A wonderful example of how successful a free-to-play game can be if supported by strong development and a helpful community, Warframe is a game that costs nothing to play but maintains a higher player count and an even higher update schedule. From when I first began playing this game in 2014 to now in 2018, Warframe has undergone countless updates and is barely recognizable except for its look, mechanics and same frustrating, but addicting, grind. The concept of the game is simple, play as a space warrior known as a Tenno and stop the campaigns of three factions while building your own arsenal of weapons, armors, warframes, and cosmetics. With over 100 different weapons and new ones being added every month, the game never loses it freshness and continues to present new opportunities to the player in the form of monthly events and special community challenges. Warframe is an MMOTPS (Massively Multiplayer Online Third-Person Shooter) with mechanics similar to World of Warcraft and Destiny. Players create parties together to go on missions to earn experience, items, and resources to construct items for higher level play. Though there is no official end-game to the title, most players seek to arm themselves with tools that will allow them to participate in higher level missions for the chance of earning rare rewards.
The other reason to earn rare rewards in the game is due to the game's unique in-game market where players can trade, sell, and buy items for in-game currency, purchasable with real money. This creates an interesting situation where an in-game economy has been generated from the availability of items due to player activities, the demand for these items relative to what the meta currently sits at, and how much players spend of real money to create in-game currency, known as "Platinum." Some players who have reached a high enough level in the game and who have access to these rare items choose to just flip items for "Platinum" and strike out their own trade businesses rather than actually play the game as a mission-based MMOTPS. A market like this is allowed to exist because the game has such an active team of developers and monitors that make sure the players are always happy and are treated fairly by the game and the metagame. Developers have direct control over the stream of "Platinum" into the market and can limit the time players spend on certain objectives with updates and releases of new items and changes to the stats of resources and characters. What is wonderful about all of this is that the game truly is free-to-play. All items, except for a few cosmetics, can be obtained from playing the game and making progress. There is no gap in performance that exists from "paying to win" due to the game's legitimate difficulty at higher levels. Players who invest their time into the game are rewarded. The community for the game is also very helpful in aiding new players. There is a wealth of knowledge that the subreddit for Warframe can provide to newcomers and players in the game are keen to help players gain items and explain the trade system to players who would otherwise be taken advantage of. Every aspect of this game is positive and I can't wait to see what direction the developers take it in for the future.
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This last Tuesday marked the end of my independent study in 3ds Max. I worked with a fellow classmate for most of this week and last to create a presentation for what we had hoped to and actually accomplished during our senior year of CTE studies. The presentation itself was not hard to put together due to the work we had both put in throughout the year, but what was difficult was realizing that this was to be our final year in game design. It finally hit me during this process that this period of my life is coming to an end, and I don't necessarily know if I'm ready to say goodbye to this part of DSA and to the people who have made my life so great these last four years. It was also very touching to see the reactions of people during the presentation as I showed them my work. I have never been too impressed with the things I make, but it was nice nevertheless to get complimented on my hard work and to be recognized for the effort I had put into modeling these last few months.
I will of course continue my studies in 3ds Max and I will continue to make models for whatever I end up doing as a career. I'm just thankful I was able to spend my final year this way and gain so much experience in an environment I love. Thank you... This week all of my time was spent on the creation of a new program for my high school's award ceremony. I have been teaching myself Adobe InDesign to do this and the experience has actually been pretty great. I really enjoy InDesign and the process of formatting and graphically organizing rather than the sheer creation of graphics. It is very calming to just organize things in InDesign and to see an immediate result of what your finished product will look like. I need to continue working on the program next week and meet with the organizer of the ceremony to confirm what information needs to go where. I also need to spend some time this weekend working on my presentation for my CTE course and gathering images for the slideshow a friend and I will put on at the event. This will be a lot easier to do now thanks to the fact that I was able to save some parts of my computer from a storm surge that happened Thursday night. Otherwise, I would have been unable to safely gather data from my primary machine, so I am very grateful for being able to fix the parts that have been damaged so far.
Below is an image of a game character I had been working on during low points this week. Plans for next week:
This week I spent most of my time working on the invitation to our class's showcase at the end of the year. To make this invitation, I first modeled an Atari game controller that could be rendered and used as a graphic. Then I actually had to wait for the render to finish, which took about one day. After the render was done, I brought the image into Photoshop and began to construct the invitation. I finished the invitation and then had to wait for feedback before it was finalized for the emails sent to parents and other attendees of the showcase. The invitation is now done and the final product can be seen below.
I modeled the game controller in the same way I modeled the sword from a few weeks ago. I used a single plane to create a shell of the controller which I then edited and added textures to as needed. I also spent a fair amount of time this week helping students in the class with learning 3ds Max because the teacher was absent for two days. My next project involves learning Adobe In Design and remaking the awards ceremony program for our school. I plan to finish this transfer of data from Publisher by the end of next week (hopefully). Depending on AP exams, this may take longer, but my goal has been set. Plans for next week:
This week I began working on the presentation of my final portfolio. This involves tweaking already made pieces to look as nice as possible and creating new images to use in an introductory piece. The introductory piece should highlight the skills I have learned this year and the focus that I have chosen to take in 3D modeling. I have come to really enjoy the studio creation of items in 3ds Max and want to highlight the skills with lighting, texturing, camera work, and framing that I have worked on throughout my independent study. I plan to show this with a set of images set in Mondrian style that show multiple views of the same studio scene. The studio itself is occupied by a model set I had made earlier; the set of models is comprised of a saucer, two cups, a tea/coffee pot, and some sugar cubes. This is a throwback of sorts to when I first started using 3ds Max and made a lot of teapots just because the model option was there. The set is also used in my final piece of work: a living room. A render of the work so far can be seen below.
My plans for next week:
This week I continued to work on the room scene, though I was not able to add animations to the smoke and steam. I was, however, able to add a camera and begin to set up movement for the said camera in the scene. I also took some time off from the room this week and spent some time learning more about polygon modeling and practicing what I had learned in the creation of a German-style long sword. In this practice, I used the spherify tool for the first time and was able to create most of the entire sword from a single plane that I stretched and modified to meet the shape of the hilt and blade. When I had previously modeled weapons, I had done so as if I was forging separate pieces for the entire weapon rather than use a single plane. Working in a single plane was a lot more simple than creating multiple pieces and also took care of the problem of multiple vertices that had occurred in the past when I modeled complex objects. When rendering the blade, I set up a curved backdrop and added photo-realistic light setups to the scene in order to make as realistic a rendering as possible. The final product can be seen below.
Next Week I plan to:
This week I spent most of my time working on the textures and furniture for my living room scene. I added a couch, and chair, a window, a larger table, and re-textured several objects in the room to add a layer of color consistency to the scene. By next week I want to have finished all of the textures and furniture for the room and be able to begin working on animating the steam from the coffee and the smoke from the cigarette. A moving camera will then be added to the scene and will travel around the room to showcase the techniques I have been working on this whole year. This week the students in my supervisor's class have begun working on 3D modeling in 3ds Max, which means that hopefully, I will be able to lead a lesson on the techniques and software that they have just begun to explore. I am very excited for this and hope to show them some of the skills I've learned this year during my independent study. Below is an image of the scene so far.
Goals for next week:
This week I continued working on the living room scene I have planned to finish by the end of 4th quarter. This week I added a chair, the coffee table, a lamp, and some books to the scene. The books have not been textured yet, and will be done next week. The chair and the lamp use the same materials that I have elsewhere in the scene. The final product of this creation will be a camera movement around the living room as the steam and smoke from the coffee and cigarette rise from their respective locations. The intention of the project will be to show my final abilities in 3ds max and demonstrate all that I have learned about modeling, scaling, texturing, and animating during my independent study. I also have plans to work on the tutorials during spring break and cover the final creation of curriculum for some of my teacher's classes. The curriculum in this includes just a few videos demonstrating modeling techniques that I plan to create.
My plan for next week will be to finish up the tutorials for the modeling curriculum and to continue my own work on the living room project. Below is a render of what the scene looks like so far. This week I spent the first three days finishing a coffee scene that I have reflected on in previous posts and finalized my portfolio updated for the quarter. Less was done this week than I would have hoped for due to the fact that I had my wisdom teeth removed on Thursday and I am still recovering from the surgery as I write this. The coffee scene I did will eventually be recolored and merged with the 1950s living room scene I made earlier in the quarter and will be featured in my final showreel covering the work I have done this year in the independent study. I experimented with a variety of texturing techniques and modeling from editable splines for this coffee scene which will be useful as I continue to move closer to certification in 3ds Max. Probably my favorite part of this scene though is the spoon, which was made from one plane and then shelled and curved to fit the shape I wanted. The process for it was so simple, but the final product looks so nice that it's just a nice balance of the technique I have learned this year in my work with 3ds Max and 3D modeling in general.
Next Quarter I plan to:
Something I have recently come to appreciate from my time in film and continued work with 3ds Max is the extent to which varying textures can be used to represent things that they are not. This comes in handy in cases when you are trying to texture a model that has a certain material, say, coffee. It might be initially difficult for you to accurately represent the texture of the coffee with an original texture, especially if you aren't too familiar with the slate material editor or the material editor in general. In a case like this, using pre-made materials with small edits made to the details can actually save time and create a similar appearance in a pinch. I did this most recently for the textures of liquids in a coffee scene I recently finished. I ended up using a matte ceramic material colored white for the texture of the milk in the cream basin and used cafe wall paint with a stock image of a gradient to create the cream swirl in the coffee.
This was inspired by the practice in films where chocolate syrup or other mixtures were used as fake blood and gore. Since blood is not a readily available or wise thing to just throw about on a film set, a similar looking substance had to be used to compensate. I was actually talking to my teacher about this and eventually started talking more about the artificial nature of a lot of things in films and media. Foley and effects are two of the major ones, but things like shooting on a different site than the film location are also considerations made by filmmakers when they are creating. This is all to say, that when a roadblock is encountered in your design, you should try thinking of a way to fix the issue by mimicking what is needed, sometimes it ends up being a lot nicer looking and simpler than the real thing. In my previous blog post and on my selected works page, an image of the coffee scene can be found for reference. |
AuthorMy name is Graham Buhrman, and this is my blog relating to Game Design. Archives
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