Degree Project:
"Or the day I learned to stop worrying and started to enjoy resource gathering."
Genre:
Third person adventure
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Inspiration:
Valheim, Minecraft, The Sandbox, New World, Palia, My Time at Portia,
Harvest Moon: Light of Hope, Civilization VI, Don’t Starve,
Subnautica, Genshin Impact, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles.
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Contribution:
UE Blueprints​
10 Weeks
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1 Player
Concept
I was contacted by a start-up called Pinatubo Interactive, who were looking for a game designer. The idea was an educational sandbox with resource gathering and crafting mechanics for children of the ages of 7-10. The target platforms were iOS and Android. My task was to create a prototype that would be used for pitching the game to investors.
Target goals
Implementing educational elements - How do children within the target ages learn, and what is their capacity to overcome puzzles and other hardships?
Creating fun gameplay for the players – What do children within the target age group enjoy doing in games?
Implement Convai (Ai) and use it as NPCs – How does one allow the full use of Convai whilst giving them a specific purpose, such as being a quest giver.
Give players a purpose without forcing them – How do you give players tasks while offering creative freedom?
Each of these goals were set as cornerstones of the game but the weight of importance shifted during the development.
How it was made
The difficulty in the early stage was being able to get the first playable prototype done in time. I created a basic resource gathering system and building system. I created Blueprints for mineable rocks and choppable wood, so that if we decided to have different trees, we would only need to create children of the parent Blueprint and alter the attributes in the children. When the player walks up to stone or tree, the correct tool automatically appears. This was an inspiration from New World, by Amazon Games, which I decided to implement since it it kept the flow of gameplay going.
The building system was simply placing a static mesh at the end of a line trace. When placed, the mesh had a sign which prompted the player to gather a specific amount of wood or rock to build the huts. When the player had gathered sufficient resources, they would enter a collider (not visible in game) and the Blueprint of the hut would remove the resources from the player’s “inventory”.
This made creating huts a swift experience as we wanted the player not to be stuck on building the actual structures.
Using MetaHumans with Convai did not go as planned. It was difficult to make the asset work with the ai-plugin, which I circumvented by using a low-poly skull asset, which I named “Kurt RusSkull.” I also made the decision to use low-poly assets for the game.
The next large challenge was creating a quest system. It was the most time-consuming system during the development because I had never done anything so advanced before this project. After tutorials, UE documentation, reading on forums and tearing my hair, I created a simple quest system that allows the player to receive and turn in quests. This was done using enumerators, data tables, components, data structures, and UI widgets.
Game Project 4: Artius
Genre:
Co-op Horror
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Inspiration:
Soma, Amnesia: The Bunker. Prey
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Contribution:
Blueprinting, 3C design, Tech design
Team size:
5 designers, 3 programmers
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7 Weeks
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2 Players
Concept
Artius is a two player cooperative horror game where the players have arrived at a seemingly abandoned space station. They need to find the server room, download the information, and then escape whatever mystery is happening. Work together, power up the doors, but don't make any sound... something is out there with you.
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Early on we decided our main focus would be on gameplay. The player characters are identical and make sound when they run, interact and if they play clumsily. The enemy is a blind entity which reacts to any and all sound that the players make. If one player makes too much noise, the enemy will move towards them. This is where the other player has the opportunity to distract the monster in various ways.
UE Blueprinting
Blueprints was the perfect method for creating rapid prototypes. When we were discussing designs, I was able to create a basic presentable version of the idea.
This was fun as I had the opportunity to collaborate with different team members in solving everything from simple (basic UI) to more complex tasks (splitscreen).
3C
We decided early on that we wanted to do a split-screen experience, which meant that we needed to use at least one gamepad. So we went with two.
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We took inspiration from games such as Soma and Amnesia, where their most basic interactive elements is pick up and throw. The players can pick up objects and throw them, either to each other or to make noise to distract the monster. Some doors need specific objects to unlock. Had some issues when grabbing an object it dropped to the floor. This was solved by adding an arrow component to the character blueprint which then was placed as the target to attach object.
For movement, such as crouch and sprint, we used the built in functions in Blueprints and altered the values of acceleration and max speed to get "the right feel" of wearing a heavy space suit.
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The camera is set at a first person perspective and the character mesh is ignored as to make sure that the players does not see the inside of the mesh. We saw the inside and it was too scary.
Tech Design - Power suit
To create a sense of urgency, the players have power suits with a meter that continues to decrement during play. The suit sounds off an alarm when it reaches zero which attracts the monster. To keep this from happening, players can recharge their suit power at power stations. This was made in Blueprints with a simple continuous decrease of value, and recharge on overlap.
The speed of how quickly the power decreases was playtested along with how the level design grew or shrunk.
Tech Design - Animation
We bought art assets from the Unreal Marketplace which came with animations. The space suit was rigged with the Epic character skeleton. Which meant that I only had to make animations for grab and crouch. This was done in Unreal, until I found Mixamo. Implementing Mixamo was a larger hassle than advertised. With UE5, I had to convert the Mixamo animations and then implement them into our project. These animations weren't perfect so I altered them using the built in modeling in UE.
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As for the monster, the early version of it was an asset we later discontinued. Before this decision was made, I used the animation blend space with the animations that were included in the purchase.
We let the player know of the monster's existence by having the monster walk by the player's view.
(One of these is animated by me. Can you see which one?)
(Discontinued monster design, intro test.)
Game Project 3: Petrified Island
Genre:
Third person adventure
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Inspiration:
Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Elden Ring, Stray
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Contribution:
Blueprinting, Sound Design
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Team size:
4 designers, 3 artists, 2 programmer
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Tools:
Audacity
10 Weeks
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1 Player
Concept
Petrified Island is a third person adventure where you play as Koh-Ah, the jaguar sentinel. The volcanic goddess Pelé, is angered and your job is to find out why. Use your ability to shape shift into a jaguar and your human form to clear the island from golems and solve the puzzle to find what's disturbing your goddess.
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This was the first game project in Unreal Engine and seeing as we were designers with similar interests, I decided to try something I haven't tried before: sound.
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Audacity
Using the audio software called 'Audacity', I created sound effects for the jaguar form. I made lists of the sounds needed, multiple versions of each sound, and then changed all of it after first implementation. The audio has to make sense and be tweaked accordingly. When the jaguar takes damage or attacks, it is me doing sounds. In Audacity, I altered the sounds to fit the occurring event.
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For the ambient sounds, I used sounds from the 'Royalty Free Sound Effects Archive' by Sonniss. Altering them if need be.
Blueprinting
UE Blueprint was already an interest of mine, and with this project I increased my skill capability.
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Previous to game project 3, I watched numerous tutorials on implementing and creating mechanics for different games. Such as, combat systems (melee and ranged combat, health systems), alternative movement (wallrunning), destructive meshes, and level creation. What I learned during the project is how to actually implement sound effects for the characters different forms, the npc sound effect, and the separate ambient sounds of different level areas (external path, cave sounds, volcano).
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Even though these are different systems, the implementation of them are similar.
Game Project 2: Lunka
Genre:
Coop Brawler
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Inspiration:
Diablo, Little Nightmares, Inside,
Anton Semenov (art)
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Contribution:
Product Owner, Camera Design
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Team size:
4 designers, 3 artists, 2 programmer
5 Weeks
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2 Players
Concept
Lunka is a 2 player coop brawler, where one player plays as ranged attacker and one plays as a defensive shield-bearer. The theme for this project was symbiosis, so we decided to put the characters on a tether and force collaboration in both combat and puzzle solving.
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Player’s need to collaborate by combining Josephine’s ranged attacks and abilities with Brank’s melee to overcome this bizarre world’s inhabitants, and get to their prize: the Lunka.
Product Owner
As the product owner, I was responsible for making sure that the project came to fruition through the collaboration of the team.
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During the project I was in constant communication with my team. . These projects can be stressful, and I wanted my teammates to feel good about their contributions as well as their health. I made sure that they did not work too long during the days, that they were taking breaks, and that they felt like they had a task to do.
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I was the mediator between the programmers, artists, and designers, and made sure that everyone was on the same page and understood the vision of the project. My communication skills improved vastly during these weeks.
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As the PO, I was also responsible for delivering the presentations during the project.
Camera Design
Early on I decided to try out using a dolly track camera. The environment art set the dark tone of the game with the characters being tethered to each other, with a restriction to how far they would be able to separate themselves, made the dolly seem like a good idea.
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After a lot of feedback and research, on good camera practice, we settled on the final camera track. It follows the characters through the whole level, alternating the distance to the action.
Game Project 1: Robus
Genre:
Racing
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Inspiration:
Crazy Taxi
The Simpsons: Road Rage
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Contribution:
C# scripting, Level design,
Controller design, UI design,
Tech design
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Team size:
5 designers, 2 artists, 1 programmer
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5 Weeks
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1 Player
Concept
Robus is a frantic bus driving game about picking up robots at bus stops and taking them to their destination without running out of energy. Each robot passenger can affect how your bus drives so you better be prepared to not to lose control!
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This was the first major project during our education and was in collaboration between FutureGames, Microsoft, and Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology. The theme was "Future of Movement". The museum had an exhibit called "Zero Emission" so we decided to apply it to our game.
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As an added opportunity, the target audience was early adolescence and accessibility. Microsoft provided us with adaptive controllers which we decided to use as the main controller for the game.
Controller Design
In collaboration, with the team's programmer, we created the logic behind the controller. Microsoft sponsored the project with the Xbox Adaptive Controller which we implemented in the game. The left button steers the bus left, right button steers it right, and pressing them both brakes the speed.
The tweaking and playtesting of the controller ignited a new interest within me.
Level Design
The level design is a basic grid system with the possibility to drive between the buildings, giving the player the opportunity to cut corners and find shortcuts.
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it was important for me to have the player find shortcuts since the sensation of feeling clever is gratifying. This idea was supported after children between the age of 10-12 played the prototype, and they giggled when they noticed that they could drive between buildings.
UI Design
Due to the limited amount of time, the main menu logic was basic and I created the simplest functionality.
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The UI logic was a conundrum at first, but was solved in the last minute.
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The artists did a great job in creating the assets for the menus and the in-game UI, which I implemented with great joy.
Tech Design
In our team we were 1 programmer and 3 designers that worked on the logic of the game.
We collaborated on the interactive elements of the level, such as the bus stops, directional arrow and the robot passengers.