Overview
Pitch
Reel of Imagination is a narrative driven and combat oriented fishing game where your character bond with their father through the act of fishing.
With your imagination you gain control of your fishing lure which gives you the opportunity to explore the bottom of the lake to navigate the ultimate catch
Goals
This is our exam project for my studies at Futuregames as a Game Designer. My intention of going solo instead of a group project is mainly to be able to focus on my own growth and to be able to showcase the skills that I carry. Working in a team has it’s benefits, but in shorter projects I’ve now experienced that visions, goals and effort put in can differ in various degrees. Going solo lets me have 100% ownership and creative freedom to work on whatever comes to mind.
My goals are a mix of getting to learn more about and work with roles and tasks that have been lower priority in our school project or I haven’t had fully grasped yet. As well as learning a bit of and getting an understanding of working in other fields, for example art and VFX, to have a broader understanding of their tasks. With the intent to have an easier time discussing and understanding ideas from these fields.
My goal in terms of for the exam project is to have a fully functional and presentable prototype demo with a gameplay time of minimum 20 minutes. Deadline: 22nd December.
My long term goal is to continue working on this project after the exam hand in. I intend to release the game on itch.io and on Steam as a free to play game. The reason for making it free to play is to make it easier to let more players play the game.
My priorities
- Economy/Resource Design
- Gameplay Design
- System Design
Other priorities, but on a lower scale
- Narrative Design
- Cinematic Design
Engine and tools
- Unreal Engine 5.3
- Blender
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
I will also experiment and try to learn these tools at some point of this game project. Not necessarily within the schools exam project
- Rokoko Vision for motion capture animation
- Machination for prototyping systems
- Articy to have an overview of the narrative
- FMOD for adaptive music
How I’ll be working
Standard core working hours will be between 10:00 – 16:00 which will include or exclude resource gathering, research or further educating myself.
Mentor
Week 1
Week 1 started of with a full day of planning, reference gathering and some basic designing of the gameplay loop. The game idea came to mind prior to the project start and was mostly just mental notes. I later prototyped some mechanics that I feel that I would use in some way in the future.
Mechanics prototyped:
“Swimming”
Targeting
Homing Projectile
Week 2
Continued working on more basic mechanics and features that eventually will be needed for the game.
Built and implemented:
Interaction
Health
Dynamic camera system
Change level
Going through my first thought process of the gameplay loop
Week 3
Started working more on advanced combat mechanics and systems to have a solid foundation which I later can iterate further on. I’ll be using Tag system together with Event Dispatchers that will listen for when tags are active or activated to determine different states like Attacking, Afflicted or Dead. Currently the combat uses animation notify to trigger damage collision. I’ll have to see if I continue using this or if I find a better way to do it that fits my game.
Following Epics documentation I also implemented a simple AI that can sense the player and move towards it.
Additionally I’ve added a basic dialogue system that I’ll polish a bit when I have time.
Experience and Level System
Designed and prototyped AI
Weapon equipping
Attack and damage through animation notify
Week 4
Started on a very basic level block out to start get a sense on how big I want the level to be. My goal was to have a prototype demo ready for Futuregames Award that had an application deadline at 17th of November. But that has now been delayed to 3rd of December instead. So I’ll have more time to work and get a feel how big I can make the demo.
Polished up the dynamic camera system so that cameras can pan and/or tilt in more interesting ways. With this system I now can do a better visual storytelling and make certain parts of the game more cinematic.
I also spent some time with my mentor to debug and sort out some issues I had with my experience and leveling system. The player now properly gets rewarded experience whenever they kill something.
Level block out
Death and experience reward to killer
Updated dynamic camera system
Week 5
I decided to try out making my own animation for the attacks for starters. I believe that if the damage is done through the animation it can feel more responsive and give proper feedback to the player. I still have to tweak the keyframes a bit, since that after some testing the notify collision doesn’t cover as much of the area as I want.
I therefor also made my own little lure model! It’s pretty cute! But I haven’t figured out how to export the texture that I projected on the model.
Basic modeling and animation
Implementation of my own assets
Week 6
Polished the damage point sockets to cover damage area more properly.
Started designing the resources a bit. I intend to have resources that will connect the Surface Level and the Lake Level through the games economy.
Example: The Lure collects Exp Points through combat and exploration in the Lake Level. The Boy collects Trash in the Surface Level. In the Surface Level the Boy can convert Exp Points and Trash in combination to craft an upgrade to the Lure.
Setup a basic Skill Tree which converts EXP to acquire skill.
Added camera lag to the Lure Character for more less static feel.
Week 7
Remade the AI slightly. Made it able to attack and damage me by having it inherit the same abilities that the player do. Will create unique animations for enemies attack.
Made so that the boss fish can spawn after collecting all of the collectibles in the level. It’s rough though. Since I have currently (30th Nov) have to put in specific XYZ coordinates in Spawn Actor from Class. Tried to use an Actor with a Billboard component and place it in the level to determine the spawn location, but it returns None so far. Will have to research.
Found out that enemies sensed other enemies as their enemies as well, since they didn’t have any filter on their perception. So they were aggressive to any actor that was inherited from the player actor. I fixed this with adding a tag to both player and enemy.
The enemy actors could still damage each other while they were targeting and attacking the player. The attack notify trigger also triggered on other enemy actors collision box. I fixed this in the event where damage is attempted to be applied, to check if the damage dealer actor and the attempted damaged actor both has Enemy Tag, then ignore to deal damage.
Created 2 additional attack animation in blender and created a combo montage for the player.
Did some small level design for one area.
Attempted to add SFX for dialogue typewriter text.
Week 8
Week 8 has been a week to get grounded in my current state. To see where I am and what I can accomplish within the exam project timeline. Spent a day to go over the progress and plan for the next weeks.
I’ve also had a meeting with our Head of Education to discuss my status in looking for internship. I told her about my current strategy in applying for internship and we went over my resume and cover letter. I got some pointers on how to improve the cover letter. I also got encouraged to focus a bit more on the job hunting for internship and not stressing too much on the exam project.
I spent more time on polishing the portfolio after some feedback. Applied for
Created an actor that can reward the player with both experience and all sorts of currencies. Currently in a crude state where I’ll just have to manually write how much of each currency to reward the player.
Status
Production is on a minor halt until an opportunity for internship or work, or if I’ll proceed with a contract work through school if neither of those occur.
When I pick up production again I plan to spend roughly 10-20 hours per week on the project.