My roles for the project split my contribution into two sections,
Firstly, I was project manager, and led meetings/scrums following an agile development recording progress and delegating tasks via Pivotal Tracker:
https://www.pivotaltracker.com/s/projects/746883
We added a large number of tasks to the icebox, planning out potential goals, but many were not reached as our velocity was lower than initially expected. This is largely due to issues with using CryEngine, and the learning curve associated with it.
As such many tasks listed remain unfinished.
Additionally I lead arranging meetings and managed correspondence with our project supervisor, Ewan Armstrong, and Dan.
My second role was creating the map, or 'static 3D assets', 'level design' or 'level development' type names fit the jobs I undertook.
This ranges from working with the team from a concept level to draft out the game concept, and more specifically the map layout.
From these concepts we decided that it would be both interesting and beneficial to base the level around the university campus. This gave us unlimited access to the actual environment, and allowed us to get many reference materials easily, as well as being a suitably sized and shaped area of urban terrain.
From this I made some concept art piecing together a satellite image of the campus (Google maps) and pictures of rubble etc.
Based on advice from Ewan, the first phase of map development was to 'white-box' (create a simple mock model of) the entire area as quickly as possible in order to test game-play This was my first experience using 3D modelling software, but I learnt the necessary skills to create basic models. The largest issue was with the exporter for putting models into CryEngine being buggy, and very poorly documented, and this ate a lot more time than it should have.
From here,its became clear the the amount of work to model the entire map to a fidelity that matches the detail of CryEngine assets would not be feasible in the time for development that we had. Instead, I would develop a few key buildings in the most important areas to represent how the game would look once completed, given a larger development period. In order to create these buildings I learnt a new set of skills, in 3D modelling with Maya 2013.
All models are in the submission folder as Maya binaries (.mb files).
Once the models were complete, to improve the overall quality of the map, the models were merged with existing assets from CryEngine and Crysis3, to give an edge of professional quality art. The models were not textured due to not having time to learn the skills required to texture as well as model. Instead, a smooth single colour was applied to give a clean cut prototype appearance.
The complete map has been incorporated into the final game files, and can be best explored within the cry-engine editor, note that some layers can be hidden (if things disappear).
As well as working through the map development process, I documented the development of the game play concepts that were agreed between the group. This was recorded in the form of story boards:
