Context:
The aim of this project is for small teams to work together to create concept art, assets, environments, and games design required for a playable game prototype. Aimed to help us get better employability skills, and to help us work better in teams.
Brief:
The project is similar to the Games Jam I did in week 10, it has me joining a team to create a game around the theme of a One-Button Game, all the games must be made with Unreal Engine 4. This project has us sorting our roles in the team, mainly focused around the chosen specialism, and also being able to multi task and adapt to different situations that may arise (Such as doing concept art, and doing blueprints). Similar to the Interactivity project, we have to create a working prototype of our game and present it at the end of the project, as well as make it playable to the public.Team:
3D: Georgia Arnoux, Matt Batterham.
2D: Myself, Nes Can, Scott Sedgeman, Alex Crisp
UE4: Matt Batterham, Myself.
The Plan is to get myself and matt working on the interactivity work, as well as provide backup support for the rest of the group in 2d and 3d.
Plan:
Our plan began with the brainstorming, I started by using the game name generator to come up with potential names for the game, this in turn gave me some ideas for games with the one-button theme to it. Once we managed to get the team together, we threw around various ideas until we settled on the idea of a neon punk tower defence game. The idea was that you where a single turret, and you automatically turned left and right and to defeat enemies you shoot by using the one button idea. As the level progresses the enemies would become more difficult to defeat, however the player does have the option to upgrade when they have enough points. I believe we intend to do three levels depending on time.
We decided on making the camera fixed point, looking down, with the turret at the bottom, and the enemies attack from the left, right, and centre, you can attack one area at a time, We decided on making the environments out of 2D paintings and the turret and enemies will be low poly 3D models. We intend to make this game compatible for PC, as a free to play game on the internet. The one button that the player will use will be the mouse, clicking on the turret to shoot, and when in-between levels clicking on items to upgrade.
Mechanics:
Level 1: small waves of 5-10 enemies will charge at the player slowly, giving the player plenty of time to get used to the controls and defeat the enemies by spinning and shooting.
Level 2: more enemies will charge at the player and their speed will increase, however the player has the option to upgrade to shoot at two enemies at once.
Level 3: multiple enemies will be attacking the player from different directions at the same time and after that a final boss will appear. The player has the option to upgrade to the strongest turret available and will be able to fire in multiple directions at once.
There are a few different mechanics and blueprints that will be needed to make our game.
1.The enemies will all have to be locked on to the player and move in, this can be accomplished by using a nav mesh bounds box and making it so the ai enemy has sight range on the player, and thanks to the blueprints I achieved in the interactivity project the ai will chase the player as long as they are within the nav mesh box and are in sight of them.
2. The main playable turret must be able to rotate. I don't know how to do this blueprint personally, but through internet research, I will be able to find out easily enough.
3. The player must be able to shoot projectiles at the enemy, and the enemy will be destroyed after a few hits. This is easy enough, I did the same blueprints for my interactivity project.
4. The player will have the option to upgrade their turret if they feel like they won't win the next round, the player can upgrade in between levels, but must have enough points to do so. this will be using blueprints mixed with widgets to create a level choice and upgrade screen. I will need to research further into how to create this.
5. UI and various other pieces of information that will be on the interface. Easy enough, create widgets and set them to correspond with the events happening on screen.
Replay Value:
If the player found it to easy, they can not upgrade their turret when proceeding to the next level to make things more challenging.
There will be a leader board with time the player completed it in, and say if the player got hit once by the enemy that would add a couple of seconds of time on, giving the challenge not to get hit by the enemy.
If we have enough time at the end of the project, we intend to include mini challenges that the player can try to achieve alongside the main mission, such as don't take any damage in one level, or defeat 10 enemies in 30 seconds.
Research:
For the first week I was looking at different pages of turrets and many tower defence games, as well as 80's neon themed games, so I could come up with some idea of what kind of turrets I needed to create for this game. My image research mainly stemmed from Google images and looking at one-button themed games. I looked at the game Far Cry Blood Dragon as a beginning for ideas towards colour schemes and weapon design.
Development & Progress:
These two images I started with the idea of the turret's being big buildings that have multiple turrets, I tried to keep to an 80's look with the buildings, but showing more of a futuristic look to it. The second image I had the idea of a mobile fortress, instead of the player being in one area, they are following a path, enemies come from all directions and you have to protect yourself and not get destroyed before reaching the other side.
This design I looked at the blood dragon game to come up with the colours I be using, and decided to create a 'flower cannon' I was thinking of attaching it to a base but my team told me it's just going to be the turret and not a building. So after that I started focusing mainly on coming up with just turret designs.
Using the image research I collected and some of the turret ideas I drew in the earlier images, I began to create a quick variety of turrets, for some of these designs I looked at the vehicles and cannons from the star wars clone wars tv series.
Using the design I made earlier and moodboard research, I added colour to my turrets, this didn't take too long as I wanted to see what colours would work with what to bring out a neon look.
After showing my team the ideas for the turrets I had produced, I started focusing on how the upgrades would look, I was partially interested in the 'flower cannon' as I thought of the idea as it got upgraded it would go from being closed to blooming out and getting more petals (guns). My next design would see what happened if I fused two of my turrets together (note the Dragon Ball Z reference).
Abandoned Ideas:
These ideas where some that I presented to my group before we settled on out game idea that didn't get picked because they didn't meet the requirements of the project brief.
Alien Ping Pong: A game where you play ping pong as an alien, there is a bar in the top corner that increases and decreases ever time before you swing, when you hit it will determine how good your swing is, hit right and get a good swing, hit wrong and you will have a less powerful swing and maybe a miss.
Paranoid Beast Rampage: the name says it all, your aim is to return home because your paranoid about something at home, along the way you have to go on a rampage to destroy stuff, this increases the meter and your score, the higher the meter the stronger you rampage becomes.
Strengths & Weaknesses:
I was able to get a good understanding of how neon lights worked and what type of turrets would look effect, while trying to make the style similar to Far Cry blood dragon art style.
I was unable to come up with any decent ideas to bring to the table, when thinking about a one-button game I really struggled, I also intend to come up with more iterations for my turrets next week, and learn how to get better at drawing the perspective of these turrets.
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