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Eternal Consumption Demo

So here’s what the game looks like after ten weeks!

This milestone had a lot of issues! While trying to clean up character movement, Unreal crashed and my main character blueprint stopped running at all! Making a 2D topdown game in unreal basically requires using the Paper ZD plug in, which is a fantastic plug-in that makes animating in a 2D space much easier. However, while fixing up my game, the plug-in ran into an error, so anytime I tried to run my game at all the whole program would crash. This meant I had to remake my main character blueprint! This caused errors with a bunch of things in the game that I did not foresee, such as level transitions and motion blur. 

However, after a few red bulls, I was able to fix most of these problems! The issue with the level transitions is that the player now had slightly different dimensions, causing them to be spawned below the level. Then, I switched my anti-aliasing settings and turned off motion blur. All of this back-tracking actually turned out to be a good thing, as I was able to FINALLY get the character animations working properly! Now, when the player moves left, it plays the move left animation instead of the move down animation. The levels and character blueprint had been on different axis, and I had continually tried to fix this at the source, switching axis for animations and levels. However, this would just cause a bunch of different problems, such as the player falling through the level and the camera showing the empty z-axis of the character. I ended up embracing the mistake, and went in the character blueprint and switched the directionality variable that affects animations. Now, when the player moves in the x-direction, it affects the y value and vice versa. This finally got the player animations to look correct!

In this build, enemy AI is a lot more robust. The enemy raptor will survey for the player, and when they find them, they will chase them and then bite them. The player can also shoot with a crossbow by pressing space.

This build also includes a new menu! If you press escape, you now have the option to exit the game, restart, or go to the main menu. These menus have a special font to help add to the feel of the game.

As a succinct, solo game, I am a little disappointed that I didn’t have more time to show off all of my features and more design philosophy. I got a little caught up in making features instead of utilizing these features. This demo proves to myself that I can make this particular game, instead of showing off what I can do to others. While I am a little disappointed I couldn’t show off more, I am super excited that I have developed all of these tools so I can make this into a long and developed game experience.

Beta Build Design Documentation

Getting there!

Sorry it took so long to get this build out, but last time I promised dialogue for all my npcs, a full intro map, and basic combat implementation and I could not let y’all down! On this build, we have a main menu, npcs with animations and dialogue, the entire intro map, and enemies! 

This main menu isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s there! We have a background my old roommate drew (shout out Jackson Denson) and buttons that let you start or quit the game! 

We now have animations for all of our npcs with dialogue trees! Everyone has something to say, and you have multiple ways to respond!

Not all of them are finished, as some of the dialogue leads to ability assignment and then following you, which will be in the next build.

The intro map is complete, allowing the player to explore this starting area in whatever order they please! I have a “set path” the player is supposed to go on, but with multiple paths to promote exploration! I have too much going on in each tileset to make it one large area, so I have it sectioned off into five smaller levels.

For the next build, I want to clean up music from area to area, make the camera follow a bit more robust, and have different player start locations.

I have the start of enemies and combat in this build! This took me forever. There unfortunately isn’t a ton of tutorials on top down 2d games in unreal, so I had to use a lot of google, taking bits and pieces from different tutorials, and brute force. Most of the tutorials were a little bit too basic, casting to enemies and the players. Instead, I used an interface! If an actor is hit by an actor, it sets off an interaction with that actor. Now, I can set this to any enemy and they will be attacked! Furthermore, by adding the damage to each individual enemy, there is less code on my player or attacks that would bog the game down.

This will make it easier to implement numerous abilities with different effects, such as stun and “steal life”. 

This build also includes music, ambient noise, and sound effects!

For the next build, I just need to polish everything to make this a better, shippable demo.

• For exploration, I want to make the camera more robust; the camera will follow a little behind the player in whatever direction they’re moving and won’t go off the edge of the map. I also want to have multiple player start locations, depending on where the player enters! I also want the music to continue throughout each level instead of restarting.
• For dialogue, I want to fix the text the npc says so it is horizontal! I really need to fix this, as dialogue is extremely important in this game and you can hardly read it! I would also like for the text to scroll, and to give each npc a different “simlish” audio that plays
• For combat, I would like to assign the abilities after a certain point so the player earns them! I also want to make the enemies chase you and attack, so it’s like actual combat. 
• For art, I need to fix the animations! Most unreal 2d games are side scrollers, so it is much easier to just switch the animation based on left and right. Since this is top down, I am using a multi-directional animation source, which has been giving me some difficulty. Once I figure out how to fix it, the game will look and feel much better, as I already have flipbooks for all my enemies and attacks. 

That is obviously a lot of stuff, but I am very close! Now that I have some time off from work, I will have more time to make this a tight knit demo that shows off the potential of this game!

Art bui design documentation 

Holy smokes we have something! 

During the prototype phase, I got some feedback on how to move forward on Eternal Consumption. After taking the time to write all the dialogue for the prototype, I knew I needed to make sure I could actually implement a dialogue system so I could use all the text I had written! 

For this build, I was able to get the dialogue system working! It also double downs as a quest system, so I’ll be able to assign abilities and branching quests. I need some help fixing up the UI, as the display is a little weird.  The system is pretty simple, but the implementation can be a lot. The code below is the first characters dialogue free :

For this build, I was able to do the outline for the starting area! After making a million maps and flow tables, I finally started putting concept to practice. For this starting area, I want the player to be elevated, so they can see later areas they can gain access to. I want to direct the player north, so they can meet two important npcs. “The mentor” is basically necessary, and appears immediately after getting off the elevated platforms. Then, I want the player to go north to meet “the stranger”, but after meeting the first npc I want the work to technically open up.I got some pretty assets online and I started putting stuff in. 

Here is what gameplay looks like right now : 

For the next build, I want the whole first area to be complete, add dialogue to all my characters, and implement combat.

Prototype

After peer review of my design document, I realized there was one very pressing issue for Eternal Consumption …

Scope!

Making a game that alters genre depending on your choices is a very daunting project. Normally when making a prototype for a game, I would immediately go into the game engine, develop the core gameplay loop, and start on the systems that I believe would be most difficult to create. However, for this game, the core gameplay loop is pretty big! Engage in dialogue that gains unique abilities, then explore the map using your own unique playstyle. Furthermore, I am not as terrified of making a top down game that emulates a game like Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past as I might be with another project. For this prototype, I let my scope get the best of me and I was too scattered! I tried to do too much, finding art assets, building tilesets, a level, making animations, and adding dialogue.

I sat for a minute and tried to figure out what was most important about this game and to showcase for future design jobs! I realized that for this vertical slice, I could probably get away with clunky combat or mediocre code. However, what makes or breaks this project is the dialogue and game feel! The player must want to explore, engage with the world, and be invested in this narrative. So for this prototype, I wanted to establish how the narrative would be given to the player and how the intro level would feel.

To do this, instead of focusing on the actual game in-engine, I tried something new! I wrote the dialogue script for the npcs in the intro area, created a level map based around game feel, and wrote a list of gameplay goals for this starting area. Furthermore, I got some art assets online to help establish a tone for the game. I did this because it is absolutely necessary that the player enjoy interacting with the dialogue system. I wanted to workshop this dialogue and make sure that people enjoy the story, before I make a whole game showcasing this subpar narrative.

Design

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-0zcmv8W53YAsXwPOwqWoA6qEmzl8ktBzB4_TraeHTk/...

Dialogue

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1e9DBeT_kVO99Lgm8dLBRo1FoinFZ71NoIUPg-3eQ...

Here is my concept document! Give it a read if you're interested :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tnp2E1xMQozZcrx7xmWZjhjvr7G8TJewEmnKqNrwyeM/...