May 1, 2024
At the start of the month I joined a team with 4 other designers and we began working on porting our personal work into one big project that would take the player through a journey of adventure. This is the postmortem of the experiences I had during my time with team Malachite.
Block Meshing The use of block meshing allowed me to iterate the
layout and locations the player was able to go rapidly. When my level was first introduced into the
team’s I had to restructure both the entrance and exit sections of my level to allow for connections
between the other levels that mine was sandwiched between. Had the level been within it’s art pass
it would have been a greater challenge to implement my level into the greater level that the team
had built to that point.
Art Pass As we moved into the beta stage and began replacing the
block mesh with finalized assets it was a joy to watch my level along with the rest of the team’s
levels come to life. The assets that we all picked out to use meshed really well together allowing
for a greater diversity of assets while still making the team’s level as a whole still feel
connected to one another.
The Lava Pit The ending section featuring the lava pit went from
my least favorite part of my level to being my favorite section. With the feedback given to me I
redid virtually every inch of the final climb. Changing the platforms that hung from the ceiling
into rocks that would erupt from underneath the lava bed, and changing the single switch needed to
solve the puzzle into 3 individual pickups that would cause the next rock to shoot from the ground.
Ultimately the final rendition of the final climb up from the lava pit became a more enjoyable and
complicated puzzle for the player to solve.
The River The block out of my original level had a river that
the player would walk through to progress, at early stages of the beta I used a single plane with a
scrolling water material applied to it. I stepped away from the level for about a day and learned
about Unreal Engines spline tools. Using the new information I was able to create a blueprint that
uses a spline to generate copies of a custom plane mesh I made. These copies would connect edge to
edge and deform fallowing the spline, this allowed me to create a winding and twisting river in
seconds adding a new layer of life to the scene. I later added another blueprint that would capture
the location of the player and spawn a water splashing effect where the player enters the river.
Team Communication Throughout this past month the team
communicated almost every action we were making, this kept each other in the loop and prevented
conflicts from arising. Our communication was key in ensuring that each of our individual levels
fallowed a single theme as we moved through our art pass.
Lack of Playtesting While I look back at the amazing work that
was accomplished on this project I feel that more playtesting would have driven my level along with
the whole teams experiences further to glory. Personally the only playtesting that was used for my
section was the 2.5 assignment for DES2, along with the team playtesting we held frequently
throughout the month. I feel like this limited the amount of feedback that could have aided in
turning our shared experiences up a notch.
Little Understanding of Sequences All of the knowledge that I
have with level sequences provided to me by Full Sail aided greatly in the construction of the
ending lava climb, I still felt limited to what I could do, and I wasn’t very efficient with the
tools. This lead me to most of my crunches and caused most of the headaches during this process.
Redoing the Lava Section Partway Through Beta I began the
transition into beta early, while still waiting to hear back from the 2.5 playtest. I started with
the outdoor section at the start and end. When I had received the results of the playtest I realized
I had to scrap the original lava section and make it better. However with the stage we were at as a
team it was to late to make major, drastic changes to my layout as it would cause the teammates that
came after me to have to rework their areas as well. This left me with having to redo the lava climb
within the shell of the original, limiting what I could do.
Personal Lives Happen We had 5 team members all together and
each of us have our own lives to live outside of class. Differing work schedules, time zones, and
family situations cased communication to be broken up. While the communication was great, responses
and testing was much of a waiting game.
Building and Packaging While the building and packaging issues
were solved by our gold release, it was not an easy road to fallow. While we are still learning the
ins and outs of Unreal there are still nuances that can get in the way that require attention to
move forward. Blueprint errors, mesh errors, actor settings, and random macro issues lead to a lot
of bug hunting. While the team members that were not a head worked, me and a couple of the others
would spend hours fixing these issues.
Looking back it is amazing to see how quickly a group of strangers can come together and work on a successful project. I guess we could equate this to contractors being hired to work on a game by a publisher. This experience taught me a great deal about how valuable communication is and how a well equip team can preform. Each of us while learning the same curriculum have already started to find what interests us the most and have learned more within that branch of game design, this accelerated our work and help majorly with questions anyone had if they were running into a speed bump.