Week 7 was the start of our second rapid ideation session which would last two weeks, yet again. This time around however, we were tasked with creating an artefact in a ‘Hackathon’ that addressed either one or more of the following issues:
· Social issues
· Economic issues
· Healthcare
· Education
· Environmental issues
The theme we decided on was environmentalism due to feeling very strongly about this issue.
Here are several screen captures of what we managed to prototype:
The reason I say “we decided on” and "we managed to prototype" is because we were asked to either work alone or team up, and with my experience of working collaboratively in game development being limited, I jumped at the opportunity. However, we were only allowed to work in pairs. Fortunately, there are a considerable amount of both game development, and user-experience development students from our course who have access to a particular Discord server, and it soon became evident who I would be collaborating with.
After merely brainstorming, I came up with the initial idea of Fragile World. When pitching to potential teammates, I only had a very vague idea as to what game I wanted to make. What I proposed was a game that hyperbolises humanities very real issue that Earth is extremely vulnerable. The decisions the player makes would have severe and immediate consequences, for the planet and themselves. The world was initially meant to be affected through the methods in which the player gets from A to B (location to location), and depending on the means of traversing the level, the world would either remain intact or become unstable, thus determining how difficult the game would be for the player. The worst-case scenario for the player (or best case for the challenge-seekers) would be affecting the world to the point where it would be near impossible to complete the game.
Potential teammates seemed interested in my idea, but I needed to know not just their ideals, but games they were influenced by most, and whether or not we are influenced by the same types of games. What genre were they most eager to make? Do their goals coincide with mine? If I were to work in a bigger team, then I would not have to take this approach as such, but I found the challenge of pairing up influenced my initial approach, particularly when time was of the essence. Having missed out with working on a film project in 2017-2018 due to not having an idea ready quick enough to pitch, I decided to waste no time in this instance. Pitching was very informal thankfully, and a handful of us were ideating over voice chat. This helped us assess each other’s approaches, ideas, desired outcomes, and how adaptable a person was to change. The six of us that were in this Discord voice chat were all conflicted as we would have much rather preferred to work together as a bigger team. I was fortunate enough to click with another member of the chat who was rearing to go, and better yet, we had the same availability over the span of the two-week rapid ideation session. There were some who were hesitant at teaming up right away and that I completely understand, although I believe I made the right choice.
As stated in my previous post, I was eager to ideate and prototype an intro game cinematic and for a short time I was also debating whether I should prototype interactive narrative with Inkle, however, due to the fact that we were time-constrained and only a team of two, this seemed of lesser importance, especially as I am actively seeking entry level jobs in the industry. Despite this, because we were only a small team, we had to come up with a narrative to some extent to get some idea as to what we wanted to make and help us build on the bare-boned idea that was before us. My once vague idea soon took more of a stable form with help from my teammate. It was now ours. As we were wanting to develop this game beyond the Hackathon timeframe, we were thinking in the long-term. In retrospect, for the game jam, this really was not the best way to go about it, but as a full-fledged game, I have very high hopes for it. In terms of thinking for the duration of the sprint and prototype, we got carried away to the point we had to tell ourselves to stop. By this point, it may have been too late. Because of the vastness of ideas that we came up with during this rapid ideation session, we are still very eager to carry on developing this game. We are considering pitching it to other developers on the course so that they may also contribute to the game in their spare time and add more to their portfolios.
The player was to have access to several vehicles and tools and based on what they do or do not utilise, the world could be altered in different ways. We originally envisioned wildfires, floods, etc. but we decided to tone it down some time later. Even though our approach chanced slightly, the game difficulty is still to be determined by the player’s decisions. Our main influence was Dishonored (2012), an action-adventure game developed by Arkane Studios and produced by Bethesda Softworks, in which if you kill your enemies rather than incapacitate them or simply sneak by, then the plague becomes more prominent, and rats appear more frequently, and thus makes the game harder. The ending you are provided and the way in which characters see you also depends on your playstyle. We are wanting to incorporate a similar system into Fragile World in future, however I will go into this later in this blog post.
Because of my love of Final Fantasy VII (1997), I have always wanted to write the world as a character, in which it reacts to the decisions made that are ultimately affecting it, especially the negative. In Fragile World, human choices are to be linked with what happens with the environment, and the world can be forced to act against you to defend itself. It was more than apparent from this point on that we were crossing into the fantasy/ science-fiction realms. When thinking of environmentalism, one of the main points that is reiterated time and time again is just how finite the Earth’s resources are. With this, we discussed the potential of having a main source of fuel that can be used up by the player. We decided that our game would have a steampunk aesthetic, and originally, the fuel source was thought to be that of coal; we soon realised that it would be more beneficial to create our own fictional energy source. My reasoning behind this was that if we ideated an energy source then there could be a story behind it, which would then ultimately lead to more gameplay scenarios, and other narrative elements. If they use vehicles and tools powered by this fuel source without any consideration of conserving, then greed and ignorance would be the downfall of the planet, and in turn, the player.
First came my list of ideas which was then added into the Miro mind map my teammate and I shared:
From here, we built from the chosen foundations and began to understand what it was that we would like to develop. A Game Design Document was used to decide on which aspects of the Miro mind map to use, although it was not fully filled out.
To better understand what choices to make in terms of building this world, and what kind of state it may be in, we decided it would be best to come up with a backstory. What we came up with was the cause of the world’s woes for the present time. In the past, a very influential person existed who claimed to have discovered a 100% green source of energy that many bought into, including Governments all around the globe. It was not long before every bit of tech became powered by it. This influential person, who was to become CEO of a huge energy corporation, had fooled almost everyone into believing the propaganda. This energy source was (and still is) extremely toxic for any living being when near and it soon became apparent that the energy source should have been left unearthed. Some became aware of this, but before the minority could act, it was too late. The CEO was not motivated by greed, he wanted to show just how greedy and ignorant the world could be. That humans are parasitic. He was the devil’s advocate. And through the masses being so easily misled, the world was punished, and in turn, life itself. When continuing in developing Fragile World later, journals and memory fragments showing and/ or describing how life was affected and how the world seems to have reacted badly will be added and can be found by the player when they explore; in doing so, the truth is revealed to them. Neither the player nor the main character, Kyle, is to know anything about this from the start. You can complete the game regardless of your choices; however, the outcome will be decided by how you play and the decisions you make. What I mean by this, is that there are multiple endings that a player can obtain, one playthrough at a time.
The player must actively explore the world to be rewarded with the best of outcomes for the planet and the life that exists within it, but even more so than this. Kyle starts his journey (to his knowledge) at the same time as the player, unaware of what has happened, what is going on, and what purpose you have within this world. Kyle the robot boots up in a hangar to find that he has acquired consciousness and an AI by the name of Felicity addresses you shortly after you ‘malfunction’ and walks you through several tutorials found within all 4 rooms of the hangar before allowing you to leave. Felicity is to be an AI who will follow you throughout the world who offers her advice and gives you directives. However, you can choose to completely ignore her. From the beginning, during the tutorial level of which we have prototyped, she states that Kyle’s (the player’s) supposed purpose is to clean up the world and return it to a state of peace and stability. Little does the player know that she is to be an extension of the evil CEO from the past and that the player was meant as a tool to carry on his will after his death. We are to implement game mechanics that subtly hint that this ‘green energy’ is harmful to life, if the player were to use a vehicle to travel through a wooded area for example, then some time after the player could return and see that the trees were withering and dying. Settlements of humans that have managed to survive through the harshness of being manipulated by the CEO, would react differently or be hostile towards Kyle and the player. Again, these are just examples as to what we hope could come to fruition later in the development stage.
These endings provided are to be based on the choices the player makes. As you would expect at this stage, they are very vague, but they give a good idea as how best to proceed with development in future. The tutorial would not factor into these endings as we envisioned simulations would take place within the hangar:
Good.
To achieve the best possible ending, the player must always ignore the directives given to them by Felicity and think for themselves to find the truth. Felicity would become hostile over time and would need to be overcome at the end of the game. This is not fleshed out fully obviously, but it seems best to have Kyle be rid of, or 'awaken', the other robots that do not possess consciousness. The world would gradually recover in time.
Obscure.
If the player follows the directives and at the same time finds the truth that Kyle is in fact designed by the CEO, then there is a slight chance that the world can return to normality, although it is not 100% clear.
Bad.
If the player follows tasks blindly without any sort of straying from the initial path laid out by Felicity, despite clues that all may not be as it seems, then the world is lost for good. It becomes evident that you are evil, and this ‘clean-up’ process was to cleanse the world of life so that it may start again.
The directives given are that of a linear fashion, whereas when finding pieces of the past. I.e., journals, fragments, etc. these are to be shown in a non-linear way so that the player must piece together the puzzle over time and try to make sense of everything. To guarantee that the player understands the stories behind the collectibles in the end, they would be rewarded with an explanation via a game cinematic, exclusive mission, etc. after finding them all.
My thought process was to build an introductory tutorial level around these foundational narrative elements which would then lead to the open world map, the open world side of things was to be revealed when the main hangar door opens after completing (or skipping) the tutorials. I was hoping to make the hangar door function by the end of the second week through animation, linked to a button trigger, but too much time was spent on narrative and not on making the playable prototype that we envisioned. On top of working full-time, I unfortunately fell ill after the first week of the rapid ideation session and was bed-ridden for the second half, and so I was only able to design what is shown now. There were several things I was planning on completing or at least wanting to try my hand at before the end of the second week which was extremely annoying for me. I was going to duplicate Kyle’s player model for set-design purposes which would convey the fact that this hangar was to house more than just him; he is to be the only robot to boot up randomly and obtain consciousness which would make it obvious to the player that he is unique. I was also planning on basing this hanger beside an airstrip of sorts which would be within a mountain range; I learned that heightmaps can be implemented into Unity to mould terrain and so I was very eager to try this. Nevertheless, I was so possessed with the narrative aspects for the first half for the most part and I struggled to separate myself from building narrative and the story world. I could not shake the feeling of how much potential the game had, and still has, and could not stop jotting ideas down on paper. From this moment on, I will now focus purely on level design and stop myself from getting so hung up on story so much. A Kanban board was added within Miro, although I did not use it to the extent that I had; with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had. This would have definitely kept me on track with adding more level design content to my portfolio.
With us being only a team of two, we decided to use Unity Collaborate which is part of Unity Teams Basic. At this stage, I was not fully aware as to what version control was and how to use it. Using GitHub was not that essential as my teammate was focusing purely on back end developing and I, level design. The changes that were published were available for the other developer almost immediately without them having to issue a pull request via GitHub, and with the history feature, it was possible to revert back to a previous version of our development if there were to be anything ‘game breaking’, we made sure to publish any changes made as frequently as possible so that there would be less to do again if anything did go wrong. My teammate designed and implemented the robot player avatar/ character, Kyle, along with a third person controller that included the following animations: walking, running, and jumping. When publishing changes, it was very easy to see what exactly had been changed because of the detailed descriptions that were attached to them. With me being fairly new to game development in general, my teammate introduced me to Probuilder, a tool within Unity that allows for the quick and easy creation, moulding, and editing of models. In this rapid ideation session, I used this tool primarily for structures. Firstly, I created and assembled with the basic object creation tools found within Unity, but Probuilder alleviated the time spent on the level design by a tremendous amount.
The main Probuilder tools I used were: ‘edge select’ > ‘insert edge loop’, and then ‘face select’ > ‘extrusion’:
Although, I did not use the tool as I should have been using it, instead I built all the walls individually and wasted a lot of time only to find that you can create a room in just these few steps demonstrated above.
As you can see, the rooms were textured. Curiosity got the better of me and instead of sticking to grey boxing the level like I should have, I felt that I needed to understand how you apply materials correctly. A good example of this is the hangar door:
It is worth mentioning that the textures were downloaded from the Unity Asset Store. When applying downloaded textures in the past, I merely added them and that was it, although I noticed that the sizing of the textures was strange and often huge when assigned to objects as materials. This led me on to figuring out that tiling plays a crucial role in achieving a more realistic look through the correct scaling. ‘Under Surface Options’ the ‘Base Map’ is where the main texture was added, and the ‘Metallic Map’ defined the metallicity of the material. Also, to achieve a more rugged aesthetic, I switched the source from ‘Metallic Alpha’ to ‘Albedo Alpha’.
In addition to textures, I also added post processing in the scene for a greater sense of realism, to make it less flat, and to make it more aesthetically pleasing for the player. Again, just another general curiosity.
Here is a before and after comparison.
Before:
After:
It is no secret that the end game for me, at least for now, would be working in a AAA studio as a narrative designer in which the company ideally specialises in role-playing games as these are the games that I am most passionate about, but it is heavily desired, or in some cases, needed, that I possess at least 1 – 2 years’ game development experience in either Unreal Engine 4 and/ or Unity, as well as ideally having worked with C# visual coding in some capacity even for junior positions. I aim to waste no time in ticking all the boxes that are so often displayed in these job postings. I have known for a good while that breaking into the games industry and working my way up as a junior level/ quest designer was, and still is, my preferred option. I am to become more and more confident and comfortable with Unity, and generate as many physical, high-quality level design projects to add to my CV and portfolio as possible. I asked for feedback from my teammate, and he said, “I really enjoyed the brainstorming and everything! My only real suggestion would be to diversify a little bit, like what you've said you're planning on doing with level design, just so you can bring a bit more to a small team - since, from what I understand, it's common for members in indie teams to cover a range of roles, whereas you would want to be more specialised in larger projects/studios.” This has a lot of weight to it, for the duration of the course, and perhaps beyond, if I decide to work on indie games, then it will be a juggling act of trying to prioritise level design whilst not neglecting the fact that I should be assisting outside of my comfort zone to be more adaptable and more resourceful for the benefit of not just myself but those I am collaborating with also. For the sake of the sprint, instead of focusing so heavily on narrative, I should have prioritised on helping with game mechanics, not getting too carried away, grey box the level firstly before worrying about textures and graphical post processing as it was nowhere near as comprehensive as I would have liked it to be. At least after this rapid ideation session, I can say that I know my capabilities as to how much work I can fit into a sprint and what is deemed manageable at my current skill level, however, it is evident to me now that unforeseen circumstances could randomly affect any developers schedule at any given time and so this factor must always be considered.