FRONTIER
The Team
Daniel Eji - Programmer
Abdul-Rahman Dawoodu - UI Designer
Saleh Hosseini -Programmer
My Role
Lead Game Designer
Level Designer
Audio Designer
The Idea
The module gave us the criteria that we had to make a multiplayer game, which meant we had to create and understand how balance for both players can work. I always wanted to delve deep into creating a multiplayer experience where splitting the roles of players and spectators. In this case, players would have a active participation in how to complete the game and the spectators would influence the environment to cause more havoc for the players of the game.
This was the core idea that was going to work with the game, where both of these teams don’t have direct interaction rather the game environment would be the method of interactivity between the players. This concept delved deep into how could be introduce that type of gameplay, and the idea created was maybe there could be a race. You see loads of sports where racing happens which has a lot of spectators but how would it be if they could stop the people racing to get to the end goal with emphasised the gameplay.
Additionally, a theme of space was added to present a challenge in regards to the reasoning everything is happening.
Mechanics
An Asymmetric game, as each player group has a different set of rules to follow.
Team 1 - Rangers
The Rangers have been sent to occupy this Planet in the name of Peace Corp and deliver a peace treaty to the native Aliens on the planet. These players will be in the environment trying to solve a puzzle within a limited time to get to the end, they will be met with 4 different sections where these puzzles are solved, increasing difficulty, once they reach the end of the 4th section they win. The method in which they solve puzzles relies on each player in this team having a different ability.
Player 1 can use the power of Teleportation to teleport over holes (with restriction to distance) and through allocated walls. Player 2 can use Telekinesis, to move objects including blocks and certain platforms (in essence this player can create make-shift bridges)
Team 2 - Aliens
These will be the native Aliens having the miscommunication that they are being invaded by these Rangers and are choosing the defend their home planet before the Rangers can find a good settlement.
Aliens move around the level slower than that Rangers however aren’t restricted to the layout of the Level, instead they can freely fly above the Level. Additionally they also have abilities but their abilities differ from how the Rangers are played. Both Aliens have the same set of abilities where they can summon enemies from their current position, plant bombs, plant devices to slow the Rangers down, shoot rockets from above and finally change the weather conditions. There are two main methods in which the Aliens can activate these abilities. The first two I mentioned are on a cooldown timer, whilst the final 3 involves the Aliens collecting resources in a shared resource pool.
Below is a video of the game in action, however there is a update build, but have been unable to record footage
Blog Process
Final Personal Reflection
This is here as a reminder to what happened in the project as an overall project, realising my own and the teams, pros and cons and evaluating what I learned from this whole experience. It’s quite lengthy, just like this whole blog
Audio Design pt 2
Now I have to think about the Score for when the players play the game, how will the audio keep them engaged. I know we have a timer so maybe if we focus on the fact that players need to be in a rush and still keeping the futuristic tone.
Live Ops pt 2
Going over the basic plan of the Live-Ops that we intended to put into the game.
Placeholder Level Showcase
Now because the Placeholders of the Puzzle are quite elaborate, it’s important to actually talk through the process of how to do them. So I decided to have a talk with one of my developers on how these puzzles are solved so then they will have an understanding on what to produce.
Level Design pt 8
Now time to make the Step-by-Step Guide for the final Puzzle of the game, and the moving on to the sketches for all of them and the final step…..
Level Design pt 7
This did take some time however, now we finally have the time to focus on the steps of at least Puzzle 2 and 3 because they need to be sorted out, because without the steps, there no way to ideate the physical level designs without them. Now time to figure out the ideal method of solving the puzzle, but to increase the diffuclty each puzzle will have more steps. Yes that means I need to make more of three of them for each….
Rewards, Economy and Monetisation Pt 4
Now I want to focus on the other things, the specifics of the Season Pass, what challenges will effect the economy, the view of the Seasonal content regarding how it works. This really is being tied to the overal progression of the game.
Audio Design
Now it’s time to really look into the muscial score of the game, how do I want it to sound, what do I want the first impressions of the game to be. What do I want the game to feel like? Well here’s the answer.
Technical Design Pt 3
Now it’s back to go onto the design, as it came to my attention that one of the mechanics doesn’t really work or balance the game entirely so it’s just to show off the update of what I learned from changing this simple little thing
Level Design Pt.6
Now it’s time to take the initial sketches and translate them to into a 3D environment using Unity, this is also a good test to see if the idea will be feasible. Obviously these will all be placeholders for the developers but there is a good structure enough so I think it should work
Rewards, Economy and Monetisation Pt 3 (Economy)
Now comes the refinement of the economy in this game, realising my initial error would’ve made a really bad economy, there was need of restricting the way players will receive the money. By limiting it to them to challenges only so the simple economy will not suffer from inflation.
Level Design Pt 5
This particular part focuses on the next stage of the design level, making those all important sketches to start the development from and translate them and finalising on the Level structure so I really have an idea of the game.
Live Ops Pt 1
Though incomplete, creating the idea of how I want to game to continue forward including a basic plan of it was essential to it’s growth, and starting the development of the game’s plan is an important factor ensuring a game can continue to make money. Gaas for short.
Rewards, Economy and Monetisation Pt.2 (Design Method 3)
Now I want to clarify that to extend on the monetisation for the game, the type fo menu flow is necessary to show off that way that players will be able to get their cosmetics, to enhance the experience players should also receive something for coming to the game. So here willl be information about how these will work as well as the Season Pass, defining how it’ll work for this game
Onboarding Pt.3
Now it’s the time to make them in the Unity Game Engine so the developer can understand it
Onboarding Pt.2
Similar to the Puzzles and how thye were developed with Step-by-Step guides, I took the same approach and thought to implement the action the player should take and the a little tutorial bot that will give speech bubbles to guide the player on what they are supposed to do.
Onboarding pt.1
Onboarding is very important but considering the scale of actions that the players for the game will have to conduct, a tutorial was the motoive that I went with, taking heavy inspiration from Overwatch in the method that they start the game.
Rewards, Economy and Monetisation Pt1
Now to consider how I’m going to make money from this game (if any). Ideally from my research, monestisation can be a double-edged sword but if done correctly will persuade people to pay, so for this game to be successful in terms of this, would be to allow optional content such as cosmetics which is the angle that is going to be taken, and creating a season pass to add that longevity.