Game Design
Project - RoboRail
The last few months of my degree at Full Sail University involved a team-based project for Capstone. As a result, I was assigned to be a part of Team Bad Wolf, with the main concept for our game being on a train and collecting items, all while protecting it. My team included me (Mohan Goel), Cameron Knepper, Henry Chen and Carlos Hamilton. With each of us having our respective skill sets, we had assigned roles to ourselves - I was the Project Manager and Creative Director, Cameron was the Game Balance Designer and Co-Creative Director, Henry was the main Technical Designer, and Carlos was the main Level Designer. Despite having our assigned roles, however, we were all aware that we would be helping each other with our respective roles, at times.
With my main level mechanic and level pacing flowchart approved, I began working immediately on a prototype of the mechanic. My main aim was to have three versions of the mechanic in the entirety of the level - one where the player would only need to drain all the water in a filled room, one where there is a continuous flow of water till the room is filled, and one where the level of the water would either rise or lower depending on the current level of the water. Below is a video of the mechanic prototype.
With the main level mechanic prototypes completed, I set about creating a level blockmesh based on the pacing flowchart I created earlier. While many of the sections were simple and easy to do, the "Central Chamber" was the only section that took quite some time to complete. I had aimed to make it as detailed as possible, even for a blockmesh. Take a look at the full complete level below!
While I had initially planned out how I was going to tackle the blockmesh phase for this level, I realized towards the end that I hadn't done a good enough job of planning it out. As a result, I had a good blockmeshed level but with mechanics that ended up breaking the game level, as can be seen above. Below is an updated version I have been working on for some time, in order to make it far more refined than what I had initially planned to make for my course.
PERSONAL PROJECT POST MORTEM
What Went Right:
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Layout - As we started collaborating together, we were able to come to a consensus on how the overall flow of the whole level should be and whose sublevel should come where. We managed to stick to this and keep the flow continuous and comprehensive.
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Level Mechanic Prototype - So this is something that was both good and bad, specifically for me. It was good mostly because of the fact that a decent majority of the assets I required was found pretty quickly through various sites like Turbosquid, Free3d, and the Unreal Asset store.
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Transitions - We managed to keep the transitions between each of our sublevels and make the level more cohesive and flowing. To take different sublevels and try to merge them to make them more adhesive and close-knit is a difficult task, and I would say we managed to do that pretty well.
What Went Wrong:
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Planning - While a lot of us were on par with each other, there was one member that was not very open to anything and was definitely not pleasant to work with at all. His work resulted in the rest of us being forced to deal with errors that would arise because of his unwillingness to understand the situation and accept any errors on his side. He made things very unprofessional and delayed a lot of the deadlines we had set for ourselves.
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Time Management - Many times, there would be other issues arising on Perforce. In a lot of cases, Unreal would crash as we would be updating and submitting the work we have done. We would sometimes notice that perforce has indeed pushed those updates but upon checking on another teammates workspace, it would not be so.
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Level Mechanics in Level - As has always been the case for me, I have always struggled with lighting in all levels I work on in Unreal Engine. This time was also no exception to that! Even now, I struggle with doing lighting, but I feel as though I am getting a little bit better at it.
Conclusion: