Senior Capstone: Project Introduction

Hello again, internet!  It's been quite some time since my last post, but this time I was actually doing something useful between then and now.  That "something useful" is the focus of this post!

This is the final semester of my undergraduate career, thus the semester in which I'm to complete a senior "capstone" project that shows off all the fancy things I've learned in the past four-and-a-half years.  As I hope to eventually become a video game programmer, I wanted my project to focus on programming for a small game.  Believe it or not, the majority of my hands-on school-induced programming experience has been in the Unreal Development Kit, so I approached the professor who had taught me how to use it and asked him to be my advisor.

Our discussions led me to decide that the project should be a short level for an adventure game.  I had those old Flash-based point 'n' click games in mind when I started, but the idea morphed to include a more modern 3D experience, using a first-person camera and allowing for free movement throughout the entire space.  Navigating through the level consists of picking up and using items to solve puzzles.  At this point, these puzzles range in difficulty from putting an object in a certain place to comprehending a logic-based riddle.

My initial level design had a vague, needlessly open layout, but the puzzles I came up with gave me a good start for my revisions.  I haven't actually taken my school's official level design course, so the design I landed on isn't exactly a work of art.  However, my advisor said it would suit my purposes well enough, and I didn't want to argue-- after all, I was more interested in getting the Kismet together than anything else when I started.  Below is the sketch of my general level layout.  For those of you who aren't experts at deciphering scribbles, the map consists of three different ground heights, a few buildings, a few underground passages, staircases in varying states of disrepair, and a player path that sort of resembles an ampersand.  At least, the sloppy way I draw them.  The overall goal is to light the four magical beacons so you can enter the chamber of... erm, something.  I haven't quite figured out the details of the story yet.

This is still pretty accurate, actually...

The level is inside a spacious graveyard, but I'm not currently aiming for a horror game.  This combined with my lack of organic modeling skills encouraged me to decide on a low-poly, low-resolution art style.  As I spent a considerable amount of my summer working on pixel art, it seems like a nice representation of my skills.  If I ever revisit this project after its completion, I may change this approach; for now, it suits my needs well enough.

So far, the most fun I've had was while putting together the Kismet for the level.  Most of my design required relatively simple programming-- things like picking up items and opening doors-- but a puzzle that has you lighting torches in a specific order required some head-scratching and a couple re-implementations.  At this point I am calling on a few Flash files to add some fancy text to a puzzle, but am largely depending on the pre-built announcements of the UTDeathmatch game style.  I hope to replace this with my own solution before the end, even if it's just to replace the HUD with a player inventory display.

I have a small imgur album set up for this project, which I hope to fill as I get more assets finished and presentable.  Of course, I will be updating this blog with more information as I find the time.  My goal is to cover the major parts of this project in detail so that people other than me can benefit from the weird bits of things I have learned and will be learning while I complete this project.

Until next time!