to speed and removing debug UI – this is now complete and features a fully modular scripted system for attribute bars (health, mana, breath when underwater), and ability slots (including the pistol) – which is used on the HUD, weapon wheel, and to show how many health/mana vials the player currently has.

You can view the Artstation post of the assets I worked on here – https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3XQy2

Props & Misc Assets

There isn’t much to say on the props side of things other than I have developed a load of props to fill out the space. I did however investigate into Marvellous Designer further (as this is a software where my knowledge is lacking) in order to simulate cloth for the covered furniture and small rag.

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I also created some procedural foliage using Substance Designer and combined them into an atlas using the Atlas Maker node from Substance Share. – https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/18

I did also create some leaves but I’m not happy with how they turned out so I’ll be using ZBrush to generate the alpha and normal maps for those and then procedurally texturing them via Substance Designer.

UI Design

By keeping my scripting design modular and in an object-orientated approach I managed to cut down the workload significantly as I identified within the original UI of Dishonored 2 what data and functionality is shared across different but similar UI elements. I then used this in tandem with the modular ability system to store data about each ability (name, description etc) which is then populated on the weapon wheel procedurally, meaning the system relies solely on creating and adding a new blueprint to the player to add an ability (or equipment such as the pistol as that lies within the same system).

The slots themselves are objects (or more specifically widgets) which are then populated at the start around the weapon wheel using some basic vector math to rotate the position around the wheel based on how many abilities the player has.

Lamppost System

While creating the lampposts I also created a system to connect them in a network which will then generate wires between set points. The gravity of each wire can also be adjusted, and it will droop down more the further the two lampposts are.

Where Now?

From here I need to implement the VFX for the last ability (the dark ability), and wrap up the level design. I will also most likely continue to polish up areas in terms of design and environment art while I write my dissertation.