Ragalla Seliby-Kaplan Blog

Ragalla Seliby-Kaplan I UVed several of my main items in my scene but as I'm still playing catch up I have a couple more left to complete. The project overall is going well enough as I am getting my work done in a timely manner and all of my items are on my laptop where I work.  I plan on UV the rest of my work very soon despite you recommending we be done with UVing by now. I know I'm behind but I am juggling multiple projects so I make time where I can especially considering that this is one of my later works. The cart UV came out a bit weird as I used both my own and auto UV to see what it would come out like. I plan on redoing this UV as I feel the size of the UVs are disproportionate. I think this had something to do with me resizing the image to make it easier to work with and think shrinking it down. I'm not sure if that would cause an issue but I wanted to check anyway. This UV also had issues with my laptop and campus computer UVing my work di...

When making my 3D level I followed the tutorial presented to us in class and unfortunately used the detailed environment design rather than the simplified one which explains the time it took my assignment to upload. Despite this I still manage to implement the design I was going for using the model presented to us with the Disney example of a center place of interest and areas surrounding it being interest points to hook customers into seeing the whole park. I wanted to implement something similar but much more simplified. The idea was to have a center area that looped outward and had players to further out to explore and have to find some keys and head back to the center in order to reach the exit but ultimately I had fail in that ambition but with tools like this I can definitely see myself coming back and making something of this scale a bit more detailed for my final product. I wanted something a bit more exploratory that had you going inside some not to deep caverns to l...

When designing my Megaman level 2 I wanted to have a Metroid Vania style exploration element to the overall level. Despite the level I turned in being an incomplete version I managed to make the intended level and had friends and people online test the level and even provide me with feedback via email. The design was a strait forward linear level with now peaks or troughs at first glance and eventually you reach a door at the end of the level where you need 4 keys. To find the keys you must engage in activities you might night even think was a wise choice on your first run through. Jump to heights on platforms mysteriously higher than normal and arranged in a stair like manner gets you into the upper portion while falling through a pit gets you to the lower half. I also avoid death pits in general as to not lie to the player about some pits being okay and other not because I feel like that’s pretty cheap the design allows for players to explore and get the keys needed to succeed wi...

Ragalla Seliby-Kaplan When developing the second level using the first as a base was a simple task as I was able to implement various aspects of design I wanted in my previous level. Unlike the last level however I felt like I ran into the problem of inconsistency as when making this one I mainly went by the seat of my pants when designing it. Ultimately, I had a clear vision of the max size of my level and how I wanted it to end but getting there was basically me filling up the spaces until I got there.  The linear levels I want to avoid as I feel they are too simple.  When making the level I had much more creativity flowing from me than last time as I was used to the system even after the updates. Creating levels was like drawing and I just let whatever came to me out and honestly if worked out in my opinion for the best. I kept the overall linearity of the level deciding that if I was going to expand the overall design into having more roots then I was goi...

Ragalla Seliby-Kaplan When creating my Megaman level I looked up other levels from Megaman 6 and Megaman 1 specifically. I looked up the overall size of each level and wanted to make something of equal length if not a bit shorter. While I have not played a classic Megaman game in a while, but I have played the x series which is overall the same. When working with the Megaman level design I counted the number of squares necessary to make the level the right size and proper length. When developing I will admit it took me a but to get the hang of the program but after that making levels was a bit easy and fun. I made the levels linear as it was supposed to be as and kept up with the usual Megaman level design methods. While not using spikes, I wanted to avoid pits at all cost but compromised and used them but avoided things that I personally felt were a bit cheap such as enemies on small ledges. Due to the lack of enemy variety I decided to have them placed in unique areas to add varie...

The knife assignment was my first introduction to retopology in Maya as with the rest of the class, but it was simple enough to grasp at first. The real issue came in curving the knife using only squares as I caught myself overlapping a few of my polygons which caused me to reshape and delete a few to get them all in order. Honestly retopology took up most of my time when working with this as it was a slow and steady process.  UVing was easy enough to follow as I used online tutorials to help with preparing it for substance painter which was the shorter of the assignment compared to everything else. I had some issues that required me to look up how to guides on retopology with certain curved objects, but I managed to get the assignment done on time at least. The materials used for the dagger were improvised on my part as I could find or make one to one material for it.  I did however come away with the knife looking too polygonal and less like the act...

Ragalla Seliby-Kaplan Regarding the group mapping I say we had a clear idea of what we were going to make. The idea of a level by level prison escape speaks for itself as the ideas just flowed naturally. We all took our existing levels and see how we could remake them into something on a scale of low to high difficulty. We planned on making a shared document where we could create our levels separately and then have the other critique the general layout as each one of us was aiming for a beginner, intermediate, and final level design map course. That way we can work on our own time, show off our levels, remake them if they conflict, come up with new ideas to share for board design, and coordinate accordingly. In this sense we manage to stay on top of our design all together and avoid repetitive map layout and avoid conflicting ideas so our make could make and contain a linear and consistent story. What went wrong however was the timing of it all. We only had about two days t...