Erin Hao
Description
Two players each control the head and tail of a slinky dog toy, and the two parts snap back together when stretched to a distance.
How to play:
To travel across obstacles, players have to position themselves for the spring physics to work in the desired direction. Players start on the floor, and the goal is to climb up to the roof as Slinky dog and get out from the dormer window.
Narrative:
The owner of the room grew up and went to college, but they forgot their favorite rug, so Slinky Dog wants to deliver a forgotten rug to the child.
Design Process
Art Challenges
Art in general:
We wanted a family-friendly art style with playfulness similar to the style of
It Takes Two(2021), so we used vivid and saturated color. Majority of our team had a strong art background (though from different art majors in our school), so we were able to use a lot of hand-painted textures. These textures allowed enough detail controls for the art style to set the mood, and narrate a story.
Our shared Board:
Reference & planning
Sketch boards
Main Concepts:
the Spring:
The spring is our principal mechanic. Visually, it has to be concurrent with the physics simulation, our development team was new to Unreal Engine, so I was responsible for tech-art related work, and a lot of research was needed for reasonable implementation.
From some browsing, I came across the game Arms(2017 Nintendo) with similar spring-physics mechanics, and used it as a reference. At first I thought a simple static mesh would solve the changing distance between two players, like in many grapple hook solutions. However, from tests I realize that the repetition of static mesh does not accurately reflect the expansion and contraction nature of a spring.
To achieve a coherent visual, I dug behind for more tutorials on connecting the end position of the spline to physics simulation and event tick world position using blueprints.
Level Challenges
Our game mechanic is physics based, and we chose to use the default physics simulation in Unreal Engine. Level design’s difficulty was hard to imagine when we first drafted the design with blender, and required constant testing and adjustment.
Tech Challenges
Our tech team was new to Unreal Engine, so it took them a lot of effort to ground the mechanics from scratch. Unreal Engine uses chaos physics, which is quite uncontrollable. This often results in unexpected one-time issues that are hard to debug.
Reflect & Learn
What went right?
-
Our team had similar prospects for the game, so everyone’s input during discussion contributes to progressive decision-making.
-
Our team was confident with this portion of development with more than half of the team from my school (art school), so there were relatively less issues with art than any other aspect.
-
We frequently used shared online boards, and were active on discord.
-
We are a passion-driven team. We were able to finish the game despite inexperience, because we collaborated well. As a team we actively sought solutions together when we encountered any problem.
-
We wanted a family-friendly art style with playfulness similar to It Takes Two, so we used vivid and saturated color. Majority of our team had a strong art background (though from different art majors in our school), so we were able to use a lot of hand-painted textures. These textures allowed enough detail controls for the art style to accurately set the mood, and reflect the narrative.
What went wrong?
-
Our team did not have enough computers that could run Unreal Engine 5. This delayed our design process, and created unnecessary workload.
-
A large team required good organization, and immediate updates. Though we communicate well during meetings, sometimes artists are hesitant on calling out in the group chat over other days of the week.
What I learned?
-
Having a balanced team is beneficial but not mandatory for a successful game, as long as the team is supportive of each other and flexible in learning new things.
-
To design and work in Unreal Engine as early as possible to avoid any unexpected problems caused by compatibility, and also leave extra time for fixing.