Synoptic Project Pitch Work:
For the name of my pitch, I’ve (temporarily) went with Untitled Chav Game, until I come up with a new title.
My Initial Ideas
- I want to create an RPG with an interesting story that would capture the attention of the player, as well as being open world so that the player can choose to do as they wish.
- I want to compile the things that make MMORPGs fun into a single player experience.
- I want to create boss fights which will take strategy and feel rewarding for the player to complete, following a Dark Souls type theme.
- I want to experiment with more simplistic low poly or voxel graphics in this type of game.
Elevator Pitch
- For: People who want a quality RPG experience.
- Who: Want to play single player or do not enjoy elements of other RPGs.
- The: ‘Untitled Chav Game’
- Is a: Unique open world yet story driven single player RPG experience.
- That: Offers the player many different options in how they approach the game.
- Unlike: Many other single player RPGs, as it features many of (in my opinion) positives of other RPGs put into one single player game.
- Our Product: Will stand out from other single player RPGs.
Looking for a unique, refined RPG? Are other RPGs not cutting the cloth, or do you prefer to play solo? Look no further, ‘Untitled Chav Game’ offers a new open world yet story driven RPG experience like no other, where the player picks the pace but not the difficulty.
What is ‘Untitled Chav Game’?
Untitled Chav Game is a single player RPG (PC) set in the town of Houghton, in which you play a young boy whose curiosity of the area and its history fuels his quest to stop mischief being caused by evil.
From exploring land and killing monsters with an easy to learn and hard to master combat system, to following an intriguing storyline in search of answers and knowledge, Untitled Chav Game has it all.
Research Images/Concept Art
- I have created some concept art to help explain my idea of the mapping in the game.
Style Guide
storyboard
The pitch itself
My Synoptic Project Pitch Ben Knowlson
Pre Production
PM 2: Plan the provision of requirements for a specific production
Me and the team have discussed our ideas with each other to try and merge mine and Morgan’s 2 initial pitch ideas as feedback said, and we have come up with a general idea for the game which uses some ideas from both projects. Our core idea for the game is that you are an alien who is trying to escape area 51 through using spray paint and graffiti. You must spray different graffiti with different paints in order to solve puzzles and get upgrades + learn new graffiti, leading to you eventually escaping the level.
As one of two programmers / coders for the game I worked closely with my team to try and find an achievable and realistic idea for the game which is do-able within the deadline given. Regular scrums during pre-production have made sure that everyone is on the same wavelength and has the same idea of what we want the game to be.
Me and Morgan (our level designer) have been working closely in order to make sure that he can create a good level around my movement script. I have brought up the idea of having movement that takes elements from Lucio in Overwatch, as well as elements from Mario 64; this would be floaty movement like Lucio replicating what it would be like to be on a hoverboard, as well as the triple jump mechanic from Mario where each jump will cause you to gain height in the next one for 3 jumps, allowing for platforming puzzles to be implemented. A wall ride mechanic like that of Lucio would be a stretch goal but it is important that we don’t base our level design around this in the meantime as it is only a stretch goal.
Our team also created a storyboard to help simply visualize what will happen through out the game:
PM 3: Be able to co-ordinate a production process
I made a chart for use from our team during pre-production, in order for us to check what still needed doing, what was in progress, and what had been done.
(We also created a Trello page in order to keep track of our tasks during the project, however I cannot get onto this to take a screenshot as I have been locked out of my college email and cant access Microsoft Teams or Trello. We have made a Discord for the team to combat this and in the discord we have made an asset list and task list for the team to use temporarily.)
This is a burndown chart which we can use throughout the project to keep track of how many tasks we have compared to the amount of time we have. This helps us determine if we are on track to complete the project on time.
PM 4: Know how to complete industry-standard documentation
Tech Spec:
This is our technical specification for the previous game idea. This is to help all members of the team get a better understanding and a similar vision of what the game should turn out to be, so there is no lack of understanding.
Scrums:
We have recently had a scrum in a discord call to discuss the MVP deadline, and figure out where we stood with the project after problems started to occur due to the corona virus outbreak. In the scrum we changed our plans for the game to suit how much time we had left to complete it, and came to the agreement of a new, more suitable idea for us to work on. Below is a scrum sheet from that scrum, and I will talk more about this in the MVP blog post.
SP 2: To Understand storytelling concepts
Setting:
The setting of our game is area 51, and the buildings and test labs are supposed to be explorable.
Character:
You play as an alien who has been held captive for research and testing in area 51.
Plot:
The only tool you can find to aid your escape is some spray paint from where a painter has left it, you then have to use it to solve puzzles and find a way out.
Conflict:
Puzzles, guards and parkour will make the escape difficult as the alien has to bypass them in order to escape and the guards want to keep them imprisoned for research and testing.
Theme:
The theme would generally be sci-fi as it is in area 51.
Tone:
The alien is trying to escape and his life depends on it.
Point-of-view:
The alien’s point of view is the only important one, as he is the one who needs to escape.
MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT:
Due to the unforeseen circumstances and problems caused by the coronavirus crisis, as well as the lack of motivation towards our original project idea, our team have decided to stop production on our original idea as realistically it was going nowhere. We don’t have an MVP to show off for our past idea but instead we all came up with a new idea together, in order to rekindle the fire and get people back into the swing of things and working again.
The primary reason we decided to start over with our project was because there was not much work getting done, no one really knew where we were going with the project and all around we weren’t passionate enough about the idea to get it done. Before the MVP blog deadline came around, we organised a time that we could all jump in a call and go over things, where we ended up pitching new ideas and choosing one, being ‘Maccies Madness’. When going over these ideas there were some key factors that we had to keep in mind when voting: The amount of time we had to complete this work, the amount of people we had to do each task and other things, such as the boundaries that were set right at the beginning of the project pitching phase.
Having to work from home has lessened the amount of work that we can do, as Luke (for personal reasons) can not cover as much work from home, etc. Morgan has become the project leader which I believe is a good move as we previously didn’t have anyone who wanted to step forward and take leadership over the project as we were all unsure as to what the project was going to be; nobody had a clear vision of the outcome. Due to having to work at home and me being locked out of my college email (resulting in no access to Microsoft teams), my team have had to make a discord server for our communication, which is fine as it has a lot of useful features. We can easily join a voice channel with each other to scrum or help one another, where we can also share our screens, making showing progress, models, etc. a lot easier. We also have text channels which can be used to discuss which tasks we are completing and still need doing, as well as any problems that might occur.
To work with the theme that was set for this project we had to make the game include some form of mischief, and also keep in mind how little time we have left. Considering both of these factors we came up with the idea of a game called ‘Maccies Madness’, a short and simple game where you play as a worker in a resteraunt and have to cause as much damage and mischief as possible in a set amount of time, with a point based system for score.
Everyone was fine with their workload and I worked with Luke to divise our plan for who did each script. I decided to take care of the movement script and the interaction script whilst Luke took the timer/points script.
SYNOPTIC PROJECT UPDATE:
I have completed 3 scripts whilst working closely with Morgan (our team leader who takes care of everything in engine) that are going to be useful for our game to shape it out how we want it.
MOVEMENT / CAMERA SCRIPT
To begin with I made the movement/camera script. We originally planned to have the game in 3rd person to show off the character that our modellers designed along with the animations however the animations will not work in engine, so I had to make the script 1st person. It still works with our game, and shows how we worked together to overcome a problem.
The speed variable is a multiplier to control the speed of the player which is changeable in engine. The Vector3 direction is to be used later for RayCasting, as well as the RaycastHit. The ‘maxD’ float is a value that determines how far you are from something that is above you so you aren’t forced to crouch when walking underneath anything. The sensitivity float value controls mouse sensitivity.
The first 2 lines of code gather information on the players keyboard inputs and multiplies them by the speed. The rest of the code is used to normalise the inputs to avoid any errors, then transfer the inputs into the game so the player can move around.
This part of the code gathers the mouse inputs and rotates the camera according to these inputs. The if statements assure that the player can not rotate the camera around up or down (“frontflip” or “backflip” the camera).
This last bit of code allows the player to crouch when pressing C and assures that if something is 0.1f above you your player will automatically crouch and a line will be shown in the debug for people in engine to see this.
PICK UP SCRIPT
Afterwards we needed a script to pick up and move items so the player could interact with the scene in order to cause mischief by misplacing things and taking apart machinery. I signposted this one in C# as I went so I could explain easier on my blog.
The first of the 3 variables is the item that is able to be picked up. The reason this is here is that the script itself if put on the items rather than the player, so that the person who is working in engine can have an easier time selecting which items are able to be picked up. The second is the temporary parent object of the item when it is picked up (the player), and will be set to the players GameObject. Last but not least the ‘pickup’ variable will be set to an empty child attached to the players GameObject where ever the person who is working in engine wants the item to be held relative to the player.
The signpost explains this.
When the left mouse button is pressed while the mouse is over the object, it is no longer affected by gravity, and will be held in the place where you positioned the ‘pickup’ variable. When the left mouse button is released, the object will be affected by gravity and detached from the parent object, falling from where ever it was held.
MOUSE LOCK SCRIPT
These 2 boolean variables are used to indicate when the mouse is locked and when the game is paused. (the locked one is not used anymore)
This checks if the game is paused every second. If the game is paused the mouse is made visible and isn’t locked, otherwise the mouse is always locked in the center of the screen and made invisible.
This allows the esc button to toggle the paused variable.
SYNOPTIC PROJECT CONCLUSION:
Below is a showcase video that showcases our combined efforts for this project. (My mouse lock script would not let the mouse work with the menu and we struggled to find a fix.)
Personally, I think this project could have went a lot better for me and my team however I have learned a lot while taking part in this project like the importance of communication, leadership and passion in a project to make it successful. A lot of problems we faced were due to coronavirus, but we cant blame that for the problems we faced with our vision of the original idea, as communication and more concepting could have made it easier for us to know where the idea was going rather than having to come up with a new idea.
Unfortunately we did not achieve what we planned to when starting this project and had to come up with a new idea, but we did considerably well with our new idea. The reasoning behind it was mainly problems caused by coronavirus and lack of ambition and passion to complete the project throughout the team. Our project does fit the brief we were set as you have to cause mischief in the resteraunt by misplacing things and ruining it.
A highlight of the project for myself was the pitch phase I thought I had a very good vision for a game that me and a few friends were passionate about and I managed to portray it well. Sadly this was cut short as teams weren’t allowed to be picked by students and my idea wasn’t picked by staff so we had to awkwardly merge the ideas unlike any other team and it left us in a lot of confusion of what the game would turn out to be, ultimately leading to big problems throughout the project.
I could definitely have put more work in throughout the entire length of the project which was my biggest downfall.
My advice to any first years is to try and be passionate about your pitch as it rubs off on other people. Get people onto the same boat as you with the idea and as long as you are all passionate about the idea it will feel less like work and more like fun. Also have fun with it, don’t stress, if you aren’t enjoying it and it isn’t for you take the message and find a course/uni degree you like for when you finish second year. The games design industry isn’t for everyone.
Ben Knowlson's NextGen Blog 