Development Walk Through 3

The last blog I posted, I talked about setting for unlocked and what the map looked like. In this post I will take you through gameplay/mechanics, and other things that relate to how the game is played. For unlocked each room has different types of keys and locks. So those keys are the items in the game that I need to describe in the GDD. So to start the first room had a basic key, and key lock. The key is simply something that is used to unlock the door to the first room. This is something that the player needs to find, and that the same with the other rooms. Another item which is located in the second room is a key card. The player uses the key card to unlock the second door by inserting it into a key card reader. The next items I needed to describe was the combination lock and codes found in the third room. The combination lock is a number pad on a wall. The player must find the codes for the door scattered throughout the room. Once the player found the codes, they have to enter in the correct numbers in the correct order. When the player unlocks the last door they enter a winning room and are able to exit the game through a door. While on the topic of hows these items work I want to talk about the gameplay in our game. As I mentioned unlocked has three rooms with different locks and keys. So for the player to progress through the game, they have to successfully unlock all three doors by finding keys, key cards, and codes. The game is linear and the player always starts in the same room. For the GDD I drew out the flow of the game and how the player went from room to room.



As you can see the whole game is laid out for you and this is how you progress through the game. Once you do one thing and only when you do that one thing will you be able to move from room to room. Unlock does have rules though as the player can't just cheat there way through the game. This part of the GDD needs to be as detailed as possible and that's just what I did. For the next blog post I will talk about rules, goals and objectives, and the basic mechanics for unlocked.

Development Walk Through 2

For this walk through, I will talk about how I work through a game design document. The game design document is an important piece that goes into a game. It lays a foundation for what you game is going to be. For me I start with a template for a game design document. The template includes things like a title for your game, overview, setting/game world, characters, controls and menus, and many more. As I mentioned before, the project I am working on is called unlocked. Now for this game the template I usually use had to be changed as some of the things would be not be needed for the project. Characters and a story in unlocked would not be needed. First I started with the game overview. I did not need to do much here because I had already finished working on the high concept document, another important piece to a game. The high concept goes over things like what the basic premise is for your game, what type of people will play your game, what platform your game will be on, and many other brief information about your game. For the project, many of these categories didn't require much thinking. Unlocked is about unlocking doors so it for a wide range of people young and old. I had to think what makes unlocked interesting, really when you think about it unlocking doors sounds simple. For unlocked though it's more than that. Unlocked is meant to get challenging and many people love a challenge. So back to the GDD, the next section I worked through was setting. For unlocked setting was an important part because the game has no story or characters so our environments have to stand out. My other group member has been working on the programming side of the game and working inside of unreal engine 4. He was able to make some very cool looking rooms. I took what he made and in writing tried to paint a picture of what the rooms looked like. I like taking something you see and writing about it, and sometimes you feel like you actually in the place you are writing about. There are many other things that go into a GDD that I will talk about In my other walk through blogs.

Development Walk Through 1

Most of the time people only get to see finished projects and many wonder what happens behind the scenes. Over the next few blogs I post I will be taking you through a project I have been working on about a door lock simulator . One of the things I was working on was making buttons and 3D widgets inside of Unreal Engine 4. The first thing I need to do was create the button. For example, the project I am working on has three rooms and one of the rooms you need to find a key to unlock the first door. So I went online and found a picture of a key and imported it into UE4. I resized the picture and made it look a little better and of course, made it a button. After that, I needed to make a widget so I could put the key into the game. Inside this widget there is a add component button and that allows you to put in 3D boxes, cameras, trigger boxes, and other things. So I added my button to the work space and saw right away I had to change the draw scale because I could not see my object I just placed. Changing the draw scale allows you to see the object, you are then able to scale the object to however you think looks good. The object is one sided, but you can search side and are able to make an object two sided. This just helps you not lose where you object is. After this you are now able to place the object into the game. I did the same thing for the second room in the game, only this time it was key cards. Making buttons and widgets in UE4 is very easy, but also very important.