My Personal Summer Project and what became of it.

Well over summer I had planned to do a huge sci-fi project which involved creating part of a futuristic city, unfortunately I started to fall behind on my project timeline, mostly because I felt sort of lost with the ideas, it wasn't because I was lazy, because I was trying to do work every day.

I just thought the map itself was not up to scratch in my opinion, it wasn't what I envisioned in my mind, I didn't want to start modelling finished buildings for a project that didn't have finalized ideas and concepts.

I went through many iterations and the white box’s I made just didn't seem to flow or work properly in 3DS MAX in the white box or in my head meaning either the buildings were blocking too much of the level out or making it seem too odd to be an FPS map. The biggest problem was making sure the environment and placement of the buildings was a nice map for an FPS game. It caused me to keep thinking about moving the buildings in different positions, maybe scrapping an area and starting from scratch again.

The Area I had the most problem with was designing the mall, and I still don’t think I have a good design for it yet. It always seemed so closed off from the rest of the map and the mall section could have been a smaller stand-alone FPS map.

I spent a lot of time redesigning it and going through iteration after iteration on paper and in my head. There was a lot of stressing about that and I didn't want to start all over again after all I've done. I think I got emotionally attached to the white box I had done. I didn't manage to properly concept my vehicles out like I wanted to or do anything with a character.

As this happened the days seemed to fly by without much being done or worked on, I was working but not at an optimal speed. I took too long and gave myself extra time after I missed a certain deadline. It was a mess in the end, BUT I really want to finish this project though because it’s been bugging me, I know I've got a really good idea in my head for this.

I have learnt a lot from my mistakes though, I realized I didn't do enough planning and get a clearer vision of what I wanted the map to end up looking like, I should have definitely made loads more mood boards and checked out more maps in FPS games. I was really limiting myself without the extra planning because when it came to making the white box, I was spending a long time thinking and adjusting, over and over again until I burned myself out and had to stop. I needed more reference images and visuals to help me create this world.

I've started university again now but I still want to continue with creating this world. I have a lot of it done and I don’t just want to abandon everything I have done up to this point so ill press onward with it, despite having extra projects on top, Big changes will obviously need to be made. I'm not going to make anymore promises that I will complete it, because i know i might not make it, so from now on if i finish a project I will stick it up, and if i don't, then so be it.

I'm happy I managed to make it into 3rd year, ill be honest, in saying I didn't think I would. I got 50% in my 2nd year, which is a 3rd. I'll try my best this year, I need something ridiculous like 88% to get a first overall in my degree, but i'm not making any promises. I'm worried about the future because I still haven't got my act together, and the fact that I've had all summer to do so and that not much has changed is quite disheartening.

Anyway this is all for now, below is an art dump of what I managed to do over summer. Thank you for reading if you got this far.