Shuttle Craft Hanger Cinematic Sequence

Planning
At the start of this project we had a lot of varying ideas on how we could start this task. The ideas varied from a very serious tone to even a comical styling. After looking into the brief in more detail we decided to try and stay with the more serious tone. We then started to look at lots of different game trailers to see how other FPS style games had tried to capture their game. After the research was completed we decided to try and plan a few scenes separately just in a paper format using notes.

Level Build
We had made a very early decision that when we build the level it should be a very simplistic design as this would allow us more time building up the scenes of action. The way we did this was to only have our hanger and two corridors that lead off from this. We then made multiple copies of these areas so we could set different scenes in the same environment. Although this gave us lots of scene options it made testing scenes very awkward as the level build time started to become very long.

Scene Creation
When starting work on the scenes it was very helpful that we had already mapped and created story boards for some of the scenes. This meant we could quickly set a scene up then once the level build had finished watch it through to see if it worked. This style became very useful as it allowed us to apply a lot of finishing touches to scenes quickly and accurately. Also because all scenes were set in different maps we never had to worry about them overlapping each other as they were all just set to trigger in sequence.

One part of the scene creation that became frustrating was that when adding a camera into a scene it did not always appear in the correct location. This did sometimes mean a long search then relocation to get it into the correct scene.

Problems Encountered
The biggest problem we encountered was getting the sentry guns to activate and fire. Although we managed to solve this issue with a game script other scene adjustments had to be made to make this work how we wished. Another problem we did find with the sentry gun scene was it would always happen randomly. We tested this several times and decided to leave the scene in as even when it did not work fully with both sentry guns firing the deployment still had a good effect.

The other main problem encountered was getting game sounds and music to trigger in game as the level would start. It also did not help that we had left this part of the project until the end which meant time was running short. We manage to find a quick fix for this that worked the majority of the time but it still left some de-synchronisation issues. This was noted when we presented to the class but it was the first time it had been that out of sync.

Improvements
The main area I think our trailer needed to be improved upon was the sound sync issues. If we had allowed ourselves more time we could have created or researched a better solution for this problem.

Otherwise though the project as a whole worked very well. We worked well as a team and work was completed when we were sat down together. This probably helped us a lot as it meant lots of opinions were always been thrown about and when a problem was encountered it always seemed easier to solve.