CuiCui

Introduction

Core Team

Felix Faeh - Design Lead
​Kenny Guayaguil - ​Tech Lead
Abby Johnson - Art Lead
Sam Hall - Character Artist
Liz Davis - Environment Artist
Michael Marangoni - Environment Artist

We are a team of six undergraduate students from the Savannah College of Art and Design (GA). Below you will find, what we have been working on for over the course of six months as our final project for Studio Class leading up to the Bachelor of Fine Arts! Development launch was in September 2019 and concluded in April 2020, followed by sporadic adjustments and fixes.

You will find the google drive link to our executable at the end of the entry, as well as our website.

Trailer:

Gameplay Video:

Approach

• Aesthetically speaking, we aimed for the concept of the conflict between shadow and light, with the message of trying to embrace the other-side: Embracing your weaknesses and being able to turn them into your strengths.

• Desire to create a third person linear experience, with non-repetitive level design and gameplay segments, in order to create an immersive story driven game and world. (style loosely inspired by the Uncharted series by Developer Naughty Dog),

• Emphasis set on creating an ethereal game feel and gameplay. (tone loosely inspired by Journey by Developer thatgamecompany)  

Game Features

• Three distinct environmental Levels, that vary each in size and challenge. The player must advance from one to the other, while solving challenges in the form of solving puzzles and platforming gameplay.

• Player plays a small bird comprised entirely of shadow, which flies through the environment, which has a limited stamina amount, but which auto regenerates on landing. The stamina bar is directly tied to their health bar, since light is the only damage source in this game, and it should symbolically portray the act of taking away the character's willpower to move on.

• All light sources endanger the player (reduces HP and eventually kills the player, if stayed in too long). But their Hp will regenerate in the shadow. Obstacles and challenges include sunlight coming through windows, drapery and also devices fueled by light sources. In addition, a reappearing majestic bird (Azhar) comprised of light plays a vital role and threat throughout the levels and narration. All these challenges will need mastery to overcome. The player will at times even indirectly make use of the light, taking it as their advantage to solve problems, highlighting that the character is able to coexist, and even thrive alongside their weaknesses.

• A singing mechanic, that allows the player to have other Birds (We call them Buddy Birds) flock to them, making the player more powerful temporarily, gifting them the force to break through stubborn barriers. Additionally, the buddy birds can create a shield around the player, protecting from light sources, over a certain period of time, which ties back to the core.

• We have two areal based AI's. Both of them are birds, revolving around the concept of light and shadow. The first are friendly (Buddy Birds) and can appear in dozens on the screen at a time. The latter is a single hostile bird (Azhar), the main antagonist of the game, who makes multiple appearances and cannot be killed but must be avoided through logic and timings.

• A set of interactable tapestries are placed across the game, which will play a short cinematic for the player, with the goal of immersing them into the world, while also giving a small reward on progressing passed challenges.

Environment Art

• The environment portrays long abandoned structures of an archaic civilization, with the goal to invoke mysticism, spiritualism, vanity and discovery in the player. Notable structures include an abandoned hallway and ancient observatory interior, followed by a small opening into a narrow ravine, which then leads to water filled former temple basin, that leads into the wide open large glowing desert dotted with high monolithic tower and statues.

• Our geometry is entirely based on Islamic architecture, taking greater influences from Moorish art history. We found the architectural style befitting to the overall theme of light and shadow (additionally, we were infatuated with the patterns in sacred geometry). We also felt that this style was generally underutilized in many student projects and wanted to give it more exposure.

• We wanted to invoke a fable like feel, which is why took a semi stylized/semi realistic approach to our materials, lighting, shading and post processes. For instance, we gave the scenes a black outline and the light source, heavy volumetric shapes (It also helped further highlight the parameters of danger zones, the player needed to avoid).

Art: Hallway Level

Art: Observatory Level

Art: Summit Level

Character Design: Cui

We wanted to give a lot of attention towards the design of the player controlled character. Cui. So, over the course of the six months, we made countless iterations to her. On the color tints (from brown, to black/green and to black/white) and overall texture patterns, to even an entirely new character.

Early on we opted to give Cui's texture, a reflective geometric patterns, which was another inspiration found in Islamic architecture (muqarnas-like), which we found beautiful and fitting to the overall style.

There were also various attempts integrate a diagetic User interface onto Cui in forms of headdress or tail feathers, in order to immserviely display stamina, avoiding 2D UI altogether. But we ran into constant issues, where the UI was not at all noticeable to the player, due to the scale. There was a constant attempt and trying to get it right, but in the end, we conceded due to time, but would have loved to further explore this option.

A lot of our changes were based on player feedback that Cui was either not visible enough in the environment (due to the really small scale) or that she did not convey the theme of light and shadow enough. So having tried to find the uniqueness in the character, we started to give starlight patterns to the texture of the character, all the while adding adjacent separate feather meshes, that would adorn the character.

The biggest change to Cui came towards the latter part of our project and was based on a longer ongoing sentiment: That she did still did not stand out enough in the environment. This would lead to our biggest change yet: An entirely new character from scratch. And we turned Cui into an Owl, since the iconic night creature was very befitting to our shadow narrative.

This brought with it a whole slew of logistics. We needed an entirely new model, new textures, new rig, new particles and new feather add-ons, having new animations created, integrate them and fixing references in the blueprint. We wanted to reachieve the positives and fix the feedback of our original model, so we kept a sense of geometric pattern on the textures, while adding glowing particle effects and additional cloth physics driven attached feathers. We also added, an entirely new color palette in the form of purple darks and striking silvers for a strong contrast, with the core design of making her exude an ethereal misty feel.

Character Design: Azhar

Azhar was designed to be beautiful elegant, and intimidating. We incorporated swan like elegant features, that gave Azhar a touch of nobility. The wings were designed short, for the animator’s ease. Originally, it was our hope to create a magical, long, and flowing tail for Azhar using particles. This, however, fell of the band wagon and has not yet been achieved. We hope to implement it in the coming weeks. 

Azhar's size outscales Cui's by quite, but although exaggerated, we still aimed to keep it realistic.

Just like with Cui's model, we gave Azhar a new retexture, after the old one had felt obsolete and non-befitting to the overall game look and feel. 

Design: Hallway - 1st Level

The Hallway Level is comprised of the ruins of a past archaic civilization and aims at invoking curiosity within the player. It is the smallest area for the player to traverse through and the walls are somewhat narrow. But to make this a starting area, we chose that sunlight would only comes from one side and that most light sources encountered would be static. This is where we teach the player the core mechanics of movement and the concepts of light as a danger, which is why we designed it to be easier to traverse through, than the following levels. We had setup rubble obstacles, to create a platformer-like experience, with the challenges kept easy.

Here, we also teach the player basic interactions with the world (such as picking up weight and dropping them on pulleys to open doors).

It is also the first time, the player will encounter the majestic bird Azhar, our antagonist in this story. We purposefully kept the confrontation short and made the characters model appearance only glimpse for a split second, in order to create tension and foreshadow a confrontation down the line. To this effect, we had the bird swoop near to the player, followed by its harrowing screeches, as the light baths the scene emanating from its being. This was also done to reinforce the danger of light to the player.

We added some smaller dynamically appearing NPC Birds to the Hallway to give life to the world and further the immersion. And since the player will be needing to interact with these later on and flock together, this also added familiarity and the forging of a bond with these birds. 

Design: Observatory Level - 2nd Level

The 2nd level is already much bigger then the hallway, with the player looping around the central pillar.  Here we introduce the player to a series of puzzles that involve lights, such as the projectors, burning veins and moving drapes. Azhar also makes a timid appearance, as he will patrol certain areas and attack the player upon coming in range. But with finesse, the player will be able to use Azhar's own emitting beams, to funnel into the projectors and use it to their own advantage! There are a total of three environmental puzzles, with two on the bottom and a third on top, leading into the center of the observatory, where the player will progress right down an opening into the next level.

A series of caged friendly AI Birds need to be freed in this level in the top part, and here the player is first able to sing to them, in order for them to flock towards the player. They will follow the player throughout the level to help overcome breaking cages and freeing other birds, which the player could not do on their own. They also increase the players resistance in the light, and serve as a 'body shield' for a certain amount of time. If hit by light, they will after some period, one by one leave Cui and return to their origin location.

We aimed to create more rise in tension in this level, through the appearances (screeches and glimpses) of Azhar and his terrorizing flight around the Observatory. The mood starts off more ambient and benign, but as the player continues further up, Azhar will become a larger and more threatening presence.

Design: Summit Level - 3rd Level

The Summit is by far the largest level and opens up to create a immersive feel of decompression in contrast from the last two levels. Instead of feeling ‘caged in’, the player is now given the feeling of freedom, as they traverse over a wider desert environment. We wanted to create an increase in flow and catharsis, and created a descend into the desert pathing, which then lead to an upwards swoop, ascending a series of towers, as they move passed the cliffs into the open space.

Naturally, since the player is now thrown into the open, they are far more exposed to sunlight over a longer period of time. The design attempt was to give a sudden rise in difficulty and flip the approach the player took to navigate the last two environment on its head. Normally, the player was used to staying in the safety of the shadows, trying to avoid sporadic placed light sources. But in the Summit Level, this all changes, as they are now traversing in a large light bathed terrain and shadows are far and few between. 

The player can now apply their skills and knowledge, riding on the ability to sing to other birds, flocking together and gaining more endurance in the light, flying their way through, able to reach subsequent shadows, dotted throughout the level. They will find the highest number of buddy birds here, all responsive to the interaction of singing, creating a larger and larger flock, fueling the catharsis.

Azhar is also the most active in this level, as he patrols the sky and attacks your flock, appearing in different puzzle sequences and also making a grand entrance in a short cinematic, with our goal in the end, to pose the final challenge of the game.

Visual Effects

Cui’s Feathers and Footprints

Cui needed a feather extension, so we modeled two simple planes. We applied some vertex movement to the main feathers to simulate moving in the air, but for the accent feathers we needed something more complex. For this we used UE4’s cloth-sim. For a natural and sleek look, these special feathers couldn’t accompany the character model while Cui had her wings tucked in. Therefore, we set up a few anim notifies and blueprinting logic to manage hiding the feathers while she was grounded.

To finish off the feather effects, we have a particle system that emitted some falling feathers while flapping. And also footprints! We created a spiffy animated noise effect on the material then used some more anim notify and blueprinting logic to place sound and decals of the material so they perfectly lined up with the animations.

Singing Ability

One of the main abilities Cui has is her ability to sing to other birds. For the musical notes, we drew some notes, sparkles, and sound waves and created an emitter that was attached to Cui’s head. This meant that the effect followed Cui and played to completion in view of the camera even when flying super fast. For the sound area, we made a transparent material that used fresnel and depth fade. With this, we were able to make the sphere highlight the edge of the expanding volume onto the geometry of the scene for the player to be able visualize the singing sound's radius.

Overcoming Challenges

First off, the team was entirely new to working with one other. For a student project, this left a lot of room to figure out, how to organize ourselves and thrive together. For us, it worked best, that we gave everyone the platform to voice their opinion and ideas, since our core group was not as big, but in a healthy spot to have many person to person conversations. This incentivised a lot of proactive participation from all members and allowed each to feel, like they had a voice and were part of the team.

It also meant, that the design process of adding new things was rather free flowing. This had quite a few of upsides. But not without its downsides.

On the one hand, the project was fueled by great passion and by trying to satisfy united visions, we could further our exploration into areas for the game we wanted to pursue, where we felt it would benefit from. A negative, was that the project was over-scoped on more then one occasion. The vision would slowly grow out of control, creeping in with an equally sized workload. This process did not serve the overall game design and the balance took some times to figure out, but eventually through healthy documentation and with the insistence of a core design sentence, things got back on track. 

On top of that we had to hand in and show working prototypes and art environments in front of our professor and class in increments of every two weeks. The vision of the game was at constant odds with the deliverable, which meant, it was a constant organic dialogue, to develop short term and long term results. And in the end we gained a tremendous learning experience from having to constantly produce something for shorter deadlines. One way we managed to tackle this was by incorporating the agile scrum process, with one meeting on a daily basis. Another solution we found to help overcome the heavy workload, was to integrate and learn a version control software. In our case,  it was Perforce. Regarded as industry standards, this was our first time dipping into these industry practices, but we were able to gain a lot of insight from it. 

Lastly, because of the nature of our game, we opted to trade in a longer gameplay, in exchange for richer content on a smaller space. We had a game concept, but it would involve quite a few character animations, particle effects and immersive sound FX's. But since our group was limited and many of us weren't very confidently versed in some of these fields, we were given a choice. The first was to find short cuts and slim down the design by quite a bit. We chose the latter, which was to outsource specific smaller assets to other students to help with certain parts. We maintained a close tie and communicated back and forth, integrating each them in our pipeline, as best as we could. We managed a total of 19 additional students to help with minor parts of the game. Most notably in the field of 3D Character animation/rigging, followed by Sound Design, but also character concept arts and voices for dialogues. This project could not have been realized without them!

Final Thoughts

CuiCui was a tremendous learning experience for everyone involved. One thing we benefited a lot from was how the formal and professional demand and work process pushed us forward to best practices, that were commonly utilized in the industry. We were also able to learn a lot about communication and team dynamics throughout. Thinking back on happy memories and many sleepless working nights, we were able to channel a lot of our passion into CuiCui. The vital role of trust among the team and a healthy work ethic cannot be downplayed. As we would come to learn, it is the core foundation of development towards any insurmountable seeming vision.

Game Executable

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16M8bahkqhyKwReOPeQVcsBlt4hCtZp4i/view?usp=sharing

Game Website

https://www.cuiproductions.com/

Additional Credits

Particles and VFX: Austin Edwards
UX and Testing: Jackie Sabillon
Concept Art: Liana Cannon
Rigging Team: Juan Pablo Noyola, Laurel Griffith, Brandon Kolaczewski
Lead Character Animators: Benjamin Burke (Cui), Jessica Bearden (Azhar)
Assistant Animators: Brandon Kolaczewski, Mariana Brown, Alex Bridges, Patrick Armario
Illustrators: Lachlan Herrick, Gentry Lessman, Jazmin Pedraza Aldana
Sound Design: Collin Peck, Ryan DeGeus, Jomar Morrero
Voice Acting: Jacqui Davis