Ark: Return Of The Mad Scientist (Demo/PoC)
Game Summary
A 2.5D side scrolling plat-former, Set in the Laboratories of Isaac Von-Nuke mad scientist extraordinaire. With a multitude of different weapons created by Isaac, you must take back Isaac’s home and Laboratory.
The game will have 2D characters in a 2.5D environment. I believe this can be better then having just an all 2D/3D side scrolling plat-former, Because this means we can put more detail into the background without cluttering and give more depth into the environment.
Demo Summary
This crowd funder is for a demo of this game concept, I would like to create this at a professional standard for a proof of concept. In a sense this would be the spring board to bring these characters and story into an industry environment. In The hopes that its picked up by a company that I could work with.
Reasons for this project:
I chose this as my project as a way to show and demonstrate my ability to create, that being characters, stories, models, designs and environments. My hope is to gain recognition for my work and possibly gain a work position. and above all to get my characters and ideas out there for people to see and connect with.
Cost:
In order to create and publish the game. These programs need to be payed for, to get the licencees for each of them.
Unreal engine 4: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula
Substance painter/Designer: Yearly £759.13
AutoDesk Maya: Monthly £222.00
Clip Studio Paint: https://www.clipstudio.net/en/functions/volume
Limitations and Risk assessment:
This project will be have clear limitations, those being time and man power. Since the whole project will be run by myself, meaning I will have to work effectively and on schedule. Meaning if I become ill progress on the project will cease.Also since this is a Demo/PoC it will likely be a case of an unpolished looking game, how ever this is to be expected. Along side this project I will also be focusing on other pieces of college work, so I will have to keep that in mind and keep them all in balance. Finally this all hinges on my own abilities, knowledge and skills in creating and finishing the project.
Project value:
The value in this project will come from being able to showing future investors and companies a functioning concept for a full game. As the result of this project will be a playable demo, that would be more enticing to any investor because its would be more tangible then just a design document.
Back story summary
Isaac part 1:
Isaac was young genius that sort great knowledge in science. His inventors help a great number of people around the world, but soon after Isaac was obsessed with obtaining knowledge, that in the end he shut himself away from the world in an old mansion atop a hill.
Base:
The mansion was originally owned by a deranged old man who hated ALL people. The mansion was up for sale after the old man died of a heart attack whiles climbing the stairs. Isaac bought the mansion as soon as he saw that the back garden off the cliff was a grave yard. This would later become Isaac’s Base of operations and home.
Isaac part 2:
After getting the mansion Isaac used the money he earned from his many inventions, and started the creation of his soon to be base of operations. He continued making marvels in the medical field and domestic areas. As he kept building and creating he went mad power and his sanity slowly dwindled away.
Assistant:
Isaac had an assistant back before his obsession with knowledge took a hold of him. His assistant was a woman he was friends with, back when they were children. But during an experiment she lost her life, the experiment brought Isaac close to the brink of death and cost him his right eye; oddly the experiment turned half of Isaac’s and his assistant’s hair white. Due to Isaac’s beloved assistant’s death, he soon started searching for a way to bring her back to life and after several years he did it But she wasn’t the same as before, She was lifeless and showed little to no emotion (at first, but) with this Isaac truly lost his mind in insanity.
Character Design Summary
Isaac von-Nukton:
Rough designs:
-Black and white hair
-Lab coat
-Stitches
-Grey Shirt and bottoms
-eye patch (robotic right eye)
Assistant:
Rough designs:
-White and black hair
-Stitches
-Lab coat
-Jumper
-knee high boots
-robot arms
Planned schedule
This is the timescale I plan to follow for this project, I’ve made is a little longer than i normally planned so if I need any extra work finalising little bits.
Standards, Legislation and ethics
For this demo I plan to aim for the Pegi 12 area for a base, if this were a full game I would like to aim for this kind of rating as well, since I plan to have mild violence in the future, but since this is just a PoC/Demo I wont have to worry too much about a rating.
This project should not have any legislation or ethical implications.
Similar projects Research
These projects are the kind of style and layout of a game that I want to use to create my demo.
Blog Updates
Development of the Re-animation Laboratory
01/10/2018 to 10/12/2018
Here I have researched and created a full 3D environment of my reanimation lab, I plan to be able to convert this into a 2D environment with little difficulty.
17/12/2018 to 18/03/2019
Before I can begin texturing the rest of the demo, I defiantly need to work on my texture and material skills, I would Love to get my final demo textured, even if its rough, I mainly plan to texture the props in my demo.
Developing skills in Unreal engine 4
25/03/2019 to Project end
This is my other project that I’ve been working on along side this one because of the skills and techniques I have learnt here I hope to carry them over to this project.
Weekly Updates
21/01/2019
This week I worked on re-scaling the reanimation lab, in order to have it fit for purpose here in my game, it would be great if I can get this to be my final level in the demo.
01/04/2019
This week I have extended the range of the project to include a graveyard area and the inside of the mansion, the areas that lead up to the re-animation lab, I began and finished the model for the mansion, as the mansion wont be seen close up, i don’t need to worry about the level of detail.
After finishing the model I also began creating the graveyard area in unreal, this is the start of in engine development.
08/04/2019
More Modelling:
This week, for the graveyard area I created a few items that could be placed around the area, such as a mausoleum that the player can walk through, plus of course gravestones.
I wanted to keep the models simple, since a simple model wouldn’t impact the performance of the computer, plus . could always make more detailed models later down the line. So these models are more fit for the purpose of this demo.
15/04/2019
This week I have created the basic level layout in unreal 4, although it may appear simple, it is a big step forward for the project, since I can now, map out the graveyard area
This week I have also been able to create the 2D character blueprint, originally the level blueprint called for a 3D character blueprint, but I was able to apply a 2D character to the level, Although there were difficulties in getting the character facing the right way.
13/05/2019
This week I began the first Play test, just to make sure the level was complete-able, I noted that some areas were more difficult to traverse, I will be fixing these this week too.
I’ve also begun testing Unreal lighting for the demo I want the pits to glow as the player jumps over them, this is been a bit of a pain since if i build the lighting the glow stays no matter what, I’ll need to look into this.
Its clear at this point in the project that I will not be able to create the 2d animations at this time. If this was more than a one man team, I’m sure a lot more could have been done here.
27/05/2019
This week I started the first full play test of the demo.
In this play test (1) a problem was noted with returning to the mansion level was discovered in where the player would appear in the wrong place.
03/06/2019
This week In order to fix the problem I found last week I re-organizing/optimizing level layouts and level switches, In the level and level blueprint. Put simply i had to create a copy of the mansion level, with the character spawn in different locations corresponding to the correct positions of the area the player acme from.
10/06/2019
This week is the final round of play tests, I want to make sure the demo works as intended before this project ends.
This play test (2) uncovered I still had a problem with loading the mansion level.
This play test (3) uncovered an error with loading the grave yard level, this error was a simple one, in which I had accidentally miss spelled “graveyard” in the level blueprint and put “gravetard” by mistake, a simple key miss hitting the t key instead of y key.
In this play test (4) thankfully all the levels load as intended and I am quite satisfied with the end result.
End
Project Evaluation
Here at the end of this project here is my evaluation of how the project turned out, how I handled it and areas of improvement, for myself and this project.
My specification for the this project was to create a demo for a 2.5D side scrolling plat-former to put my game concept forward as a base for a full game, with characters and story. I wanted a functioning level for the demo, with a 2d background and character, with a 3d foreground, I had planned to have a interactive environment of the re-animation lab, with animations, lighting, textures and drawn characters.
Before I began my project, I had researched budgets for the programs I would use, as if I were creating this project alone without the college. I found all of the resource I needed and I created a schedule I wanted to follow, However with the information I needed for the budget I still didn’t know how to work with this information, so I just put them on the crowd funder page. where the schedule I feel and know that it was a rough plan and I knew I wouldn’t be able to follow it, I always have trouble with schedules both in planning and following them. I really need to get handle on schedules the next time I’ll need to create one, because this one was now detailed or accurate to what I needed.
So at the start of this project I also had another project that ran along side this one, so I decided to use this time to combine my work together, since this is the environment that I wanted to create for this project. I wanted to save time and be able to keep myself free to create more stuff for this project. I also used this project to do research into my chosen environment, that being a reanimation lab, like in “Frankenstein’s monster”. This only took the first term to complete, After this I thought that I could take it a little easier.
Come the second term, I mainly worked on developing my character drawing skills since at this point I still thought I would be able to create animated characters, this was also because another project called for me to develop my drawing skills, so I thought that this would be the best way to spend my time, by having multiple projects linked to my games concept and characters. as well as this I was also developing my texture creation skills too, it was around this point I started to get a little over whelmed, Since all these thing were going to be what I’d need for my project final production. But even with feeling overwhelmed with all of the areas I wanted to improve my skills in. near the end of this term I had finished the texturing project and started another project, one that I would become the project leader for and would take all of my focus, though this project was extremely relevant to this project, since I’d be creating a game level and the game it would be in, since I was the group leader.
Then came the third and final term was when I realized that my plans had not turned out quite as planned. At this point I had really been focused on the other game project that this project wasn’t a priority, I at this point let myself fall behind in this project, there was a lot of time pored into the group project that I decided to I would also link my level to this project by creating the outside graveyard area for the mansion the reanimation lab would take place in. After expanding the range for my game demo, I tried putting it all together, which lead me to realize my shortcomings for this project. There was no way I could create a playable level, character animations and textures. So I decided to focus on one of these aspects and that was a playable level. I wanted to do so much more, but alas that wasn’t going to happen at this point.
So my end result is a playable “game”, with a 2d character, a death conduction, moving platforms, lighting and functional level switch layout, however the levels are simple and are basic block outs with more detailed models. Looking back on this project, Its clear that I still need to work on my management skills, since I was working in multiple project at the same time, even with the link between them being the same setting, the same story and all, I still wasn’t able to create a demo to the standard that i wanted it too be. It ended up being overly simple and basic.
Moving forward I now have the skills and knowledge to create a game in unreal engine 4, thanks to both this project and another. If I were to try creating a demo for this game concept again, I know I’d be able to create it to a standard I’d be happy with. The level of detail I’d be able to put into a unreal level is a lot higher then when I started this project. For example, I know I’d be able to be able to create a more complex system blueprint, I now know how to create a re-spawn death screen, a pause menu, start menu, win and lose conditions, collectibles and animations. I confident that any unreal level I create in the future will be of a higher standard. Its also safe to say if it weren’t for the amount of work I had to do for the other project I’d of created something better, but I don’t believe I would of gained the knowledge and skills I have now.
DeathRoe Games 