Making The Game: Coming up with an idea.
The Experimental Games Project, is one in which I was tasked to create a digital game using Unreal Engine. It could use first person, third person or vehicle pre-sets, however we had to code all the game mechanics ourselves and come up with a idea without a direct brief. So, in this section of my portfolio I will show you the process in which I created my game.
When coming up with an idea for this task I first decided on the genre and theme I wanted it to have which was a third person action puzzle game. I wanted it to contain elements of science fiction, urban fantasy and horror. All this considered I decided on a ground-zero zombie game in which you are the first zombie.
On this basis, I made a Pinterest board to get some ideas of what it could look like visually and any assets I could look for when building the game.
After doing some thinking and research into various styles and games, I decided that in this game the player must collect keys hidden in various rooms around a hospital in order to escape, whilst being the first ever zombie to exist. Along the way the player must attack 'enemies' which are trying to kill the zombie and stop it from leaving.
You will play as the original infected zombie, at the start of a mass outbreak of the zombie virus. Whilst you still have some form of consciousness and can control where you move and items you interact with, you have an overarching need to kill. So, you will 'wake up' in the morgue after being confirmed dead the previous day. Whilst in the morgue instructions on how to move, jump, pickup items and attack will gradually appear on screen so the player can better control the character and interact with the environment. This will then urge the player to leave the morgue using a key found in the room, where they will be met by their first victim. Enemies will fight back so the player in is a kill or be killed scenario removing their ability to choose to be a 'good' zombie. From there the player must find a way to escape the hospital by entering various rooms to find keys whilst infecting as, many people as they can.
I then decided to set my game within a hospital which appears to be modern, polished and clean due to my game being set pre-apocalypse. I made multiple plans of what the layout of where the various rooms would be placed before white boxing the entirety of the hospital, which has two levels. When white boxing I placed the pharmacy and lab as shown in draft one, as this made more sense visually when completing the build.
As this game would be set inside a hospital, I made a layout design that corresponds with was I believe the interior of a hospital would contain. This includes rooms like: Consultation rooms, X-Ray, Laboratory, A & E, Morgue, Pharmacy, Break room, Front desk/Entrance and a waiting area.
The player would spawn in the morgue and progress through the hospitals various rooms looking for a key to the main entrance. The hospital would be dark and have red flashing lights to indicate it's on lockdown to prevent the player from escaping. The game is set at night.
This character that the player will play as is the first zombie to come into existence. After spending 24 hours clinically presumed dead after a tragic car accident, their body gets re-animated due to a new virus within the body. Previously this zombie was a widowed father, his child only being 12 years old. However, in a horrific car accident he succumb to his various injuries, leaving his boy to the system. Remanences of his pervious self still remain within his new form but for how long? The virus is gradually consuming his brain removing all traces of humanity.
He will gradually deteriorate whilst in the game becoming more confused and murderous, losing his memories of his son and his ability to have a conscious thought. This will make the player feel sad and engage better with the game itself having them empathise with the character despite them attacking those within the hospital. Gradually around the hospital he will have ‘thoughts’ that conflict with his actions like:
Why can’t I stop
Where's my son
I am so sorry I didn’t mean to
This will further distress the player as they are able to see that the character wants and almost needs to be good but he physically cannot stop himself.
Making The Game: The Problems and How I Resolved Them.
After deciding what I wanted my game to centre around it was then time to start adding mechanics into my game, not all of them went to plan so I had to find issues within my code to rectify these issues before I could subsequently hand it in.
The first mechanic that I implemented within my game was an enemy that would follow, attack, cause damage, and be 'killed'. As you can see the enemy took one hit and then died, so I had to find a way in which to rectify this. Also, I wanted it so that when you get close enough to an enemy they can hear you rather than just following and attacking on sight.
I found that there was an issue within my blueprints. I had connected the minus damage from health B-A instead if A-B. This meant on one hit the health instantly depleted and the enemy died. So I fixed this by plugging them into the correct ports so that the health gradually depletes rather than instantly dying.
I then implemented a mechanic that required the player to have a key to unlock a specific door, but as you can see here there was an issue in which I was unsure on how to correct on initial assessment.
When looking back into the door blueprint I found out that there was an issue within the timeline for the door open and close. One being that the time was set originally to 0.9 seconds making it play far too fast. The second being that it was doing a full rotation due to the value being set to four so I changed this to one, solving the issue.
When I was doing a quick general playtest of my game I came across a concerning issue of which I did not know how or why it occurred. My game cut back to the menu screen when it was not suppose to.
WARNING: This videos contain flashing lights.
After looking into if there was a problem with my timer, any collisions and my health/combat system, I found that somehow I had placed the blueprint that would eventually be for the game completion into the door for the Consultation Room 2. This was a simple fix, in that a just removed the code, made sure it was not in any other blueprints and complied my game.
After another playtest that I completed, I decided I was not happy with the lighting. In some areas within the map it was virtually impossible to see. I thought of how I could correct this... I could change the angle of the spotlights and their intensity or create a different type of light source. In an attempt to make it more complicated, I decided to add a flashlight that will add more light to wherever the player moves the character.
WARNING: This videos contain flashing lights.
So, to implement the flashlight I added a spotlight component into my Third Person Character , and repositioned it in the components to be attached to the Follow Camera. I also changed, in the viewport, the outer cone angle to 33, inner cone angle 22, and intensity to 6000.
Then in the Event Graph, from the Event Begin Play I attached the Set Visibility action (unticked) with the target set as the flashlight. Separately I got the F button action and called a Flip Flop plugging A into Set Visibility action with the target flashlight ticked and plugged B into Set Visibility action with the target flashlight unticked. This made it so that when the player hit the F key the flashlight would appear and when clicked again disappear.
One other issue I came across was that my trigger boxes where being triggered when my player character was not overlapping them. This meant the story text would appear randomly and at the wrong times.
On investigation, it was found that the enemies where triggering the boxes. To correct this issue I selected all of the trigger boxes in the level, going to the collision pre-sets I changed it to trigger. Then I changed it to custom, finding the World dynamic object response and set it to ignore. This corrected this issue.
Making The Game: The Outcome
To keep my work safe I made a lot of saves at various points on various platforms. I have a total of 20 versions of my game some older, some newer. They are spread out so all of them are on my PC and some of the more recent ones are on my OneDrive, so I can work on the game whenever I get a chance
After completing a series of playtests, and further adapting this game adding a variety of new features like an inventory, a second level, dialogue system, boss enemy and many more mechanics I created a more polished version of this game which is both fun and well-rounded. In the video below you can see a full playthrough of the game with developers commentary starting after five minutes.
Full playthrough with developers commentary.
