The vertical slice part of our production has been a valuable learning experience. There are plenty of lessons we took from Rapid prototyping into the vertical slice which helped the process along. For me Vertical Slice was a challenging problem. I was designing a level around certain mechanics for movement and grappling that was based in a narrative story arch we came up with. At first this meant I was making modular pieces for a Prison level. These modular pieces and their scaling was the first hurdle to cross. Narrative is extremely difficult to nail down. Im not a writer and therefore trying to make a story work in the context of a level proved to be a time consuming process. I made ALOT of props ( both static and animated ) as well as modular pieces and hero pieces to tie rooms together. In the end alot of these werent used since our final level changed. The changes came mainly from a big change in direction for our Grappling mechanics. Moving from physics based to animation helped us fix alot of issues, but it also took a long time and many iterations to get to it. The same for basic movement and jumping. We actually iterated a few times before we found our current systems to work the way we wanted. They still arent perfect but by the time we had them we needed to quickly build a level. The level reflects this. Its a great playground to show our game as a Vertical slice , but not a complete level in a narrative sense. I worked on alot of texturing in the last 2 weeks. This gave me time to get a really quick substance designer and painter workflow. This will be greatly useful for production next semester. UI workflow as per previous projects was quick and simple since ive been the UI designer for every project we have done. In the last week ive just been polishing and testing stuff. I also started on the presentation. Vertical slice felt a bit more like prototyping at times. Since we spent so much time iterating on movement and grappling. Its was fortunate that we had Prefabs for the AI and other functions/mechanics so working with them was easy and adjustments were simple to implement once we had movement finished. I had hoped to flesh out the narrative and level design more, but we did the best we could in the time we had. https://media.giphy.com/media/3ohzdI9x9biPJYwxaM/giphy.gif
0 Comments
This week was all about bringing in the art elements we have all been working on, and getting them into the grey box level to replace temporary assets. I spent most of the week tweaking assets and making textures for them. Working with the programmers we managed to integrate most of the assets we needed. In keeping within our art style I aimed for interesting textures without too much visual noise. We have an art style that is quite flat. Use of normal hard brushes in Substance painter helped give a bit of character to the assets. I also worked on the UI with Josh. We came up with the idea to have a main menu where the character is being chased by a guard down an endless corridor. I did a bunch of logo mock ups. The fonts i chose to use are all in the public domain. This helps avoid any issues down the line with copyright. For the logo the Klepto name is Adumu.tff and the "space thief" is Gravity.tff
Wellington Armageddon was awesome. We got heaps of great feedback. The first few days back were slow because we had a few of the team away or resting after driving there and back. I worked on a few more 3d assets that the BSE guys needed to help put together the level from Wellington and improve on it from our feedback. I also worked on the platform texture, trying out different ideas and levels of detail.
This week we have Armageddon in Wellington. After meeting about our progress so far we have decided to create a build for the event rather than try to patch together our current level and take a game down that wasnt functional. We all met up and looked at issues we need to address like movement, the grapple arm, animations, level flow, and ai/enemies.
Josh and Conrad split off to do a level layout;
I have made ALOT of 3d assets for the game and given some of the changes we have made for the Armageddon build, alot of my stuff wont be used in the game. Im hoping that post this weekend in Wellington I will be able to integrate more of my assets into the game level. I also need to start designing Ui elements. The main 3d assets ive done this week are practical pieces such as door locks, keypads, alarms, keys, pillars, floor locks. And a few props that Zac asked for like crates and racks. For this week I worked on the last of the environment grey boxing in Unity. With the grey boxing I was able to start working on proper environmental pieces including hero pieces and props for the first part of the level; The Prison. The prison area serves as an introduction to movement for the player. I started modelling props for the gym area as well. These serve as purely aesthetical static props. The player cannot interact with them.
This week I worked on finishing the level design layout, and then proceeded to model the modular pieces for each of the parts of the our first level. There are 4 unique rooms in the level, the rest are completely modular. The unique rooms are built to snap to any of the modular corridor pieces I have made. This means that once the level is finished being put together in Unity with collision prefabs we can start testing mechanics in the true level space. The modularity of the design pieces means that we can quickly iterate and change the level or completely build a new one very quickly. The modular pieces at this stage are quite basic but their scale has been increased a fair bit form our first iteration. The reason for this is that the space afforded to player movement was not enough and felt far to claustrophobic. Ive also started designing and modelling the level select overworld this week. The overworld serves as a mini game and level select screen. This ties in with the UI design that Im working on. After our changes and discussions of the first week I worked on designing the first level/tutorial stage. This level is our vertical slice, since it will demonstrate the main mechanics of interaction, gameplay and movement to the player, teach them how to use them, and then give them an environment to apply and use them. The level design needs to teach basic movement, jumping and hiding/stealth. Then needs to introduce the robotic arm and the idea of the grapple hook. It needs to show where the grapple can be used and where it cannot. The main objective here is to show the player that the level can be completed in many different ways, and that a combination of mechanics or simply sneaking can be used effectively. The level is broken into 4 sections. In section 1, the player must leave the prison cell ( green square) and pick pocket the guard in the pink circle in order to unlock the pick door. This section serves to teach movement and sneaking/stealing. In section 2 the player has multiple routes to the blue room. This area serves to reinforce the movement and sneaking mechanics in a linear level. The player then gets the robotic arm in the blue square. The blue door opens and floods the area with guards. the player then backtracks to the blue door through the familiar environment but with the added movement freedom the grapple hook/arm provides. The 3rd section is the lab area. In this area the player combines movement, grapple hook and sneak to break into the room to access the orange circle. This area serves to teach how to combine mechanics of movement and stealth while teaching the player that vents can be accessed. The vent in this area leads to the purple switch to open the room with the key for the orange door. The 4th area combines vents, movement, grapple hook, and problem solving by combining all the skills the player has learnt in the first 3 areas. The introduction of lasers as a movement or problem solving puzzle helps solidify skills and prepares the player for the rest of the game.
Coming back from the mid semester break. We had time to reflect on where we wanted to take Grand Theft Office and how we can turn it into something viable for vertical slice. Moving away from the original Rick and Morty influence we decided to make our own character in order to avoid any intellectual property issues that may arise in the future. We also discussed changing the stealing mechanic from stealing everything and cashing in, to a more diegetic and story based objective. The player must now steal specific objects from within the level in order to repair their ship and escape the Earth. The objective for the Vertical slice is to take the original idea of stealing as much of everything as possible in order to cash in for upgrades, and focus the stealing on important objects that relate to the level, and the reason why the player is there in the first place.
This means that the original game loop which is very short is now more fleshed out without deviating too far from our prototype. In light of these mechanical gameplay changes we are also offering better movement which includes a jump. The movement changes are based on the new way objectives are presented to the player so in order for the player to feel that they have adequate control and also give them the controls that 3rd person games tend to have as a base line today. Instead of fleshing out an extended range of weapons/gadgets, we decided to give the player a robotic arm which replaces the 2 noodle arms of the prototype. This emphasis on the arm allows us to craft uses for the arm or abilities that don't require us to make or design many individual gadgets. The vertical slice level we are aiming to finish is the first level and tutorial area of the game. Here players will be introduced to the new character and his mission on Earth. They will get to learn the new movement mechanics and arm gadget in context with the stealth platforming elements. Each part of the level will allow them to use the new skills and learn them in a safe environment. The last part of the level brings all of these new mechanics into combined test that is like what the actual levels of the game will be like. |
AuthorContrary Scholars ArchivesCategories
All
|