NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 3 HND - Horror Game - Game Design Document

Game Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
High Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Unique Selling Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
Platform Minimum Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .       5
Competence Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Game Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    6
Game Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
Game Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    6
Game-play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
    Game Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
    Game Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
    HUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
Player . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
    Player Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
    Player Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
    Player States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
    Player Weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
Character Line-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
NPC Enemies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . 10
    Enemy: Monster (Zombie) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
    Enemy: Monster (Splitface creature) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . 10
    Enemy States . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
    Enemy Spawning . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   11
Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
    Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
Level Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
MVP (Minimum Viable Product) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .       14
Wishlist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   14

Idea

Isolated forrest village, nightime horror game
Old delapidated houses.
Single map.
Monster/monsters.
Death.
Forest/woodland .
Large mansion, possibly monster spawn.
Large number of houses.
Church.

Game Overview

Title: Splitface
Platform: PC + PS4 + Xbox-one
Genre: Horror/survival.
Rating: (18+) ESRB
Target: Casual gamer (aging from 18 - 35)
Release date: (unknown)
Publisher: (unknown)

Splitface is a first person horror game played from the perspective of a camera - as a journalist runs into more than they can handle.

High Concept

Splitface sets the Player in a dark, foggy woodland with a delapidated village in the middle. The player acts as a journalist looking into an abandoned town, little did they know it was abandoned for a reason, now they have to survive and fight back against the monsters that want them dead.

Unique Selling Points

• Multi-platform.
• Based off of a movie.
•  

Platform Minimum Requirements

PC, MAC, LINUX, PS4 AND XBOX-ONE.
OS: Windows XP SP2+, Mac OS X 10.8+, Ubuntu 12.04+, SteamOS+ .
Graphics card: DX9 (shader model 2.0) .
Capabilities; generally everything made since 2010 should work.

Competence Titles

Slender the Eight Pages
Sirenhead trillogy
Amnisea the Dark Decent

Synopsis

As a journalist explores an abandoned town they realise they have ran into more than they can handle.

Game Objectives

The objective of the game is to find a weapon and kill the monsters hunting you down before heading back to the car.

Game Rules

The game level is an open environment set in dark forest where the Player is forced to find a way to survive while also hiding from monsters and tries to find a weapon to fight back.

In this level, there are different spawn points from which the Enemies originate. Each Enemy has the same behaviour and will try to defeat the Player (see Enemies) silently following them.

The Player scores points by killing the Enemies: the number points earned allows the player to leave/ win the game.

Game Structure

Menu > Story mode/ endless mode > pause menu/quit > repeat.

Game-play

    Game Controls

PC controls

W - move forward.
A - move left.
S - move back.
D - move right.
E - interact.
C - crouch (hold prone).
Shift - sprint.
R - reload.
Mouse Left Click - fire/attack.
Mouse Right Click - aim.
Mouse movement - look/rotate.
Spacebar - jump.
Q - show objective.
F - flashlight.
Esc - pause menu/ quit.
Tab - show objective

Xbox controls

L2 (left trigger) - aim.
R2 (right trigger) - fire/attack.
A - jump.
B - crouch (hold prone).
X - interact.
Y - show objective
L3 - sprint
left joystick - move in the direction the left joystick is moving.
right joystick - Look/ rotate in the direction the right joystick is moving.
Start - pause menu

Ps4 controls

L2 (left trigger )- aim.
R2 (right trigger) - fire/attack.
L1 - switch weapon (weapon wheel).
R1 - Grenade.
X - jump.
O - crouch, (hold prone).
☐ - interact.
  ⃤   - show objective
L3 - sprint
left joystick - move in the direction the left joystick is moving.
right joystick - Look/ rotate in the direction the right joystick is moving.
Start - pause menu

Game Camera

When the game starts, the camera will be shown from the player's POV (point of view), while giving the effect of a handheld camera. The camera will move when the Player walks or looks around. The camera will rotate with the Player’s movement.

 HUD


Player Health: red flashes up on screen if the player is hit and has a chance to cause screen fracture on the camera.



Flashlight Energy: shows the amount of energy per battery, energy used and the number of batteries the player has.

Controls: Displays controls on the edge of the screen.

Player

    Player Characters

The Player character is a journalist researching an abandoned village. Problem is, this village was deserted for a very good reason. The Player has to hide from monsters while attempting to find a weapon and fight back. The Player's final goal is to kill all of the monsters and escape this nightmare.

    Player Metrics

Speed: 5
Max Health: 20
Attack Damage: 5
Time to attack: Depending on weapon

    Player States

Idle: The idle state is a cycled animation where the Player is looking around, it plays back when the Player remains still.
Crouch: player crouches.
Prone: player lays down.
Move: The movement animation will be triggered while the Player character is moving and will cause the character walk/run depending on if sprint is activated or not.
Jump: player jumps.
Death: The death animation will make the character fall into a rag-doll state when their life reaches zero.

    Player Weapons

The Player has a a choice of 2 different weapons to fight their enemies with, a gun or an axe.

Below is some ideas for weapons.

Weapon	Description	Where can it be found	Cool-down/ delay	Reticle	Damage per shot
Pistol	Fires physical ammo (10mm rounds) with medium accuracy and close range.	Church and Mansion	cool-down: n/a delay per shot: 1	Iron sights	5
Work Axe	N/a	Random houses across the map and the barn	cool-down: n/a delay per shot: 0.15	N/a	5

Character Line-up

NPC Enemies

Enemy Type	Speed	Weapon used by Enemy	Max Health
Monster (zombie)	3	N/a	15
Monster (Splitface creature)	4.5	N/a	40

    Enemy States

All Enemies possess similar behaviour and states, as described below:

Idle: The Enemies play the Idle state, only when the Player is not spotted or they are not hostile to the player. This also activates when the player escapes the enemies, they will wonder around.

Move: While the enemies move, they will be in the Move state, heading in the direction of the Player.

Death: Death happens when the Enemy sustains too much collective damage or too much damage from an attack.

    Enemy Spawning

Each Enemy has its own spawn point (see Level Design) and will spawn at a certain rate. An Enemy will only spawn if there are fewer Enemies of that particular type than others in the scene at that moment.

ENEMY	SPAWN-POINTS	SPAWN RATE 1-5 (1 lowest/5 highest)	MAX ENEMIES (per mission)
Monster (Zombie)	Woods/around village	5	8
Monster (Splitface creature)	Mansion	5	1

Art


    Setting

The game takes place in an abandoned village in the woods surrounded by fog at night time. There are also monsters/creatures that populate the area and the area has been fenced off secretly by unknown means, possibly by the military.

    Level Design

The level consists of five areas of interest that are at separate segments of the map, with a barn, a church and a mansion to name some.

    Audio

Zombie grunts of pain.
Human grunts of pain.
Ambient scary music.
Click noise for flashlight.
Footsteps.
Crack noise for screen crack.

MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

• Built for the PC platform

Wishlist

Add More Enemies:
Add more weapons:

How The Game Meets requirements of the brief

In response to the brief, I believe that my game design ideas meet each task required for the project. This is because each design idea I created was influenced from a large selection of research, allowing me to descover what horror games worked successfully and what ones didn't.

I also believe they met the requirements as it would give a finilised way to win and lose, with the winning condition being easy enough to reach, while also being a somewhat challenging experience for many players.

For example, the use of only two weapons makes sense due to the setting as well as allowing the game to functionally interact between different elements, such as the monster and the player.

Factors that contribute to the generation of good ideas

There are three stages to creating ideas: Generation, Selection and Implementation.

Each of these stages are incredibly important and easy to understand. For example:

Generation: which is the creation of new ideas, whether they be good or bad.

Selection: which is the process of removing bad ideas from good ones and improving on what has already been generated.

And Implementation: which is the addition of those ideas into the platform of use, aka problem solving or media creation.

The many different ways of creating or generating successfull ideas include:

• SCAMPER: which is an idea generation technique based arround action verbs as a stimuli. SCAMPER is also an acronym with each letter standing for a different action verb, for example; S-substitute C-combine A-adapt M-modify P-put to another use E-eliminate R-reverse.

• Brainstorming: which is when you create an humongous amount of solutions for a single problem, choosing the best fitting or effective idea afterwards. This is often done with collaboration of multiple people creating ideas that can range from the great to outlandish.

• Mindmapping: the technique of creating connections between various pieces of infomation or ideas. It is often used in brainstorming to help with the thought and selection process.

• Storyboarding: is used to help develop or explain a visual story with the use of images, speech/quotes and other useful information. And to help with bridging the relationship between various ideas.

• Synectics: is a technique that uses the thought processes that the subject may be unaware of, effectively approaching problem-solving or creative ideas in a rational manner.

• Role playing: this technique uses multiple participants to take on the personality or role different from their own. This may be them acting as a character or creature to come up with ideas surrounding the role they are playing.

• Attribute listing: the technique of creating ideas and identifying/ recognizing areas of improvement. This is done to enhance a particular idea or product and is broken into segments such as physical features, functions of components and ideas for change of the idea or product.

• Visualisation and visual promps: the technique of thinking of challenges visually to better comprehend issues or ideas.

• Morphological analysis: the technique of recognizing the structural aspects of a problem and studying the relationships umong them in order to create ideas or fix any problems arising.

• Forced relationships: the technique of joining two or more totally different ideas together to create a single fresh idea.

• Daydreaming: an incredibly common way of creating ideas as it allows for creative freedom with how ideas may look like or take shape.

• Reverse thinking: the technique of thinking of the opposite outcome of what you want, then doing the opposite of that. This can be seen with the example "How do I double my fan base" changed to "How do I make sure I have no fans at all". People use this technique because many people find it easier to imagine negitive stimuli than positive. 

• Questioning assumptions: a technique in which participants produce a large number of assumptions irrespective of whether they are true or false before then selecting several of these assumptions and using them as idea triggers and thought starters to create fresh ideas.

• Accidental genius: literally just accidental genius... need I say more? (a technique that uses writing to trigger the best ideas, content and insight) 

• Brainwriting: this technique requires multiple people to write down their ideas and pass their writing to another person who would read the idea and improve on the idea or add additional ideas.

• Wishing: this technique is related to brainstorming unattainable ideas before then attribute listing the flaws and problems to make the idea a more realistic idea or an approximation of what is possible. 

• Socialising: the idea that conversing with others can lead to sparks in ideas and through conversation.

• Collaboration: is the technique of multiple people working together to create ideas.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 3 HND - Horror Game (Part 2) Development and presentation

The development of my horror game project went well, despite problems with computers, with the final game having a relatively large map and lots of features.

Firstly, I made a basic map to experiment with lighting, movement and the creation of the flashlight. Initially, the flashlight could be turned on and off with no need for batteries (which I added later) to increase the difficulty of the game.

Next, I began experimenting with the terrain tools and started to work on the monster's movement, tracking and speed. The terrain was edited to have a hill-like set of bumps scattered around the map to add additional dimensions to the layout of the map.

Once the initial layout of the terrain was completed, I began adding roads and pathways using the texture paint tool, giving the player a

 number of paths to different areas and hidden areas further out in the woods. 

After this, I began adding and decorating houses to give the player areas to search and, with the addition of batteries, allow the player to power their torch by finding battery boxes around the map.


Then, I began to focus more on the monsters and objective of the game. At this time, I had managed to make the monsters able to attack and kill the player, showing a game over screen once they were hit four times, showing blood and sometimes a screen crack on each hit.

Eventually, I decided that the objective of the game was to survive, find a weapon and kill the monsters chasing the player. Therefore, I began making an axe and gun weapon for the player to fight back against the monsters and to add a win condition after the monsters have been defeated.

For these weapons, I decided to make them pickups hidden in specific areas across the map, for example: the gun found in the mansion and church, while the axe could be found in the barn and two of the houses scattered around the map.

The axe was simple to create, I made it so when the player would press the mouse1 button so the axe would play a swinging animation with a large trigger collision box attached to it. When it hit an enemy it would do five damage out of the monster's fifteen heath, killing them after three hits.

The gun on the other hand was much more complex. The gun was created by using a selection of individual parts that were animated together alongside a flash effect to give the appearance of realistic shooting, with the gun dispencing a bullet and bullet shell upon firing. However, the bullets would often lean towards the right of the player's crosshair, so I decided to add a tracer to the bullet for the player to more easily see where the bullet is going. Unfortunately, I never finished the tracer and it appears as an untextured pink line when the gun is fired.

Same as the axe, the gun's bullets were given a trigger that would take five health off of the monster, but I also gave it a seperate death animation for being killed by a gun or axe.

Finally, I added trees to the game using the terrain tree paint tool and a selection of different tree prefabs. This gave the final touches to the game before I added the darker lighting and sound effects I received from the Unity asset store.

Unfortunately, towards the middle of the project, I had severe technical difficulties with my computer which required me to send it back to the manufacturer as it was still in warranty. This forced me to work on another, much slower, computer. This caused many issues as my project would become incredibly difficult to edit or improve. Eventually the computer became so slow due to the additions to the project that it became incredibly difficult to add any more to the game, as the Unity project would repeatedly crash while working. Despite this setback, around a week after these problems appeared, I purchased an completely new computer to complete the project with.

Some examples of playtesting the final game include:


1: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jjVeEkOANQ&feature=youtu.be"

2: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8r0-I9P0yk&feature=youtu.be "

3: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4COd_oOzHT0&feature=youtu.be"

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 3 HND - Horror Game (Part 1) Research and Design

For this assignment we were tasked with creating a game based around our Splitface posters. For my project I decided to create a horror game set in a dark woodland surrounding an abandoned town.

Before creating the game, I started making a design document to keep track of ongoing game ideas in response to the brief.

For my map design, I wanted to add a set of houses, a church and a manor house isolated in the woods. This was where an underground 'dungeon-like' area would be and where the monster was going to spawn. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties with computers, I was unable to create the underground area in time. This was because I wouldn't be able to complete other key aspects of the game on time and instead just settled for the manor house.
Alongside these, I first intended to have one monster (my split face character) chase and hunt down the player. Also due to technical difficulties, I was unable to complete the monster on time and had to resort to using more generic 'zombie-like' monsters instead. At the end of the game I wanted to spawn in my original idea of the monster, however ultimately I did not have the time to code the other monsters, the players weapons and to add the associated animations to each asset.

I started by researching similar games and the techniques they used such as using glitch effects once the monster is near or attacking the player. This was to give the effect that the player character is using a camera, similar to that of a found footage film. This can be seen in "Slender" and similar techniques are used in other horror games like "Amnesia The Dark Descent", both of which became incredibly popular. Unfortunately, I decided not to implement this later as I had concerns that the glitch effect I had created could cause epileptic fits or perhaps be misconstrued as a computer error.

I also looked into the use of darker lighting and flashlights, possibly having a battery life to make it harder or more risky for the player. I implemented the ability to turn it on and off when needed, as well as having a set battery life, shutting off when too much energy is used. I also added batteries littered around the map inside the houses to allow the player to add more power to their flashlights.

I initially wanted to add a pixelated effect to the project to allow the game to be played on lower quality computers. However, it had very little effect on the performance of the game and I became unsure of the quality after I began adding more detailed textures. I still added it into the game, though, because I intended to make it a changeable setting later on.

After creating a terrain, I used terrain altering brushes that I got from the Unity asset store to add a bumpy, slightly hill like incline to the map. Then I added a mix of dirt and grass textures to the environment using the terrain's paint tool, allowing me to draw dirt roads and cover the map in grassy textures alongside normal mappings, so the textures would stand out to the player more effectively.

Once the terrain was finished, the houses and trees could be added. The houses were individually placed around the map in small clusters. Meanwhile the trees were added through the use of a tree terrain paint tool, allowing me to pick from a selection of prefabs I made, to place at random spacing and frequency.

Eventually, when the map was created, I began creating monsters to chase and attack the player. This was done by creating a Nav-Mesh-Agent for the creatures to easily traverse the map. I then coded different actions for the monsters, such as the ability to attack the player and take damage themselves. This allowed me to make it so that the player can loose, showing a flash of red each time the player is hit and showing a lasting glass crack as if the game is played through a camera.

While I was doing this, I created weapons for the player to use against the monsters, these weapons included a handgun and an axe that the player could find in certain buildings.

I then coded the weapons so that they were able to be picked up and used, with animations I created alongside this. For the axe I made a simple swing using rotation and transformation changes for the animation. While the gun had individual parts animated with physical bullets and bullet casings being launched out of the gun.

I also added a tracer to the guns bullets as they would move towards the left at close range, however this was not entirely finished and shows a untextured line following the bullets.

Finally, I created a way to win the game. This is done by finding a weapon in either the church, manor or a smaller house and killing all of the monsters before then moving back to the car at the players spawn point.

What I decided to create was good, however, it is similar in premis to many different existing games such as the "Slenderman" trilogy and "SirenHead" games, but also varies greatly in execution. In the end it is an enjoyable short game despite not finishing with my original intentions and designs.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 3 HND - Museum feedback

For the Museum project, I needed to make improvements relating to testers feedback. Therefore, I got others in my household to playtest the game and give me any feedback as to what could be improved or edited.

The User feedback I received was:

1 - User liked the functionality of the game and the actions the player could take, however, explained that there should be a way to exit the game once you are finished such as using the 'Esc' button as a way to end the game.

2 - User said that there was a lack of visuals, despite saying they liked the posters and lighting effects. They suggested adding a sign outside the front of the museum or other indication of entry.

The actions I took as a result of this feedback:

1 - Firstly I decided to create ways to exit the application. This was done by creating a button that when pressed would close the application and by making the 'Esc' button on the keyboard close the application as well.

2 - Next I created a welcome sign above the door of the museum and signs showing the way to the 'Exit button' in order to better the directions and visuals of the project.

Improvements video evidence:

https://youtu.be/5EhKpncosUA

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 3 HND - Creation of a Character (Skeleton Figurine Model/Board Game Figurine) The Development/History of Modelling and CGI.

CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) is effectively the use of computer graphics to create or alternatively contribute to imagery in art, printed media, films, video games, TV programs, shorts, commercials, videos and simulators.

These images can be dynamic or static and can be both 2D and 3D. However, the term CGI is most often used to refer to the 3D computer graphics used for things like creating characters, special effects and scenes in film and television called ‘CGI animation’.

Alternatively, in 3D computer graphics, 3D modelling is the process of creating or developing a mathematical representation of any surface of an object (inanimate or living) in 3D through specialized software, creating a 3D model.

Models may be created automatically or manually. The manual modelling process of preparing geometric data for 3D computer graphics is like plastic arts such as sculpting. Models can also be physically created using 3D printing devices.

History of Modelling:

Early days of CGI/GC (the beginning)

The beginning of computer graphics started with the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) computer system, which was designed for preparing the military in the event of an attack and was used to spot Russian military aircraft during the Cold War. Initially an effort to build a flight simulator, SAGE was supposed to provide an air defence system that guarded the United States against the threat of a nuclear attack. The SAGE workstation had a vector display and light pens that operators would use to pinpoint planes flying over the United States and was the first recorded use of computer graphics that layed the groundwork for Computer Graphics today.

1960s

CG (Computer Graphics) mostly began to emerge during the 1960s. At that point in time, anti-aliased lines, circles and curve drawing (now considered rudimentary operations) were major topics in the field of CG.

During this time, Pierre Bézier’s work on parametric curves and surfaces became public, IBM developed hidden surface and shadow algorithms that were the pre-cursors to ray tracing and at the same time, Doug Englebart invented the computer mouse.

1970s

In the 1970s, rendering (shading) was created by Gouraud and Phong at the University of Utah. Meanwhile, Xerox PARC developed a ‘paint’ program, Ed Catmull created the Z-buffer algorithm, Turned Whitted invented recursive ray tracing that later became the industry standard for photorealism and the first keyframe-based animation for 3D graphics was demonstrated.

At the same time, arcade games such as Pong and Pac-man rose dramatically in popularity.

1980s

During the mid-1980s, Computer Aided Design courses began to be taught at many different universities while Jim Blinn introduced texture mapping concepts and blobby models.

Binary space partitioning (BSP) trees were introduced as a data structure, but not many realized how useful they would become as CGI and CG improved.

Several artists began exploring fractals in computer graphics. The goal for 3D software became character animation, rather than simply rendering. Adobe brought its Photoshop software to the market. During this time video games took off, in the process creating a need for better computer graphics, and easier software to use which was quickly fulfilled by many different applications.

1990s

The evolution of CGI led to the emergence of virtual cinematography in the 1990s where the vision of the simulated camera is not constrained by the laws of physics. Availability of CGI software and increased computer speeds have allowed individual artists and small companies to produce professional-grade films, games, and fine art from their home computers.

In 1992, OpenGL became the standard for graphics APIs. Dynamical systems that allowed animation with collisions, gravity, friction, and cause and effects were introduced. The first CAD College was opened. PC graphics cards, like 3dfx and Nvidia, were introduced. Motion capture, which began with the data glove, became a primary method for generating animation sequences. Graphics effects in movies, such as Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and Toy Story became widespread.

2000s

As we moved into the 21st century, online CAD courses became available, blending design and technology to create new frontiers in architecture, engineering and much more.