Hiya, and welcome to the first post of my journey as a member of Velociradish Studios (formerly Radish Studios). Here I will be posting our team’s progress, lessons as well as other musings throughout the course of development!
As a hybrid artist/project manager, my main duties in the team are mostly related to making sure our projects move forward, whether that be coordinating the team, writing out the necessary documentation, and acting as the team’s liaison. Otherwise I fill the shoes of whatever role or position is required of me, and am wearer of many hats. I wear other clothes besides hats and shoes, too.
After completing our first prototype, there have been quite a few lessons learnt already. As with every team, a lot of it has to do with planning and overscoping. The intent of this first prototype was to ensure that the scond-to-second gameplay of our idea is solid, or at least has some potential that we can build on. Dubbed the ‘Prototower’ for now, we simply considered ‘What would 2.5D side-scrolling slow-motion, action look like?’ We pictured rogue-like elements, with a dash of squad-based tactics and progression. Regardless, we resisted the temptation to go all-in and start with the simplest of scenarios: one player, one enemy and one room. Nothing but the mechanics to play around with.
So what have I been up to this past fortnight, you ask? Why, nothing but an odd assortment of tasks, of course!
Besides staring into the infinite void that is schedules and documentation, I have also been tinkering with Unreal Blueprints in order to relieve the programmers of some pressure and to help out with simpler coding tasks, such as health bars, UI and other miscellanea. I have also been smoothing the transition in which assets move into the game engine. This involves ensuring that models and props have the proper lightmap properties and double-checking the scale, before setting up the lighting as established by the environment artist. Not the most glamorous of jobs, but definitely the kind of dirty work that needs to be done in any project!
Towards the most recent week however, it felt like our progress had stalled. To say that we had planned things to a T was definitely an overstatement on our decisiveness of our actions. We had discussed many aspects of gameplay, but we mostly deviated to the high-level aspects of it. Procedural generation? Noted. Possibly over-complicated skilltrees? Sorted. How the actual conflict would occur in realtime? We couldn’t agree on something that everyone could buy into, nor could we find something worth testing. After countless revisions of the gameplay (much to the programmers’ chagrin), from turn-based and grid-based to realtime and free movement, we finally settled on gameplay to serve as groundwork.
After spending a lot of time working in all manners of blueprints, with lots of aid from our local programmers, it has been a great learning experience familiarising myself with the engine. There needed to be plenty of back-and-forth in order to make particular variables and other C++ functions to be accessible through blueprints. We’ve also ensured that the correct animations respond to their corresponding triggers for each of the enemies. Especially after adding the animations and sounds into the game, it definitely started to get somewhere! This was a huge boost in confidence for us, and it’s astonishing how much difference some aesthetic embellishment can make. Check it out below:
We’re quite fond of the way the game has evolved into an experience that will be both a fast and slow paced game (see what I did there). For our first pass at this project, we’ll continue to be working out the kinks in our workflow, and hopefully we be able to make further leaps and bounds in the coming weeks. Here’s hoping that I will also be able to get to work on more than just setting things up and paperwork too.
The next task to do is to think a little bit larger, and start thinking about how to really emphasise tactics, and make the player’s decisions really impact their experience! Stay tuned for our next adventures!
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