#qworks

Hey there, have a look at my final project made at uni, this was made with a team of 5, I am very proud of this since none of the team were animators or graphic designers but with what skill we had we still made this fun as hell game.

I was the lead game and level designer for this project.

So now with studio 3 over, here is the final product from the studio. Starting with a team of six finishing with a team of seventeen, this would have to be the biggest game I’ve worked on while at uni. 

For those who would like to download it, you’ll need a phone that is running Android. You can download it via the QR code or the link just here: https://howlj.itch.io/graveyard-shift

Here is another update on the Studio 3 game, which now has a name Graveyard Shift. Here is a quick mock up I made for the overview world map showing the progression for the player as they make their way though the game. We’ve got a artist working on making this game worthy so I can’t wait to see that soon.

It comes to that time of the trimester were we must reflect on our time during this tri and talk about how we think we did as well as what we learned though out it. I’ll be splitting up my group and solo project into two different posts as not to confuse myself and others who read this (mostly myself).

The group project – Spoils of War: Once Kahne had done his project pitch, I was looking forward to working on his idea, a 2D side-scrolling real time strategy game set in World War I, and then once we all got together talking about what needed to be done and setting roles, I was super pumped to set out and work on this project. I was given lead level designer with one other member to help me out, and we both set out to nail down the level design since it was really the first thing that needed to be done. As for my work on this project, the level design was really the only major thing I had to do and once I was done, I sort of sat back but not completely, as if other people needed help I was there to do so, which I did with assets design and mostly research for other members of the group.  

I’ll start with cons since I like to finish on positive notes. For me, after the level and research were out of the way, I was sort of behind on how the project was coming along, I all ways asked if there was anything I could help with but the team was on top of it or it was something I couldn’t do and ever since I saw the first prototype I never downloaded it but just asked the others how they think the game was going, which every response I got was “good” or “It’s ok” and after playing it on the final day I wish I had play tested before the final day because by the time I did and spotted all the bugs, we had no time to fix them in them. The team sort of also fell apart in the last few hours as everyone started to focus on their solo projects as well as their post-mortems, I sort of half expected to see this happen on the last day since everyone is stressing out over getting everthing ready for handing in, me included.

Now the pros. We worked really well up to the point I talked about above but in the time we did it really well, everyone was in consent contact with each other and knew what the others were up too. This helped get the big parts of the project out of the way fast, like the level design, assets and the prototype when we got the programmer on the job. The audio was fully covered to thanks to the audio students that jumped on board, if anything we had too many audio guys working at once, which isn’t bad since all the audio was done in like two weeks.

My final thoughts, I loved working on such a big project but wish I helped out more as well as having more time for the others to fix up the bugs we found.

Thanks for reading and until next time

See ya

It comes to that time of the trimester were we must reflect on our time during this tri and talk about how we think we did as well as what we learned though out it. I’ll be splitting up my group and solo project into two different posts as not to confuse myself and others who read this (mostly myself).

The solo project – Underground: I really loved working on this, I had a lot of fun trying to figure stuff out on my own. I’m not going to lie, I did have a lot of help from the guys at uni including both students and teachers and I couldn’t have gotten my game to the point it is now without them. I still have a long way to go with Unreal Engine 4 before I call myself a pro but I now have the necessary skills to start up a prototype to get my idea across to someone.

I’ll start here with the cons of this project that I see in myself now that we’re at the end of this trimester. First is the feedback from my teacher, back in week 7 or 8 when I showed of my sprite sheet for my character, he pointed out some stuff that I should of fixed right away instead of holding off till the every end, he also told me to change my level environment sprites, which I also held off till the last week to change. In my head, I had it set out to at least get a working game out then work on the stuff that that he wanted me to change, in hindsight I should of changed it that week he told me, since now I have to re-import it all into my game then set it all back up.

The pros on the other hand, since I had the time to focus on this solo project primarily, I had a lot of time to research into Blueprinting for UE4 which was good because I have never used Blueprints before this tri, at first I was overwhelmed by the amount of information that was out there on the subject but as I kept looking into them, I started to figure out the right terms to search and places I should be going to first.

Trimester Post-mortem: Now for how I did over the whole trimester, at the start I was sort of shy when it came to showing my work to others as I seemed to have it that my work must be perfect before I do, and since I didn’t have much confidence in myself this made me think that my work wasn’t good enough to how to the rest of the class when it came time to present it. Over the last 13 weeks, I’ve been building this confidence up in my skills to present my work to other people, which for me was sort of a wall I’ve been needing to knock down, I still get a bit nervous why I stand up in front to present but I believe I’m getting better with it. I’m also more confident in my own skills when it comes to doing something new, at the start of the tri when I came across something new and I wasn’t comfortable with it, I would sort of not try very hard to overcome it but now I try a lot harder to understand what I’m trying to do.

Thanks for reading and until next time

See ya

Spoils of War or SoW for short, is a 2D side-scrolling, real time strategy game that puts the player in command of a group of Allied tunnellers from World War I created by Light Horse Studios. The player’s objective in SoW is to mine under No-man’s land and into the enemy’s side to plant bombs and blow it up, while doing this the player must make their tunnellers survive the events that can take place in the mines.

We at Light Horse Studios aimed to create a game that shows players the intense raw emotional and physical nightmares that the men of WWI had to endure and help the player appreciate the scale and horror of the conflict that took place in that time period. From a mechanical point of view, this was done by giving players the option of choosing who was on their team to complete the game, these characters can be killed though out the game but cannot be replaced once they are dead, making the player think about what they should do next with their team. Environment hazards and enemies can all kill the player’s team, so the player must manage all six members on their team to insure no one dies.

So last week was our mechanical lock off, meaning that all the mechanics in the game are what will appear in our final product and nothing else can be added to the game. So with that now locked down I have had the week to reflect on how the first nine weeks of this tri went regarding the group project.

First thing I thought about was the want I did to help make the game and as I thought about it I started to think that I hadn’t done much at all but then I remembered how big the group really was. The group that is working on this project has grown much bigger than I thought it would, with seven game designer students (all of the studio two guys), ten audio students and two programmers, the work load on us was fairly nice, I haven’t heard anyone complain about the load yet which is a good sign for such a big game as Spoils of War (SoW for short). As for what I’ve done, I now see that it was a lot in the long run, I was given head level designer and had another studio two member as a level designer to help out, which we nailed the level design in under two weeks. Once that was done, my role as head level designer was over but my work was not. Over the next few weeks I was given little tasks like research into WWI veteran’s lives during the war as well as looking into medals given out for WWI. I also helped out with some designs of the enemy team and a few tools that can be found though out the mines.

I feel like this project is going smoothly and that we will have an awesome game at the end of the tri, which is only three weeks away now, time is going by so fast. Our next objective is to start testing, which I hope will start today.

So until next time

This week was group project time, so we spent the better part of the week pitching our ideas to each other and trying to decide which one we all wanted to work on. We ended up going with the game Spoils of War, a game based around the trench warfare in World War 1. The research we were given was to look over Beneath Hill 60, a 2010 Australian film, around the WWI Australian diggers that blow up Hill 60, coursing the biggest explosion at that point in time. Looking over this film twice (once for the enjoyment and the other to analyse it) was a really good way to see what it was like during WWI but more research had to be done and I was given lead Level Designer for this game so I started with depth and width of no man’s land (The place between the two warring sides) from there I then went to want dirt was found in the area I was looking at, so a little bit boring but at the same time I’m really excited about this game which is what makes me continue on with my research.

I’m sorry this week’s blog is a little short but all I really did was research dirt and size, which took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Anyway until next time

See you around