Helios Game Section
To play Helios, you will need a PC running Windows XP, Vista or 7.
System Requirements
Windows (XP SP3, Vista or 7)
2.0+ GHz processor
2 GB system RAM
SM3-compatible video card
3 GB Free hard drive space
System Requirements
Windows (XP SP3, Vista or 7)
2.0+ GHz processor
2 GB system RAM
SM3-compatible video card
3 GB Free hard drive space
Visit my teams website for more in depth information on Helios
Introduction
For my final project in school that tested my skill and knowledge in game design, I was placed in a team of six whose goal was pretty straight forward: Design a fully functional game in the time frame of 3 months. Simple right! Well as any game designer or professional in the game industry will tell you one of the biggest assets that most projects never seem to have enough of is time.
Since this team project needed to be completed in 3 months my team really needed to limit the scope of our game accordingly to our time constraints but still produce a quality game in the long run. Below is a brief presentation video that was the compilation of our initial brainstorming sessions and prototyping that later developed into the game of Helios.
Since this team project needed to be completed in 3 months my team really needed to limit the scope of our game accordingly to our time constraints but still produce a quality game in the long run. Below is a brief presentation video that was the compilation of our initial brainstorming sessions and prototyping that later developed into the game of Helios.
Developing High Concept Idea and initial Game Design Document
Helios was originally a game concept that I came up with during one of my school assignments that would explore the concept of a player manipulating light.( You can laugh at my drawings)
Nothing to extravagant but perfect for our game concept since it was ideal for the scope of a 3 month long project. Next came the development of our Game Design Document.
teamchobits_helios_gdd_1012.pdf | |
File Size: | 3679 kb |
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We were very ambitious since this was our first fully featured game but made it a habit to make sure that we kept the design in scope of the 3 month long time frame. That is why we had to constantly ask questions during the development of the Game Design Document like how much time we will allow ourselves to prototype , research, and implement ideas, mechanics, assets, and features into our game.
I was given the task of researching games that had similar mechanics to our own and developing the initial controls for Helios while brainstorming aesthetic and thematic elements with my team.
With the Game Design Document completed the team transition into preproduction where we began to test and prototype our ideas from paper to game and flush out the kinks in our game mechanics . Our first weeks prototype worked out pretty well and really setup the momentum and precedent that allowed my team to exceed our wildest expectations.
I was given the task of researching games that had similar mechanics to our own and developing the initial controls for Helios while brainstorming aesthetic and thematic elements with my team.
With the Game Design Document completed the team transition into preproduction where we began to test and prototype our ideas from paper to game and flush out the kinks in our game mechanics . Our first weeks prototype worked out pretty well and really setup the momentum and precedent that allowed my team to exceed our wildest expectations.
First Prototype
Lucky for our team the main mechanics discussed in the Game Design Document were pretty simple to test and develop inside kismet.
As the primary kismet scripter for this game my main objective aside from getting the scripts to work was to develop a easy implementation method when level designers were building levels. Also it was a good way to help with the transition of applying these same mechanics into Unreal script.
As the project moved forward and ideas and concepts changed over countless iterations, Helios went through some major changes during its development cycle. Since this project was only 3 months long, many of the concepts like the light powers had to be cut from the game since they needed more time to be tested out. As we started to cut away more ideas from the game and focus on just core concepts and mechanics, Helios started to evolve into the game we really wanted to design.
Re-Design of Vision and Scope
We simplified Helios to focused on two main mechanics: Swapping between two worlds , and pushing objects to reach an end goal. Not really rocket science ideas but it was what we needed to produce a game that was much more entertaining and engaging.With our new vision and scope our team started to make the real Helios.
As seen in the video above swapping between the two worlds is a core mechanic of the game so we needed to make sure this mechanic was very simple, effective, representative, and out right amazing to look at.
We decided to use as material transition effect as the best metaphor for the the player swapping between worlds. To develop this effect my role was to develop a slow motion or bullet time effect to coincide with the material swap.
As seen in the video above swapping between the two worlds is a core mechanic of the game so we needed to make sure this mechanic was very simple, effective, representative, and out right amazing to look at.
We decided to use as material transition effect as the best metaphor for the the player swapping between worlds. To develop this effect my role was to develop a slow motion or bullet time effect to coincide with the material swap.
Since the player was going to use this ability through the game the slow motion effect had to be unintuitive but recognizable to the player after it was activated. With this in mind I setup the slow motion to only set the game speed to 2/3 of its original speed and have it last for a brief interval time.
Helios Beta
After the vision and scope of Helios was revised the road to completing the game became a lot easier as time went on. During this stretch of the project my duties started to include designing and building some of the levels in the game(primarily the Refinery levels),creating more simplistic and easy to use codes of kismet, adding in custom sounds and music, and many hours of quality assurance testing. Lucky for us the game didn't have to go through too much iteration between the Beta and Gold version. Aside from some bugs the rest of the development went by without a hitch.
Helios Post Mortem
Reflection is always key to learning more about how much we have gain through experience and what aspects exhibited in the past that we need to either developed or altered to become better.
This has been of of the most exhilarating projects that I have had the pleasure to work on and it all thanks to my wonderful teammates. Hope the future has the best in stores for everyone.
Sunken Swamp Project
The Sunken Swamp project was a very unique opportunity for me as a game designer to showcase some of skills because of the team structure that was establish and the short milestones my team had to accomplish. Basically the objective of this project was to test how effective the groups communication skills would be as we worked on a month long project with teammates located in different states in an endeavor that would exhibit our technical game design skills and dedication to produce a well put together level .
The Sunken Swamp project was a very unique opportunity for me as a game designer to showcase some of skills because of the team structure that was establish and the short milestones my team had to accomplish. Basically the objective of this project was to test how effective the groups communication skills would be as we worked on a month long project with teammates located in different states in an endeavor that would exhibit our technical game design skills and dedication to produce a well put together level .
For this project I took of the role of level designer, providing my skills to many aspects in the level from the assets used on the terrain and some of the lighting effects. But one of my primary duties was developing the town portion of the level
So for the town portion of the level I wanted to go for not just a ruin town forgotten by time but make it appear that the town was actually apart of the environment like the trees and bushes surrounding the area. So first I needed to blend some of the building into the terrain by sinking them and also add some vegetation growth so that there was an illusion of symbiosis between the swamp and the town. Next I needed to pick out the right materials to overlay on the buildings that complimented the greenish tone of the level.
As ruin structures unattended for years the building need have a lack of bright colors but also needed to show how the greenish coloration of the vegetation naturally made them assimilate into that swamp. All together it took me roughly about a week to establish the basic components mention earlier for the town and another week to fine tune all minor details for deeper aesthetic immersion.
As ruin structures unattended for years the building need have a lack of bright colors but also needed to show how the greenish coloration of the vegetation naturally made them assimilate into that swamp. All together it took me roughly about a week to establish the basic components mention earlier for the town and another week to fine tune all minor details for deeper aesthetic immersion.
Prototyping Project
Similar to the Sunken Swamp project this projects setup was along the same guidelines of putting together a team of game designers to complete a month long project under similar time constraints. But for this project my team's objective was not to produce a well polished level but instead create some sort of unique game mechanic that wasn't inherit to the game engine we were using (UDK). As game designers we have powerful game engine programs that are built with inherit programs making designing certain game features simple.
But as a game designer most of the time you are looking for solutions to implement new and unique game mechanics in your games so usually you'll have to succumb-vent the limitations of your game engine. So that is what my team did and we came up with a puzzle game. The game revolves around the PC who is in a state of starvation where they have to eat food out mystery containers to stay alive. But the PC has an allergy to a certain group so they need to discover what they are allergy too and avoid it or die before reaching the end of the game.
My main role for this project was to first setup the the kismet scripting for the puzzle aspect of the game and then find and format corresponding JPEG images that would pop up in the game when players were in the vicinity of a mystery container
Creating the scripts to render the images on the screen was simple enough but the real challenge was to implement a puzzle design around them. So mention before the player has an allergy to a particular food group so for our prototype we choose two: Vegetables or Fruit. So what I did was first assigned a specific food item to a container with a modify health node so that the player would always receive health since I had scripted it so that the player was constantly losing health due to starvation.
Next I assigned modify ammo nodes to the containers that had food items the player was allergic too. You may ask why use a modify ammo node? Well in our prototype we actually altered the default properties of the one of the guns in the game engine so that it could represent the players allergy meter build up. With the ammo counter already established by the Unreal Game engine my team thought it would be best to just utilize and tweak the existing scripts since they can serve a multitude of purposes. As the player continues to eat items that they were allergic too then their allergy meter would continue to grow until they died. So when I had completed the setup for one particular food group I just had to copy and rearrange some of of nodes and links to make the player allergic to another group.
As you can see in slide one the player will activate a trigger that will randomly select a sequence in where the player is allergic to food items that contain vegetables or fruit. This was used to add variety to each playthrough of the game so that player wouldn't know what they were allergic to in a second or third playthrough of the game. Unfortunately due to the time constraints of working in just the time span of a month I was unable to develop the kismet more to where the game would have incorporated more food allergies and a larger database of food items for the play to pick from.
Next I assigned modify ammo nodes to the containers that had food items the player was allergic too. You may ask why use a modify ammo node? Well in our prototype we actually altered the default properties of the one of the guns in the game engine so that it could represent the players allergy meter build up. With the ammo counter already established by the Unreal Game engine my team thought it would be best to just utilize and tweak the existing scripts since they can serve a multitude of purposes. As the player continues to eat items that they were allergic too then their allergy meter would continue to grow until they died. So when I had completed the setup for one particular food group I just had to copy and rearrange some of of nodes and links to make the player allergic to another group.
As you can see in slide one the player will activate a trigger that will randomly select a sequence in where the player is allergic to food items that contain vegetables or fruit. This was used to add variety to each playthrough of the game so that player wouldn't know what they were allergic to in a second or third playthrough of the game. Unfortunately due to the time constraints of working in just the time span of a month I was unable to develop the kismet more to where the game would have incorporated more food allergies and a larger database of food items for the play to pick from.