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TEAM LEAD
LEAD GAME DESIGNER
PROGRAMMER
This was the Capstone project I worked on to graduate from SAE. The Initial concept of this project was the simple theme of Animals vs. Robots. From there we took elements from various Games like; Binding of Isaac, Cult of the Lamb and a few others as points of inspiration. The game had players explore procedural levels, defeating waves of enemies to improve their strength in a build up to a final boss.
LEVEL DESIGN
CONCEPTING
Concepting Started off really simple. The setting of the game would be a city scape of players roaming the streets. Now to present the player with the environment each level would be created procedurally using 4 simple template tiles that would connect to each other. Thus each time they enter a level they would start in a different position and the roads would be laid out differently.
PROTOTYPING
With a concept in place I set out to create a simple prototype that would allow us to experiment. With a simple script that grabs from an array of prefabs at a set position it would have a random chance of placing a prefab there thus creating another tile connected to the current one. Another little experiment that was done included having the same thing done to the buildings that would be spawned in the tile to give variation, although this was removed from scope as balancing this aspect would be difficult from a level design standpoint. My prototype was then provided to the programmers of the group for them to build upon and optimise.
The Levels of Wild Smite consisted of four Base Tiles. From these Tiles, I along with the other Designer in the group worked on creating variations that could be used. We designed them with the following structure; Each base had 3 variations, which would consist of different layouts and placements of buildings and open spaces. From there, we would then create another 3 sub variations of each one. This resulted in us having 12 Variations for each Tile type, giving a total of 48 Tiles for Level Generation.
DESIGNING LEVEL TILES
PLAYER CHARACTERS
Players had the basic setting of being animals. From a Narrative standpoint though we made it so that they had been experimented on by the Robots turning them humanoid in nature. We decided on 4 Characters originally but due to scope settled on 2, a crocodile and a kangaroo. These details were shared with a collaborating artist who then created Concept sheets for them.
Along with Visuals we had to figure out the values associated with players in the game to plan out the difficulty of the game and player mechanics. Due to scope we kept this relatively simple opting for simple RPG values, Health, Stamina, and Values for damage as well as experience for progression. This was done after extensive research into other games and the values they used for their player characters.
CONCEPTING
DESIGN AND STATS
With the Character sheet from a collaborating artist the next step involved Creating the actual models for the characters. When creating characters I stick to the box modelling technique starting from the ground up using cubes and adding cuts and extrusions where needed. Along with that I did very rudimentary UV Unwrapping after which texturing and rigging were done by others in the group.
MODELLING
SYSTEMS DESIGN
COMBAT SYSTEM
During the concepting for the game to get a good overview of how combat in our game would work the group did extensive research into the combat systems of various games. Each member were given 3 games to dive into and document how the combat system in that game works as well as observe pros and cons from the project's perspective regarding using such a system.
After compiling all the research followed by taking aspects from different systems and making adjustments we settled on the following system. Players had the ability to attack with 3 different forms, they could dash to move fast or avoid attacks. Players would gain experience from each enemy they killed and once certain milestones were reached their stats would increase as well as give them a chance to allocate points to certain stats to change their build. Enemies would have their values determined from ranges depending on the difficulty of the selected level/mission.
ENEMY BEHAVIOURS AND ATTACKS
During prototyping we kept our enemies simple, enemies once they have spotted a player would go towards the player and when within range attack the player. From there we expanded to make our enemies feel more responsive. Enemies would not immediately attack the player when within range but instead would orbit around them, once ready to attack they would move in close for melee attacks or increase distance for ranged ones. This way they felt more intelligent and not just like simple attack enemies. Along with the behaviour adjustment enemies were also given various forms of attacks. This would make for more varied gameplay when fighting them requiring players to look for what attack is coming.
ENEMY CHARACTERS
CONCEPTING
DESIGN AND STATS
Enemies in the game were set as robots. From a Narrative standpoint they were the creation of humanity to make life easier, they were so good at it that they basically maintained everything for people (Inspired from Wall-E) Though their AI had a strange fascination with animals to the point of extreme experimentation. We did research into Enemies in various games and settled on 2 standard types; Melee & Ranged, a Mini-Boss type and the final enemy at the end of the game.
With the types sorted out based on our research we set up some standard values that would influence how enemies played in the game as well as their various forms of behaviours and attacks for variation. All enemies would have the same base set of stats to make implementation simpler as well as adjusting values. Along with that we created a standard set of behaviours for enemies as well as ones for their various attacks so that enemies felt more intricate instead of just having one simple attack.
With time constraints we were unable to receive character sheets for enemies only going so far as the concept art stage for them. With this in mind my work consisted of trying to maintain the overall shape as the concept and then adding details where I felt necessary. From there due to their nature and simplistic shapes they were very easy to rig with no parts of the model being weighted to more than 1 bone.
MODELLING
AND RIGGING
With the models created the next step involved creating their animations as they would not be able to use the readily available library of humanoid animations. This involved creating idle animations, movement sets as well as the animations for the various attacks of each enemy. From there I worked with another member in the group in order to get these animations linked and implemented into the behaviours of the enemies in the game.
ANIMATIONS
LEVELLING AND PROGRESSION
DESIGNING
To create progression in the game we set up milestones for player XP that once reached would let them level up resulting in an increase of their stats as well as providing them with points that they use to increase whichever stat they want allowing them to create a build for their character that they want. The goal of this was for them to build up strength to take on more difficult enemies and once strong enough challenge the boss of the game.
I was in charge of the implementation of this system, creating Scriptable Objects in Unity that would store the values used for levelling as well as the implementation to let these items interact with the player controllers influencing the player health, stamina as well as their attacks. This system was made modular so that if needed we could expand or reduce on the scale in terms of how many milestones we want as well as the various values associated with it.
PROGRAMMING
USER INTERFACE
CONCEPTING
For the creation of UI, I worked closely with the teams Graphic Designer working out the information that needed to be displayed at various points of the game, then proceeded to go through iterations of visual styles to get something that matched with the aesthetic of the game as well as making adjustments to areas that had issues or missing information.
IMPLEMENTATION
Once the Graphic Designer had finished with creating the assets for our UI, I worked on implementing the assets into the game as well as programmed the functionality of the UI for:
- Players selecting their input device and character customisation
- When players are in a level (HP & STAM bars, Items)
- The generation and visuals of the level selection screen
- The level complete screen as well as the functionality for it to interact with the levelling system.
GAME BALANCING
BALANCING COMBAT
Through constant testing adjustments were made to the player and enemies so that combat would have a better feel and would be more balanced out throughout the game. To make this easier I created a spreadsheet to keep track of all the various values as well as do preliminary testing of the values to make sure that they all work out. This included seeing how much damage a player or enemy will deal to their counterpart as well as how many hits it would take to defeat said enemy or how many hits the player can take.
BALANCING PLAYER PROGRESSION
Along with the combat the spreadsheet also covered the players progression, from the scaling of the milestones for experience, the increases in stats per level and amount of stat points provided to the amount of enemies that would be required to progress to the next level. The numbers were adjusted in the spreadsheet and then put to the test in playtesting to make sure the impression during playing the game matches with what was balanced in the sheet.
BALANCING DIFFICULTY
As the player levels their strength increases. To make up for this the higher level the player is the more difficult levels the player can enter. Each level difficulty had different ranges and values for enemies. To keep track of all this and make sure that the levels provide enemies with the right values I created a scriptable object where all this information is stored and grabbed by the level generation when enemies are spawned.
TESTING
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
I was in charge of collecting all the data during Testing for the game. This included taking note of issues that were encountered and areas requiring adjustments or changes during internal testing, as well as making sure that during our public playtests that testers filled out a testing form for us to get a grasp of player impressions and which aspects players were dissatisfied with. We also recorded testing sessions during our public playtests for us to go through and see the common actions players took to see if there was anything that players did not understand or any bugs that were encountered during their session.
ADJUSTMENTS
With all this data collected the next step was to go through it to create a list of tasks that needed to be done in relation to this whether it be fixing bugs that were encountered to making adjustments, adding, removing or changing parts of the game based on testing observations and feedback. With these tasks created as team lead I had to give these tasks to members of the group respectively with the areas of the game that they were in charge with.
WILDSMITE - TEST PLAN
GAME DOCUMENTATION
GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT
As the Lead Designer for Wild Smite, I was in charge of Creating and Maintaining the projects Documentation from the Game Design Aspect. This specifically all came down to the Game Design Document for the project among others.
Even though Testing was handled and contributed by everyone in the Team, I was in charge of creating a structure for the documentation around testing as well as planning out the actual for both public and private testing, making sure that a plan was laid out as well as observing and making conclusions from the results of testing to influence development decisions. In terms of the actual contents my main focus in this document was centered around Testing/Observing The Level Design of Wild Smite, mainly its layout & gameplay impressions.
TEST PLAN DOCUMENT
WILDSMITE - TEST PLAN
WILDSMITE - GDD
READ THROUGH THE DOCUMENTS HERE
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