Making of a Student Game: Week 1

Monday we had a meeting in the morning with all the game dev students from all of the senior team classes to make sure that everyone was on the same page. It went over what was needed by the end of the week. It was pretty standard stuff for what you would expect from a first day of class. They outlined everything we would need to know and what milestones we had to meet.

That night we did a team building group activity and the entire team (except 1 person who couldn't make it) went climbing. 4 of the 10 people in our group are climbers so we used that as a go out and have fun together team building exercise. I am one of those climbers so of course I enjoyed it, but I think everyone did.

Wednesday and Sunday we got together for our first biweekly meetings. we went over the main issues for the semester and brainstormed ideas. We covered different ideas on how to fix issues that we had. The first thing that was tackled was the Enemies. They just didn't look scary, see the previous post Game Overview for a video. So we came up with different ideas and through out ideas. Very quickly we dropped the idea that we were fighting swarms. Instead images such as that torture probe from star war or the sentinel from the matrix as other directions that we could go in. One of our artists also made a few quick models of what they would look like before the meeting and showed those to us.

We then addressed the mechanics that we were missing. We decided to try and use the physical environment more in the game. So we are adding in the ability to shoot pipes and have steam come out. then if you turn on the heat environment it will light on fire and damage what walks through it. then use the cold to turn it off again. We can also drop crates onto enemies to kill them by shooting their supports. This could also be used to jump up to another walkway or something else like that. Essentially we are going to be adding in more fun ways to kill the enemies. These two already have prototypes that were made by our lead designer.

We are also going to change the gun up substantially. The main gun will be more of a push weapon. This is because we noticed that when the AI jumped onto a railing and we shot them off it was awesome to see them fall to their death. so we want to see if we can do this more or replicate it to be used more. The secondary fire has been iterated a few times but as of the meeting Sunday evening it has become a luring weapon. Originally it was to be a suction grenade type thing, where all the enemies and boxes around would be pulled to it. but now it is more like a pipe bomb in left 4 dead where they are all attracted to it. The frequency that this can be used will have to be tweaked.

The lead designer, Bryan, has put up a tutorial on youtube so that the others can learn how he put these mechanics into the game. the first few seconds of the video will show the dropping of crates onto enemies.



We have also developed our story a lot further than it was before. We now have some ideas for who the AI who is helping you is. Our producer came up with a great narrative story behind him that, I know I couldn't do justice to. But I'll Try to summarize it. The ship you are on originally had 3 AI, The defensive (the guys you fight, the navigation, and Eli (your friendly AI). Something went wrong and Eli somehow ejects from the ship. years later we find him, or a damaged/later version of him, with the player as he makes it to the ship. Eli has motives to return to the ship as well. We are toying around with two different concepts on why that is. The first has to do with him trying to return to the ship in order to return to the place were years ago as the initial take over by the enemies occurred Eli failed to navigate a child to safety. He has since returned on a few occasions to try and fix the wrong that occurred there. In the second idea, Eli has since forgot some of what happened there through data corruption over time. He still know that he wanted to return for some reason though and continues to try to find the person who can bring him back. The Eli character is still up in the air about exactly what his motives are, but that is where we are right now.

The story about the ship and what you will progress through over time is being developed. There is now a theme of following the gold (or whatever substance we decide to make it). so in our levels you will see bots taking gold somewhere and you want to figure out why and where. As you progress you run into the defensive security in the ship that has caused all of these issues. We have different encounter ideas as well but I feel like that is a bit too much detail for now. Ask about them if and I'd be more than happy to comment on them.

The designers have started white boxing the first three levels and are making good progress from what I could tell as I was listening in to their meeting (I was coding away at my computer) I have looked into how to make the AI states work a bit more efficiently, as well as fix some bugs from last semester. I made a quick prototype of the force gun as well so that designers could use it in their white boxing.

The other programmer is new to UDK and is learning it as he goes, just like I did last semester. He has actually picked it up pretty fast. He is working on making the weapon that will be in the game. So he has been looking into how to go about doing that.

The artists are making asset lists and concepting out what those assets will look like. They have also been involved in the design meetings and brainstorming. I do not have any of these to put here but I'll ask the artist if they can post some work and when/if they do I'll link it.

Any questions or comments are more than welcome. Feedback on what you want to hear more or less about are great too. Future posts will include the about me and of course next weeks update.