Overall Thoughts about the environment - James McAndrew Environment

Over the project we have had some ups and down and a lot of changing ideas and designs. This did some what pay off as the first level layout we had, there would have been no way that i could have done all of that as the solo environment artist. The overall quality of the models and textures that i have made are pretty good but i think that i could have done more and made the lower poly versions a little higher poly so the meshes fitted together better.

This version of the low poly walls as a test i carried out after i had made all the current versions and works a lot better than i was expecting, the way that this was made was something i was unsure of but worked better than u was expecting. The topology is horrible and i think it was because of this that i avoided this.

The first iteration of the level was originally more than just the dungeon and was therefore a lot small than is now. However as previously discussed there was simply too much work for a solo environment to do.

This other iteration that was done by Matt after a rocky moment in the team and was quickly brushed off as it wasn't what we were looking for. It was more of a maze but the AI was having trouble moving around and everything seems to be a little too cramped and close quarters.

The final level layout we went for and the design we have now has more open rooms, so the AI has space to move and the player has space to attack and dodge around the enemy.

Overall i am happy with the outcome but i think that me and us as a team could have done a lot better job in communicating and talking as a team so that we don't get bottled necked by things or have to do and redo things over and over again. As a result of redo doing designs and layout and all such, i haven't really had time to do things that i really wanted to do and use things like Ewans shader to texture the environment and mess around with the environmental effects a lot more. Such as having dust particles floating everywhere. 

I also kinda of took lead of the modelers and kept track of what was being made by who. I made a spreadsheet sort of thing which was constantly updated when something new was added or there needed to something new added. The colours for the meshes is an indication of the texture map that the objects will be assigned to. The fog that is in the level ended up haveing no maps, just a particle material, this is why it is black.   

overall i think i have done well keeping track of what all the modelers were doing and have found this spreadsheet format to work pretty effectively. The only areas i would improve on is to cut the textures down a little more, this is because there are some areas such as the cage and stocks for example that could be optimized and combined with other maps. Although this isn't a massive problem as we ended up below the texture limit it would become a problem when working to tighter constraints. 

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