My first few months of game design school!

Unity - Honey Invader

My very first real game EVER! This is my first time programming in C# and I was so nervous to actually program anything. What if I don't understand code at all???

I am essentially starting with print string tutorials and learning what a game object is. It's only been a few months since I made this game but it feels like a lifetime ago, since I've come so far already.

I made a grid formation for the wizard spawner, so you could in theory have as many or as few wizards as you want. But I remember the codes breaks if you do too many. Also we are shooting a honey shot that gives us points if we hit the secret object or a wizard. And our barriers can break and they have 3 hit points and change image every time it's hit, notifying the player that the barrier has been hit.

There are wizards and the secret object off-screen. I'm using a random timer untill the Secret object is spawned and moves linearly across the screen for the player to hit.

Oh, and there's a cinematic too. I love it! I think I spent 2 weeks on this game, with after-school hours and weekends.

Hope you liked it!

Unity 3D HDRP - The Docks

My first ever blockout! It's based around a warehouse asset from the Unity Marketplace and also using the mechanics of hacking key objects and sneaking past cleverly placed enemies. 

I took alot of inspiration from Vampire - The Masquerade Bloodlines, the most atmospheric game ever(!), to help me as a reference to get the feeling of being alone in the night.

Highlights:

* The HDRP lighting:

 For the lighting I decided to use the HDRP. The lighting in HDRP can be worked on from the ground up, which I felt was such a cool feature if I could get it right! The tutorials are often multi-hours and several episodes long in many cases. But that's how I like it!

When you play the level I hope you take extra notice of the Boat, Apartments, The lighting from inside the warehouse through the windows of the roof and how well I've managed to close off the level using shadows.

The amount of time I spent on lighting this level I would expect to be about one third of the entire month I spent on this blockout. I hope you like it!

* The enemies location, rotation and behaviour:

The first enemy you see has his back turned against you and is placed much closer than the second path (stealth path). I want the player to investigate the first enemy a little bit the first thing he does. The is leaning towards the wall while smoking a cigarette. I'm trying to convey the message that he is in a care-free state and is not expecting a conflict at this time.

Upon sneaking up behind him, the player has the opportunity to see the other enemy in front of him. The second enemy is placed in such a way that should the first enemy be taken out, the player might find himself in combat with the second enemy.

* Clever second path:

Should the player decide to play more stealthily the player would have to find another way past the first enemy.

After going back to the broken fence and looking around, the player can see some pallets leading up to the roof access. Following this path lets the player use the hacking mechanic to shut off the lights in the level, making it easier to navigate without being seen. I spent alof of time with shadows and lighting to guide the player to the correct path. If the player would be looking down towards the second enemy and trying to jump down, the player would be landing in a well-lit area and also landing in the first and second enemy's vision. By making the yard bright I'm hoping to steer the player to the next safe location, which is dark.

* Keypad interaction

Here is my first 'minor' programming puzzle I ever made! It's a keypad that requires a specific code. You can set the code to whatever you want, but it's poorly programmed and is relying heavily on manual labor to work. I'm simply hiding and unhiding game objects. So changing the code would take maybe 10minutes of programming. It works flawlessly though. You can fail and then you get booted out. Press the correct number in the right order and you unlock the door. I was new to Unity, Programming and Game Design as a whole when I made this level, so be nice!! :D

*  Clever re-use of assets

I'm trying to sell the image of a busy warehouse while using assets in an... economic? way. I whipped up some pallets and barrels and pasted them across the level. Also I'm using one fence asset from the marketplace aswell that is copied alot too. All I'm doing is changing the angles slightly to make the level feel like it's a bit run-down, you know. Bad guys don't renovate and keep things tidy like that! Right?

Enjoy!!

Unity 3D - HDRP

I kept working in the Docks level for this puzzle. This is my very own creation! A Tomas Original! Lockpicks are done and dusted! Right??

I think I spent about a month on this, mainly on after-school hours and weekends, to make this puzzle. The programming is not just hide and unhide gameobjects anymore! It's actually pretty complicated and I had my code reviewed by the programmers a couple of times (It looked really messy).

The puzzle is solved diegetically. Meaning that the information we, the real-life-person, sees is what the player in-game can see. Roughly explained.

 The number at the top right corner of the safe is there as an aid for people that do not hear the clicks every time you rotate the dial and do a hit/miss.

Hmm... What else. I think that's it. The video will explain alot! 

Hope you like it! It was really fun to make, despite the million headaches I went through making it!

Figma - Resident Evil-inspired Inventory

This is my first time using Figma to create something more intricate, rather than finishing a school assignment.

I thought doing something like this would be pretty cool, so I did! 

The idea is that you can pick up an item, inspect it in 3D view and then find a secret compartment and click on it in the 3D viewer. Doing so would lead to you obtaining another item possibly used in a puzzle or something else really cool.

Hmm... Not much else to say. The Figma for this is a rats nest. I'll show you a picture below.

But hey, every button works and many people have tried breaking this Figma but all have been unsuccessful! ;]

Hope you like this too!

Unity 3D [Mobile Game for Group Project #2]

This is my Unity 3D Bee-car prototype to our SoapBox racing game! I made this in 1-2 hours and it helped immensely in getting us greenlit by the jury! I think it really shows what our game would be about. In this prototype you can swap out parts. Doing so changes the mechanics of the soapbox car slightly. You can also jump off small ramps and use sloped corners to assist in steering.

The judges really liked the idea and this helped them visualize what we were going for. Because of this prototype we got greenlit without any issue!

Unity 3D [Mobile Game for Group Project #2]

The final product!

You would expect me to do the Game Design for this game, but not this time! We needed a 'sound guy' and we had nobody! So I volunteered to try something new. Should just be drag and drop in sounds, right?

Not quite. I figured that out real fast!

We had an announcer and he needed to sound a certain way and say the right things at the right time. Also we needed sounds for every button. The we needed fitting music for the race and also the menus. Then crashing sounds, win sounds.. And the list goes on and on and on! [See pictures!] And of course nobody was available to program the delivery of these sounds so I had to do that too!

I downloaded Audacity and started to combine sounds from free libraries to get going on various sounds.

I went to Speechless.Games, which is an AI voice provider that I got introduced to at a convention I went too and I got some free 'Time' to use from them. So I spent it all on this one project!

I used FMOD as a middleman to alter how sound was delivered aswell. I learnt about something called 'Sidechain' that would let me lower the volume of one sound when another sound would be playing.

Along with programming and creating these sounds, my one month with FMOD went relatively well. It was just so much work having to source all sounds, edit/stitch sounds together, create coherrent voice lines and then also program delivery of each sound,... 

In my opinion I think I came out on top of this one!  Please check the video below for the sound. There are multiple levels but they essentially work the same way as this level. Also there is subtitles which I made aswell but is not activated in this video.

The game is on Itch.Io:

https://futuregames.itch.io/madboxracing

**Disclaimer; Please note! I only did Sound+Sound-related programming on this project and I only want the Sound to be submitted for consideration. I don't know how to credit everyone properly for a group project like this. But credits to everyones efforts are available at our Itch.Io page!

Unity 3D - Fishing fun!

A prototype of a game that me and three others worked on as a team!

I did the programming and came up with the idea of these, amazing!, fishing rods.

There's an AoE fishing rod, a sniper fishing rod and a normal fishing rod.

Of course the sniper rod let's you fish way further out and the Area of Effect rod let's you... well.. get more fish but you can only fish in close proximity. Obviously.

We added an Anti-air fishing rod too but there's no video of it since I just added it last minute. But it's extra potent against fishes that fly in the air in a V-formation. And of course it functions like an Anti-Air gun in real life. Obviously. 

If you can imagine that!

Unreal Engine 5 - Level Design Blockout [Assignment]

My second ever blockout! Me and two other game designers made a vertical slice where each of us made one level each and then we stitched them together to create this vertical slice. The theme we chose was Cyberpunk 2077. This project took about a month and I spent alot of time after school and on the weekends.

My level is the Second level. (roughly 7minutes in)

The narrative:

Our player steals a prototype from a Corporation. He gets caught and escapes the high-rise by jumping out of a window. He then lands ontop of a scaffolding [This is where MY level begins], and sees the Corporations private army descend on the planned escape route. He manages to reach the escape car and makes his escape by hanging on to the cars hood! After a short ride he enters the 'Quest givers' (Julians) hideout where he fights his way to get to him. We find out that we have been betrayed. Julian gives us the middle finger and the vertical slice ends.

The mechanics:

Sneaking, Hacking, Jumping, Vaulting, Running, Shooting

GAME DESIGN QUIZ TIME!

Looking at the First level at 6:50 and 10 seconds into Level 2. What do you notice is the biggest and most obvious flaw our team made when creating these blockouts? *The answer will be revealed at the bottom of this page!*

Highlights:

* Massive level with lots of thoughtful gameplay elements

This level is mainly for the stealthier type of playstyle. Every turret (Yellow) can be hacked from an interesting location or method. To find each turret location the player has to get creative, but there is always a way to find a cool path to a turret. Hacking a turret takes out every enemy in the vicinity and does not result in you being 'found out' or anything. Also hacking all 5 turrets gives the player a skill point. Which in our game is a big deal.

If timed correctly you can avoid patrols. They are very deterministic and always line up perfectly for a double-takedown or a sneak-past.

There are cinematics placed throughout the level and depending on which way the player takes he will see a variation of each cinematic event. However, the end result is the same no matter which route you take.

Also the player starts off being at a high altitude with a good view of the level. I added the scaffolding to the left side of the bridge on the opposite high-rise to make sure that the player has the opportunity to see it, as seeing it can give a hint that there's something hidden underneath the level worth exploring.

* Atmosphere

I tried to sell the vision of us being high up in the air ontop of a high-rise. We then have to travel across a bridge while avoiding the enemies (Or dealing with them!). To achieve the goal of feeling like we are ontop of the world I did a couple of things:

1.  I added flying cars beneath the player in two layers. The second layer of cars is very far down towards the ground. But even so far down there are still flying cars, not regular cars.

2. When entering the 'ventilation' that goes underneath the level I made sure that the player could look down and be exposed to the height! Imagine yourself in that situation, when looking down you see fog thickening and also flying cars!

3. Nothing is above the player. We are at the top.

* Built with cooperation in mind

I had many people playtest this level and I got a lot of great feedback. (Notice the glass panels in the beginning? Used to be steel.)

However, what I wanted to mention is that I invited a couple of Game Artists to play this level. I built this blockout with game artists in mind, and in such a way that they would 'Get it', you know? 

And they did. They could immediately see what types of assets they would need to make this level pop and they said it was very clear what type of game this is.  I'm hoping to get way better at communicating my vision to other people. Communication is a core skill of a good game designer, right?

Anyways!

Hope you like the gameplay!

Oh, and a super big thanks to Prashant Trivedi and Martin Lovén who helped mentoring me. The pictures below will show how the level was iterated upon and a huge part is due to their input.

**Quiz Answer!**

- Pre-production!

We learned a massive lesson here. Even though our levels match perfectly ON PAPER, in reality they differ quite alot. As you can see.

Creating a strong foundation before doing a blockout is essential when working in a team and you want success. I will absolutely remember this lesson when working on future projects!

Unreal Engine 5 - [Group Project #3 prototyping]

I'm finally back at prototyping!

'Biochem Nightshift' is a slow-paced detective style game with Call of Cthulhu vibes featuring eldritch horror elements.

I made a couple of prototypes to help us get greenlit. And of course we did!

For this prototype I wanted to show that the player can experience another world if his sanity has been altered.

The programming wasn't really all that complicated. I hid/unhid objects and change the color of the lighting, as well as added a hud with green hue for the swap duration.

In Eldrich Horror the color for danger isn't necessarily RED, but rather GREEN. I wanted to showcase that we understand this aswell, presenting this to the jury at the greenlight.

Unreal Engine 5 - [Group Project #3 prototyping]

I also made this for the Greenlight! 

We can pick up an item and it rotates and gets closer to the player camera before it enters our inventory. Since this game is supposed to have an inventory with 3D rotating objects, picking objects up and they are rotating makes a lot of sense. Our team loved seeing this!

Unreal Engine 5 - [Group Project #3 prototyping]

The last prototype I made was the world-changing the lower the players sanity became.

To achieve this effect I made a health bar (which does not need to be visible, and is for demonstration purposes only) that when it is lowered, the world changes, using level streaming. I am using 4 levels, where level 3 is the most chaotic level and level 1 is the normal state level.

I got a request from a member of our team to have maybe a gradual regression in sanity, but that would require maybe a hundred level streams to create a smoothe illusion. So I said no, with the condition that if we absolutely need it, I will absolutely look into it and maybe find a smart solution.

Aaand now the fun is over! No more prototyping for this project since we have what we need!  :(

Thanks! Have a nice... day or something!