The soul of South Georgia
As Technical Designer & Level Artist & Technical Artist
Team size: 7
Timeframe: 3 months
Overview
The soul of South Georgia is a game made by group 7 from Innovation and Professional Practice course in Abertay University. Basically, the game was to create a 3D walking simulator, in which a player could experience the island of South Georgia throughout the years. We wanted players to experience the bustling whaling town at its peak and to learn about its connection with Shackleton. We wanted to capture the silence of the island when the rats overtook the island and killed off the native species. We then wanted the player to learn about the conversation efforts which have taken place over the past thirteen years and the success they have had and rehabilitating the island and its fauna. Work will only be shown in the perspective of Technical design.
Time Travel System&Pipeline
I used Repnotify which is the tool that UE4 provided for developers to monitor a variable instead of monitoring it every frame. There is a data structure which contains attribute of the following variables related to time travel VFX. Each time period has a specific set in the datatable which is convenient for designers to adjust the effect. The system input timePeriod (integer) is a variable used for managing the process of time travel in order that the time travel system function can be easily visited and called from external modules, which is convenient for other programmers. And alpha is a parameter used for managing a large number of parameters involved in the time travel.
Learning
In this project, I cooperated with foreign students in development for the first time. In this course project, it is very necessary for us to use trello as a project management tool to let the team members know what I am doing. Because I've used JIRA before, it's not a big challenge for me. In the development process, I first came into contact with dynamic materials, learned how to use them, and combined with appropriate shaders to achieve the effect I want. Since there are a lot of details in VFX that need to be added slowly, I also learned the concepts of encapsulation and pipeline for subsequent iterations.