Unit 4 – Production Management Project & Unit 5 – Working to a brief in Media

Initial Ideas and thought process

As I mentioned previously, I had an initial concept for the game which I chose not to go with - I planned on creating a first-person horror, script heavy based game, with cinematic cameras, cut-scenes, a heavier story line, jump-scares, etc. This concept was set to be in a late night lonely office environment, with clowns chasing you around trying to kill you. The concept really never developed beyond that point, since I chose not to progress with it - although, I didn't completely got rid of it, I simply adapted it to the new concept which I'll mention.

However, I decided that this wasn't the best idea for a game, since I am a one man team, with no experience. 

This is when I moved on to another concept - the one I stuck with, a first-person, arena/arcade, round-based clown shooter (similar to COD Zombies). This concept was set to also be in a late night lonely office, except you could now walk out of the office, into the street.

The backstory would be the following - you are an office employee that has a tone of work to do and little time, so you decide to stay at the office instead of going home, for a late night session of working. However, the amount of stress and tiredness upon you is larger than the amount of work and sanity that you still have, and therefore you fall asleep and hallucinate in a dream. The lucid dream makes you think there are clowns chasing you, the clowns representing your co-workers, tasks, fears and stress overall. This fight for your physical life in the dream represents the fight for your mental and social health in-real life.

Needless to say, the gameplay for this concept represents the dream.

In terms of gameplay, I wanted the game to have certain pick-ups, such as health and possibly others that would boost your players character briefly. I wanted clowns chasing you, trying to kill you, and you having to defend yourself with a guns (plural because I also wanted to have multiple guns).

In terms of environment, as I said, I wanted an office, and a street area by the office, with stores on one side of the road, the office and another building (which took my a while to decide what). I wanted a late night time setting, with fog to emphasise the fact that it was all a dream.

Development process and how it meets the original brief

The transaction between the first game concept to the second one was a successful idea in my opinion. It allowed me to save time from potential scripting, animating and story-telling, whilst still letting me be creative with not only the looks of the game but the coding and troubleshooting.

In terms of gameplay, both in technical and practical aspects, the game could have been better. Some parameters such as the concept of having clowns, guns, health packs, round-based, clowns chasing you and all the killing - were met.

As for parameters such as the concept of having more guns and more special pick-ups, those weren't met.

There were a lot of challenges I had to go through while coding the game. Numerous bugs with blueprints - some were resolved, some were kind of resolved, some were not and forced me to take different paths. 

An example I can give is the enemy spawner, I had to completely remake certain blueprints in order to spawn clowns. The healing pickups and HUD also brought some complications.

There were a few big changes from the brief that occurred: the gamemode mechanic - it was planned to be a round-based game, play until you die, although it turned out more of a difficulty setting based game (with easy, medium and hard difficulties), play through difficulties. This was due to complications with coding as well as lack of time;
There was neither gun variety or pick-up variety. This was due to lack of time and experience;
The gameplay changed due to a huge bug with the AI - the pawn-sensing not working as intended with the spawn portal. When the clowns spawn through the portal, they will stand still, instead of roaming around like they are supposed to. This damages the gameplay and feel of the game really bad.

In terms of environment, the brief was 110% met, everything ended up looking exactly how I wanted it to. Again, there were challenges throughout the development, due to inexperience mainly, although, they were all surpassed. I recall having a lot of trouble with the park, because I had to learn how to use foliage. There were a lot of issues with the LODs and draw distances, as well as lighting and props since they were causing performance issues.

The main changes to the original brief were: I decided what the missing building was going to be (a public park). Other than that, there weren't any other major changes, and everything turned out almost identical to the brief.

In conclusion

The best feature in the game, in my opinion is the environment, especially the park and the night time setting with fog. I think it simply looks stunning. The place makes sense to have a small public park, which looks amazing, enhances and emphasises the power of the Unreal Engine by showcasing the foliage tool - animated, realistic grass, flowers, etc. This combined with the late night setting, dark blue sky tone, and last but not least the intense fog and fog clouds, in my opinion, make the game look awesome. 

Needless to say, the landscape was the main focus of the game, since it allows me to use one of my stronger tools - creativity.

Although, you can't just judge the game by the looks. I recognise that the gameplay was bad, even though the idea was there - the delivery wasn't good, yes mainly due to bugs but still.

Overall, I think I did a decent job.