Friday 23 June 2017

Unit 4-5 Assignment P3P4 1617

Unit 4-5 Assignment P3P4 1617

Since the start of the year the development off our game has changed drastically. Below are the initial ideas we had based on the brief.

Gameplay: For our first idea we decided to create a game based on the style of gameplay found in the Devil May Cry series and a style of fighting based on the popular JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series' "Stands", spirits with special abilities that appear from a user and fight. The demographic we would be aiming for would be a teen audience due to the violent nature of what we are aiming for but the lack of intense gore we feel stops it becoming a Mature Only game.

Protagonist: The protagonist Kenny Lown (K.Lown) becomes possessed by a demonic clown spirit after trying it on in a costume shop, be begins making his way through town and becomes driven to murder all in his way. In combat the clown spirit emerges from K. Lown and does the fighting.

Starting Weapon: Because of how we chose to we wanted the style of combat to be we decided the player's starting weapons, wielded by the clown, are a giant hammer melee weapon, and Water Balloons, a low impact projectile weapon. Due to the nature of the appearance of clowns being ridiculous and the juxtaposition that creates when compared to the murderous intent of the clown spirit in this project we decided that the weapons should have a "silly yet sinister" feel to them.

Unlockable Weapons: In order to vary the player's combat some of the possible unlockable weapons would be Balloon nun-chucks melee weapons, Balloon Rapier melee weapon, Cartoon Chainsaw melee weapon,
handkerchief chain with low damage, good range, able to pull enemies closer as well, and custard pies as a mid impact projectile weapon and an upgrade from the water balloons.

Items: In order to keep with the Devil May Cry style of gameplay, we decided to try and incorporate many varid items for use in combat such as;
Acid Flower (activates on low health, cancels enemy attack to prevent death, one time use)
Silly String (use to immobilise enemy's for a short time)
Trap whoopee cushion (enemy triggers it, cloud of gas released and damages enemy)
Candy floss (Candy Floss S heals %33 of your health, Candy Floss L heals %75 of your health)
Puppet Show (distracts enemies for a short period of time)
Balloon Dog (tracks enemies, pops on impact and deals low damage briefly staggering enemies)
Snake Tin Prank (Trap that damages single target when triggered)

Save Point: As the save point, in order to keep the clown them, the save point we want to use a circus style tent.

Enemies:
Stage 1: Skaters
Stage 1 Boss: Skate Leader
Stage 2: Jocks
Stage 2 Boss: Coach
Stage 3: Biker Gang
Stage 3 Boss: Biker Leader

3D model dersigns: For this project we decided to base our 3D models off those found in the game JoJo's Bizzare Adventure: Eyes of Heaven.


Idea 2 Survival Horror: After stumbling across the crash site of a crashed alien space craft the player is knocked out by a strange clown and soon wakes up on an operating table, the player then has to try and escape from the nightmarish alien Clowns and the horrifying experiments they're trying to perform on you.


Idea 3 FPS: one of our back up ideas is a simple FPS more based on the movie Killer Klowns From Outerspace, where you play as the hero of the film as you chase down clowns after they kidnap your friend Debbie.

What Changed:
As the year went on it gradually became more apparent that due to time constraints as well as the technical limitations we had that it wouldn't be possible for us to achieve the goals set out within our first 2 ideas so instead of a third person beat em up/hack 'n slash or a straight up survival horror we decided it was best to use the basis of the third idea, a First Person Shooter, but wanted to attempt to blend in some of the elements of idea 2 and set it in a more interesting setting than a standard town. Thus i ended up setting the game on an island prison. This prison, including all the cells, walls, bridge, gate, guard post, benches and basket ball hoops, were made from scratch in the 3D modelling software maya the parts of the environment such as the islands and water however were created using the features available in the Unreal engine 4.







I also therefore had to change the story of the game, instead of playing as one of the heroes of the film the player now plays as an inmate of the prison who is awoken by a sudden scream, he goes to investigate to find his cell door suddenly unlocking, he then exits the cell and finds a dead guard and after picking up his weapon he spots the first clown shortly before finding out that everyone is already dead and he must now fight his way out if he is to survive. The size and amount of levels also had to change to fit the new setting as now instead of three separate levels of intermediate size I decided it was best to have one very large level with a detailed environment, thus the prison two separate was given multiple floors filled with cells, a large courtyard with a great amount of benches as well as some basket ball hoops for the prisoners that would be there, a large bridge stretching from the main island to a sub island with a guard booth and many other bridges and islands going off into the distance. Sadly I also had to remove the high number of unique and interesting weapons that I wanted the player to be able to find as they no longer had a place within the game, instead using a simpler gun. Next the player and enemies had to be coded to perform the actions such as enemies chasing the player and doing damage, enemies dying upon being shot, adding a health bar for the player, and having the player respawn and begin again in the starting cell upon death. During development I have had to deal with many bugs, some of which i have sadly been unable to identify the cause of and fix, others that were fixed include problems with the enemies being destroyed upon the player killing them where they would simply keep coming instead as well as issues with getting the health bar to appear on screen.

Improvements;
Whilst we were able to accomplish a great many things in creating the game there are several notable improvements i would have liked to have made. The first is an idea from earlier in development where i had wanted to add a mini boss for the player to fight which would have been larger, dealt more damage and took several shots more to defeat than the standard enemies. I also wanted to add a far greater amount of textures as most models sadly look rather plain with a simple chrome look to them but every time we tried to add new textures unreal would crash and lose large amounts of data. I also wanted to add items player to be able to use many different weapons with different perks and weakness for fighting the enemies. The lighting is another area i wish i had been able to improve in order to give the environment a far creepier feel to them so as to make the threat from the enemies feel greater. I also wanted to add a skyline off towards the background of the map so it looked far less barren in the distance. As well as this we had also created a clown model in Maya and downloaded a second one that we wished to use as skins for the enemies though sadly we were unable to get the animations to work so they had to be left out, as well as models for dead guards and inmates we had wanted littered around the environment. I would also have liked to add a death animation for the enemies so they do not just despawn suddenly once defeated. I also wanted to a bug that is still present where the player will take damage for no discernible reason. Lastly i wanted to improve the way the water texture flows as it is rather visibly choppy.

Evaluation:
I feel that where different from the initial ideas we had the game still fits the brief of being based on the movie Killer Klowns From Outer Space as the prison setting itself was inspired by the scene in the town jail.

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