Roman Milecastle / Design Practice 1 Submission Post

Design Practice 1 - Submission Post / Reflective Diary

Welcome to the submission blog post my MA Games Design, Design Practice 1 project.

I set out on this project with the aim of creating an effective, high quality and atmospheric game environment, as well as learning the methods of creating atmospheric environments along the way. My goal was to put what I have learned about atmospheric game environments into practice, while also continually learning as I went and refining and expanding my skills, both creative and technical, as an environment artist.

I have created a 3D environment depicting a Roman milecastle on Hadrian's wall, set during the late 2nd century AD in Northern England, in the winter. My reasons for choosing this setting of location and time is that I believe it has good atmospheric and immersive potential and is an interesting setting that can engage the viewer. It is set in a turbulent time in history, soon after the construction of Hadrian's wall. The symbolic nature of the milecastle as a frontier between civilization and Barbarianism is intended to give the scene and underlying sense of loneliness and danger. The winter setting also emphasises this. The conditions in the environment are intended to be difficult, which would make the player feel unease. However, I also tried to capture some of the beauty of the setting in my scene through the use of the terrain and foliage.

I tried to challenge myself with this scene by creating a large outdoor environment with quite complex, large architecture. I used many methods and tools that I had not used previously, such as UE4's instanced foliage tool and particle system. Of course, I also focused heavily on researching atmosphere in games by reading books, watching reference videos and playing games. This has probably been the most ambitious environment project I've done in such a short time, I've pushed myself to the limit and learned a lot and it has been a valuable learning experience.

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The project began in late November, after a while of trying to think of what environment to do (other early ideas included a Roman shrine/temple and a medieval castle courtyard) I found out about milecastles, researched them, and decided that was the way to go. I based the decision on the scale of the environment, it's atmospheric potential and whether I could incorporate my interest in history into it (I find that making historical scenes keeps me enthused and motivated). The software that I used was Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop and Unreal Engine 4.

I made a blog post at this early stage showing some quick concept sketches, click here to read.

I also made a Pinterest board that can be found here.

Shortly after, I began modelling, starting with very basic blockouts to establish the layout and scale. Here's a picture of the scene at this very early stage.

Very early blockout of the structure layout.

After this point, I actually didn't really make any major progress on the scene as I was advised by tutors to focus on the Literature and Contextual review for the other module, and the scene was largely untouched until the end of December.

At the end of December/1st of January, I created the final models of the architecture. I made a blog post about it which can be found here.

Early modelling stage.

Having focused on the other modules work until January 1st, I really had my work cut out for me in the week of the 2nd to the 9th. I had to get the scene from how it looks in the picture above, to finished. This was going to require more work and effort than any project I had ever carried out.

By the end of the 2nd January, the scene looked like this. Read that days blog post here.

Beginning to apply base colour textures.

On the 3rd/4th of January, I made tileable textures for the terrain, worked on collisions and began to model foliage pieces. Blog post here.

Pictures taken around this time:

My original grass texture.

The final barracks building with a basic texture.

And one shortly after, when I had painted the terrains in.

On January 5th I imported the foliage and rocks and decided to make it a snowy scene for added atmosphere! I made a blog post about it and it was to be my last post on the project until this one, as it was at this point that I kicked into high gear and became too busy to even make posts.

Added trees, rocks and made the scene snowy.

Over the next few days until this point, I textured all the pre-existing assets, modelled and textured all the detail items, did the lighting, textured the foliage and added post-processing effects and particle effects, amongst other things, and finished the scene. From the 1st-9th of January, I roughly calculate that I did about 70-80 hours of work...

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The Final Scene

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More pictures: http://imgur.com/a/RnXEb

So that's the final finished product and I must say, I'm really happy with hows its turned out. I've given this project absolutely everything I've got over the past few days and I hope that it shows. Now I'm going to write a bit about it!

So the goal of the whole project was to make an atmospheric, compelling environment. I've spent a lot of time in the past couple of months reading, researching and deeply considering what makes for an atmospheric game environment (or a film, play, or real life location). Do I believe that I have achieved that? In my opinion, I have, and here's my reasons:

•   The setting and era. The scene is located and set in a relatively early time in the Roman occupation of Britain. Hadrian's wall was completed in the mid-first century AD to create a clear border of the Empire which stretched from the Middle East and Africa, to and throughout Europe. The wall was in many ways the edge of civilization - surely the edge of civilization is an atmospheric place for a game?!
•   The terrain and snowy landscape. When it comes to creating atmosphere, weather is important, and snowy and wintery settings are a classic tool. They scream survival, hardship, darkness and uncertainty. I think that having the scene set in Winter works in tandem with the theme of being on the edge of the world to cement that feeling.
•   The scale of the environment. I took great care to make the environment look and feel like it could continue on endlessly in all directions, by creating the terrain in a way that did not obviously disappear in the distance. I made the wall long and with varied verticality so it could believably be occluded by distant hills. 
•   The story and historical accuracy of the setting. I have really come to enjoy basing my scenes in historical settings that I find interesting. I took many measures to add historical accuracy to the scene.
•   The lighting. The scene is set in the mid-morning on a fairly cloudy winters day, so the sun is in the North-East, often obscured by clouds, giving the scene a dim, blue tinted look that was achieved through lighting and post-processing effects. The torches and candles are warm and orange to contrast with the cold natural light.
•   Particle effects. Before this project I had very little experience with particle effects. I added fire to each of the torches, and smoke and steam to the cooking fire.
•   Models and textures. Each model was created to a fairly low-average polycount goal, to make for a more optimised scene that ran smoothly. The textures are all PBR with normal, specular and roughness maps, and metallic maps where needed. Texture sizes range from 1024 x 1024 for smaller props & detail items to 4096 x 4096 on the larger architectural assets.
•   Post processing effects. The post-processing effects that I used included tweaks to the bloom, ambient occlusion, depth of field and visual filters.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to include another aspect that I am passionate about: audio. I would have liked to have created a short loop of music and maybe some ambient audio to go along with the scene as I think that audio is half the battle when it comes to creating atmosphere. However, the scene itself must take priority of course! Maybe I'll come back to it in my own time and do some audio.

Historical Accuracy

 Here's a list of historical details that I included or considered when creating the scene:

•   The milecastle is manned by members of the Roman army's 20th Legion - or Legio XX, Valeria Victrix. This is one of the legions that was actually based in Britain and helped to build and man the wall. The Legion's boar emblem can be seen on the flag on the tower and the shield.
•   I modelled a gladius sword that was well-researched and is correct for the period and made of the correct materials.
•   The tower contains a map that is based on a reconstruction of an ancient Roman world map by 1st Century Roman geographer, Pomponius Mela.
•   The tower contains some period-correct coins bearing a picture of Emporer Hadrian.
•   The cooking fire pot contains "Polenta" - a staple of the Roman army's diet that was made of boiled grain. I colour-picked a photograph of the dish when texturing this part of the model.

And that concludes my submission blog post for my MA Games Design, Design Practice 1 project - my Roman Milecastle 3D environment. Thanks for reading!