Research – Idea

Idea 1:

Name: The Range

My chosen specialism is programming as this is my strongest specialism because it is what I have chosen and had the most practice in, it is what I have the greatest interest in and I would like to pursue a career in this area of games development.

The level would consist of a firing range course which has a western setting and would require the player to progress through the course destroying all the targets in the quickest time possible, the players weapon will be a 6 shooter revolver meaning that being accurate will be important so that you would have to reload less, I’ll include targets in the course that you are meant to avoid shooting as doing so will give you a time penalty adding an increase in difficulty to the level. The level would start with the player progressing down a street killing targets hidden behind objects leading up to a saloon building that the player will have to enter and clear out all the targets and upon killing the last target they will get their time

The style of the game level will be western as this is the theme we are working with but as my level design is of a western style firing range I would be able to inject some colour into the level that might not be present in a real world western town

This game/ level idea meets my target audience’s criteria as it is a shooter and this is the favored genre for my target audience and I will include a more cartoon style for the assets similar to that of Overwatch that appeals to my audience as they prefer more comical genres so a less realistic art style will be a better fit

Idea 2:

Name: The Draw

Again my chosen specialism will be programming because it is my strongest part of games development and I have chosen to program throughout all of my other projects.

The level/game idea would be a classic western shootout set in the street of a western town, it would be multiplayer facing off two people against each other and they play a best of 5 rounds to see who will come out on top. I would need mechanics for hit scan shooting and to be able to have multiplayer in the game which is something I’ve never tried before

I would probably blockout the level primarily but if I were to create or use assets for this idea I would like to keep a slightly more gritty realistic vibe with the art style meaning I would have a limited colour palette as most of the colours that were present in the environment research I did earlier in the year were browns yellows and oranges and all of these colours were quite washed

I think this game fits my target audience as it is a first person shooter just as my first game idea which is the favored genre and I think my choice to use a more gritty realistic art style would appeal to the older half of my demographic

Final Idea choice:

For my final idea I will be choosing my idea by the name “The Range” and this is because I think it allows me to to better express myself and have more creative freedom with my level design. I believe this idea also challenges me in terms of the mechanics I will need to program to create my game as there are a lot of mechanics included that I have never tried before but I think its more achievable for me than my second idea based on the time frame I have to complete it

Final Idea Proposal:

Name: The Range

The level design idea I have in mind is an old western town styled firing range time trial course you would start at the end of a street that will have carts and barrels etc scattered down the street which will have enemy targets behind them that you will have to shoot as you make your way down the street, there will be buildings at the sides of the street that will just be the front panel of the building and have enemies pop up in the windows that need to be shoot and as you come to the end of the street there will be a saloon that has on the outside porch area and up on the balcony then after you enter there will be plethora of enemies as well as civilian targets scattered around where you will have to eliminate all of the enemies whilst avoiding shooting the civilians or else you’ll get a time penalty and once you have cleared out the enemies in the saloon you’ll get your time and be able to restart the level to try and achieve a better time

The art style for this design will be in more of a cartoon format giving the game a more light hearted feel whilst not falling into childish which would deter the older part of my demographic. I will use my environment research to help me decide on my colour palette for my level design though as my level is a recreation of a western setting and its being envisioned in less realistic light I can take some liberties and include some colours in my palette that are favored by my demographic like shades of blue

Some assets I would need are building fronts and old wooden carts for the street walk of the level and then I would need the exterior and interior of a saloon building, for the interior I would need a bar with bottles and glasses and around the room I would need tables and chairs to really bring the room to life. I would need the targets that the player is going to shoot and these would be cardboard cutouts of generic enemies and I would need to do the same for the civilians. I do plan however to just blockout the level design so that I will not have to create assets or use other peoples free use assets which would give me some more time to play about with the actual layout of the level as well as the mechanics.

Some specific mechanics that I would need to create to have this level and game function would be a hit scan gun system that will allow the player to shoot the targets as well as reload, I would need the enemies to be destructible and upon destruction count towards the total number of enemies in the level that need to be destroyed so that you can keep track of how many enemies have been destroyed. I would need a UI system that displays a time of your current run as well as the high score of your previous attempts at the level, there would also need to be a way to see how many bullets you have left in the gun so you know when you will have to reload and finally a counter for the number of targets you have taken out and the total number of targets. The player controller will enable the player to walk through the level and pan the camera to look around, it would also allow you to jump as well as sprint by pressing the shift key but this will make the player unable to shoot their gun

This is a moodboard for level design maps and in this research I have collected many different types of level types but a common theme throughout all of them though they all serve the purpose of their genre. They all follow a key principle of having some kind of linearity so that the player will know which way they need to go to progress through a level and this is an important part of level design because the map should be intuitive to navigate but not in a way that the player feels like they are being forced to go a certain way. With my level idea this shouldn’t be much of a problem as the point is for it to be a linear course that the player needs to follow to complete the challenge however I will try and keep the design somewhat open so that each person playing the game may tackle the challenge in a different way.

This is a collection of props and assets that I have collected to help give me an idea and focus on what sort of art style I am looking for. I levels art style to be more stylized and not realistic as for my target audience their favoured genres are shooters in games and comedy in movies, so I am trying to blend those themes with a cartoon styled art work which will appeal to my demographic though I don’t want to drift too far into the cartoon aspect and turn off the older portion of my audience. I do plan on just blocking out my level rather than use assets as I found it difficult to find the stylized assets I wanted that were free, this also gives me more time to design my level and mechanics.

This is a simple and short tutorial for helping me understand and experiment with coding hitscan weapons in Unreal I like this tutorial as its short and to the point and then from this I will be able to experiment with other mechanics I need to create for my weapon such as a clip capacity and a reload mechanic. I’ll find more tutorials like this to help me with other mechanics that are slightly more explanatory to help me get a better grasp on what I have to do however this tutorial does give me everything I need to start. I will definitely be referring back to this tutorial when I come to create some test programs for my game

This is a collection of tutorials I have collected for player movement systems including running, crouching, moving on different axis’s and even some animation. These tutorials will be a big help when I come to create tests for the player movement in my game as this is a very important mechanic in my game because I want it to feel fluid as my game is based around traversing through a course as quickly as possible so clunky movement will hinder that. I will refer to all of these tutorials to help me with constructing the movement system in my game and find one which I think best fits my game