Prototype Light
I am in a group with Sasha and a game designer from the game design course, Marian, creating a game for our FMP. The general premise of the game, alongside the gameplay is as such:
Character Design
Being the character designer and modeller, I created various concepts of characters we could use based on the characters environment. Here are the 4 concepts I made:
As a group, we decided that we want to pursuit our initial showcase of the game in a sort of Alien planet environment in order to make our game stand out a bit more with unique environment and character design aspects. We chose the last elvish looking outfits for this environment. I played around with different colour combinations till I found one that suited my idea of what outfit would suit the concepts that Sasha created for the environment.
I started to model both the male and female models using a base mesh I already used for the previous project, this time having a more complicated model to work with due to having so many different pieces to the clothing.
I used the Human IK rig preset from Maya in order to make the rig initially as I wanted to animate the characters. We however decided to use Mixamo, which creates animation FBX’s for you which we can use for the project. I had to adjust some of the generated rigs skinning in order to make it work perfectly for my models.
Environment Modelling
After I have done the characters for our general environment, it was time to make architectural models for us to use and scatter about, alongside some rocks and spawn points, and such. I decided to create these based on images I found online as I’m not the best at creating concept designs for environments.
Based on these images I found from games, movies, and concepts from different artists, I started to make different assets in a grid so that we can have a specific size for the modular assets, in order to have them tile together nicely.
We decided to use vertex painting to create the stylised look of our game. I split the workload with Sasha so that we can speed up the colouring process.
Music Production
I took the task of creating music for the game due to having a bit of music making experience from the past. I used Garageband in order to make my music loops that we can stack together from time to time, based on the difficulty of incoming obstacles, or the pace of the gameplay mid way throughout the gameplay.
I decided to make the music easy to work with for our game by making the beats at 120BPM, meaning there’s a beat every half a second, and it’s very easy to animate things on that beat cycle.
I had to make two different songs, one for the tutorial (electronic beat) and for the alien planet (fantasy electronic beat). I ended up making two songs, and a backup song as I wasn’t sure which song was suitable for the alien planet.
(Lost the file on Garageband for the tutorial level, but have the music)
Level Design + Production Assistance
During the music production, we had the assistance workshop, where we had Manny and Azhar from the year below us, help in producing assets and the level design of the alien planet level. I helped with the level design in Unity while making the music.
This is the complete level we have made. Sasha colour coded everything to make it clear for the game designer, what is what. We now simply need to import and arrange our assets across the entire level, and hopefully be close to finished.
Here’s a small gameplay of the initial blockout before any assets were added in.
After this was finished, Sasha began to place assets into the game in order to build up an environment. Using the aesthetic she added into the game, me and Manny took the task of creating the poster for the game. Manny made a few concepts for the posters, which can be found on his blog: https://manuelmdx.tumblr.com/
Based on his drawings, and some ideas I gathered online, I myself made a few concepts for how the poster could using quick 3D model renders. I wanted the poster to be more of a render of the game itself, rather than a separate drawing as I wanted to capture the feeling the game gave the player, rather than have it in a completely different style.
In the end, we had created this:
With a bit of tweaking done by myself and Sasha, we changed a few things, and I composed the typography using a font I found on daFont.com, and a few changes made by me:
During this time, Marian worked on the coding for the game to make the animations of the character fit in, as well as get everything ready for us to just drag and drop, and assign tags to whatever we need. We used animations from Mixamo as we did not have enough time to make every animation by hand, with the amount of animations we’d need to create. Afterwards, I helped Marian to put the animated orbs into the game, as well as the music to be coded in based on timed loops.
Sasha continued adding more assets into the game. After EGX Rezzed, which I could not attend unfortunately, leaving Sasha to take care of the game during this time, I recorded clips of the gameplay, and scenery within Unity to create a gameplay trailer.
I composed the shots in After Effects, and began working on the website for our game. Here is the final video of the game:
The game can be downloaded and played from the link provided by Sasha:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoSewRmNqO6DhF6X1WlFyC9hZESJ
Here is the link to our website, showcasing the game:
https://adriangabrysz0508.wixsite.com/prototypelight