STATION
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Platform: PC, controller supported
Reception: Well received from those who had viewed it at EGX 2019 London by both public and industry, both asking when the game would be released. General public interest really boosted team morale as all were exhausted at this point. Skill focus: Level, mechanic, and narrative design and iteration, 3D prop assets Time spent: 14 months (1 year, 2 months) Engine and tools: Unreal 4.19, Maya 2018, Visual Basic 2017 |
Summary of Contributions
- As the teams designer I was responsible for maintaining the design aspect of the game as a whole. This involved the development of the level designs in which the player would navigate within, the story the player would experience whilst interacting with the world they would inhabit and the mechanics that they use with the game to interact with said world.
- I was also tasked with designing scripted events in which the player would come across such as the sudden loss of gravity found within the first level and the decompression room that would suck out the player and into the main obstacle course in the second level of the EGX build of the game.
- During the second semester of STATION's first build, as my tasks were near enough complete I was tasked with helping with the artist workload as they were focusing on the creation of the environmental and hero assets used within the architecture of the game. My task included the creation of prop assets to give the sensation that the areas the player would enter once had people living within them from the likes of benches, coffee tables, and vending machines to the likes of trash people would leave around like empty snack packets and water cone-cups next to water dispensers.
- I was also tasked with QA testing with the creation of testing documents and noting what the QA testers had documented. I took time to do some minor QA testing whilst at EGX with help from the general public whilst promoting the game.
- I have taken footage of in-game for previous trailers and videos in which the game would be included and made a video showcasing gameplay of the EGX build (found on the homepage).
- During EGX I volunteered to man the stall and interacting with industry personnel in an attempt to promote the game (and hopefully find a potential publisher)!
- Recently, I managed to get myself and 2 other members of the team into a networking event which was hosted by Colin MacDonald from All4, allowing us to network the team, game, and ourselves more to the local game industry!
Examples of Contributions
Background about STATION
STATION is a 3rd Year student lead game project developed by the 8 man student team, Penrose Games. As this was a student-lead project, we were granted mentors from the local game industry within Dundee. These mentors being 2 members from Team Junkfish, a previous 3rd Year team that graduated from Abertay a few years ago.
Started in September 2018, our first semester was used for pre-visualisation of the game itself to then develop it into a playable prototype in the second semester however we managed to develop a playable prototype by the end of the first allowing us to gain a little popularity among our peers. During the second semester, there was much iteration especially within the level design of the top and bottom halves of the game. Applied for DARE Academy and was selected as 1 of 6 teams to enter the hothousing stage of the competition and were later taken to EGX 2019 London to showcase the game. At EGX, the game had managed to gather a small following on our twitter with more and more people beginning to follow the games development and joining our QA testing Discord. As of this moment, STATION has been put on hold to allow for the team members to recover from the development cycle and to focus on their 4th year projects. |
Our 3rd Year Final Project video |