Final Thesis Post

The last week of thesis was pretty successful. I've continued to work on game mechanics and created my final presentation for the semester which can be found here.

In total about 8 hours of work.

Week 13 (Belated)

In the past week I worked on blueprints and functionality within the game. After watching some videos on the turn-based plugin I started working in the code to add my own meshes to the scene. The screenshot below shows two separate things.

1-The game can function and react to  the placeholder meshes that I place in the game world. This is achieved by placing invisible tiles underneath the mesh which tell the game what tiles should be disabled.

2-Using an array and a random number generator I was able to create a blueprint class which will select from a list of meshes and place one in the scene at a designated location. This will allow me to create one or more levels quickly with interesting and varied structures. These buildings are also blocked from walking units without needing to designate each tile as blocked

I also decided to include some of my substance painter work on last week's assets. These screenshots are directly from substance painter and represent the ideal textures. Achieving the same quality in Unreal will be challenging but there are plenty of ways to improve the look before the final version.

Week 12

Week 12 was very productive with about 18 hours of thesis work. I've finished the Trailer/Shipping crate science lab with solar array and satellite dish. This is one of the more complicated structures in the game. (Screenshots at the bottom)

Next week I'll get to work on another main structure.

Week 11

Week 11 was a slow week for asset production (3 hours). I did get a lot of good work done on the rig which will run the animations for all three of the game's main class characters. Next week I will be continuing to work on structures within the game.

Week 10

This week I continued work on designing and constructing the buildings in the scene. I worked a total of 5 hours this week on the project. After doing a rough sketch of each building I got to work on a solar panel array for one of the science structures. Next week I'll be continuing to work on the buildings for the game.

Below are some screenshots of the solar panels.

Week 9

This week I started work on the first building for the game. The scavenging hut is the building for the stealth class within the game. This building is designed to be the most dilapidated in the game, showing the scavenger's nature of combining parts from different places to create something. I ran into a problem setting up ID maps to texture the building because of the number of unique objects for this structure but I'll finish working through it and have this textured early in the week. The upcoming week will be used to create more buildings for the game.

Week 7

I decided to make a change this week and postpone the game design aspect of things for a while and transition into the visuals and underlying systems in Unreal. Setting up resource management in Unreal will make playtesting much easier, and since the basics of the game are done I can start work on the three classes within the game and all of the structures I'll need to create. This also gives me more time in my game design class to learn about constructing a balanced and fun game.

About 5 hours of work total on the week.

Week 6

This week I really jumped in to playtesting the game. I've already been able to make some balance changes to help things run more smoothly. Other than these changes, the biggest thing that became clear is that the game can't be replicated with pen and paper due to mechanics like fog of war and stealth. Because of this I plan to move to Unreal to get the game working at a low level for future playtests. The first system I'm going to create will manage resources for players, adding income to their pool and subtracting for purchases as needed. The second system will be a "God Mode" for the game allowing abilities to be used during runtime.

The other progress I made was to settle on a theme for the game and create the first class character. The theme is going to be a post-apocalyptic society. The premise of this society is that many regions existed under one ruling power. Each region contributed to society in come specialized way such as technology production, research, manufacturing, or farming. Civil war caused the system to collapse and each region was left to fend for itself in a ruined landscape. Now the various regions fight among themselves for survival. Each battle in my game is a skirmish between two regions struggling for survival.

Total hours this week was about 13. (I can't say I tracked playtesting time perfectly)

Week 5

This week was very productive. I made a ton of progress on the pen and paper version of the game (which turned out to be more work than expected.) The current version is basically playable. Just need to go through the game with someone to explain how everything works. Here's a link to my spreadsheets of the different unit and structure types and other necessary information:

Board Test 1 Spreadsheet

I also completed the final version of my proposal video.

Next week will be playtesting and refining balance within the pen and paper game.

Week 4

Sadly thesis week 4 was very slow. Due to a large project deadline and a wedding during the weekend to finish things off, very little progress was made.

I did a small amount of work on my proposal video and will have that finished soon. Next week will be largely testing and adjusting the pen and paper version of my game and possibly starting a mood board for the visual style.

Week 3

This week I composed a first draft of a formal proposal for my game. The video is in the following link:
Thesis Proposal

Apart from idea refinement, I've started creating a physical version of the game that can be played with a few cutouts and some pen and paper. This will allow me to make some broad gameplay refinements before putting anything into unreal. This "prototype" will be ready sometime this week and I'll start playtesting asap.

I made a few major changes over the course of the week:

Firstly, I've decided the game will take place over multiple rounds. This allows for a constant forward push of units within the game so that making a move is more beneficial than being stagnant. A round based system will also allow for different levels of upgrades throughout a game so that many potential levels of strength can be seen in a single game. My current guesstimate is 5 rounds for a game.

The second major change/decision I've made is to have 3 (for now) classes of unit. There will be a stealth class, a standard soldier class, and a mage class. Each class can modify the state of play in some way. Within each class there are certain abilities with your units can acquire to become customized combatants. Soldiers can attack other units and impede their progress, Rouges can infiltrate behind enemy lines and cause mayhem in the base, and Mages can control large areas of the battlefield to dictate the fight.

This week will mostly be a continuation of refining the strategy components and playtesting the paper version of the game.

Week 2 Review

Week Summary:

This week featured 7 hours of thesis work. I've settled on my turn based strategy idea and done some thinking about the core gameplay and what needs to be done to make the game enjoyable. My work this week included further development of my ideas and gameplay, but mostly I was going through the tutorial videos for the Unreal Engine Turn Based Strategy plugin that I've bought which will be the starting point for my game.

The Plugin:

The Unreal plugin contains the core mechanics of a turn based strategy game focusing mainly on combat and movement. This will be a great starting point but there are many additions I'll need to make to implement the buildings and the mechanics I want. Likely the largest challenge of this entire project will be learning how to incorporate my own blueprint code into the massive network of blueprints that this plugin features.

Updated Proposal:

As for the game itself, I've updated last weeks proposal to include some of my new ideas and concepts. 

        "Create a turn based strategy game which mimics many elements of a board game. The game's goal will be to develop a base while hindering your opponent's progress to gain advantages in the gamestate, and ultimately, destroy their base. This will be achieved by gathering resources, creating buildings, and raising an army to fight for you. The mechanic that makes this game unique is that all units will start as untrained workers. By using the various buildings, players must choose how to upgrade their units for the most effective end game strategy. The goal is to make a low cost of entry strategy game that can appeal to hardcore strategists and casual players alike. With that in mind I'd like to achieve a relatively short game time ( under 30 minutes)."

Up next:

Next week will primarily be a continuation of my research into the plugin. Until I can comfortably add my own code to the system there isn't much else to do. I'll also start working on a theme and story for the game and decide on a visual style.

Week 1: Proposal

Proposed thesis ideas:

1- Turn Based Strategy Game
Create a turn based strategy game which mimics many elements of a board game. The game's goal will be to develop a base while hindering your opponent's progress to gain advantages, and ultimately, destroy their base. This will be achieved by gathering resources, creating buildings, and raising an army to fight for you. The goal is to make a low cost of entry strategy game that can appeal to hardcore strategists and more casual players at the same time. With that in mind, games will be relatively short (around 30 minutes).

2- Music Visualizer
Build an Unreal Engine based program which creates visuals from musical tones. This program will identify specific note frequencies and create a corresponding visual.

3- Escape the Room Game
Create an escape the room style game in which players explore a closed environment and attempt to escape.

As you can clearly see, I have no bias towards any of these ideas whatsoever, and each has received an equal amount of consideration. With that in mind, here's a screenshot of some brainstorming on the first idea.

Hey look everybody, I created a blog!!!!