3D Character Platformer
Recently I got the itch to create a game inspired by the Sly Cooper franchise. I've been wanting a new entry into the franchise for a long time and I wanted to use that energy to create what I would love to see from a new one. I want to also use this project as a way to work on a wider variety of design aspects than the Fantasy Factory project was providing. In the short term, I can iterate on mechanics easier and create gameplay fast enough to get to things such as level design faster.
Update 8
4/5/2024
I've been finally getting a large uptick in interviews the past couple of weeks so I've been busy prepping and making sure those go as smoothly as possible. Which means I've got a smaller update again. I'm pretty happy with what I did get done though.
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Last week I wanted to finish out the gray boxing I was doing so I could go back and edit it to have gameplay moments and some story flow. I did end up finishing out a lot of the first and second floors, however, I was really unhappy with how it was going. It felt super boxy and straightforward, it didn't feel like an organic house that someone might live in or have built. To fix this, I went ahead and just started over, and this time with more of a reference and an idea of what I wanted to work on. In the first picture on the right, is what I was working on before, you can see I ended up making something that was just a box of boxes with a very clinical flat room-to-room structure with no hallways, bends, or anything particularly interesting going on there.
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In the second picture, you can see what I've got going on in the second iteration. So far I think I've done a much better job of rooms that feel different and particularly including rooms that felt excessive, like closets, that I can use for various functions such as hiding, shortcuts, or maybe world-building. I think I've been doing a better job with UE5's level design tools and I've been making better doors or roof objects by booleaning objects and sizing them to my needs.
Right now I've already got a good idea of a couple of starting story points that the player might encounter. In the previous iteration, I had ideas of how the player would get into the house but beyond that I hadn't thought of anything. In the current level I'm working on I've started on those next steps where I can keep the ideas of getting into the house but now I've also got ideas on if the player comes in with a certain disguise that would make the enemy suspicious they might lead them into a side room to wait but the guards would be alerted and that disguise foiled. But there would be a way to sneak out of the room and make it a different section. Or if you made it in without being detected, then you would be led into the main hall and could continue with the story from there. The main thing that I want to start including is more "checkpoints." Places where the player encounters an obstacle where their current disguise isn't going to cut it in certain areas. I'm planning on continuing this design into next week, and hoping my string of interview luck continues and I can be back to being employed.
Update 7
3/29/2024
Wasn't able to make an update last week as I had the opportunity to work on a technical test for a contract level designer position. Unfortunately, I learned the other day that I didn't get the contract but I wanted to try and make a post about what I learned while working on it. I wish I was able to post screenshots of it but I'm not allowed to share it so I'll just be talking about vague concepts that I learned.
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One thing that I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of on this test was trying to weave a story into the level design to help inform where the player would going and what they would be doing. I think I conceptually have this in the mansion level I'm making but I don't think it's as fleshed out or cohesive as the idea I had for the test. Having this story in the back of my head made it a lot more interesting to work on and I felt like I was able to make much more informed design decisions. Currently, in the mansion level, I feel like I am creating rooms that would make sense in a mansion but I'm not thinking about the importance or what the player would actually do there, and why it's significant for it to exist. In contrast to when I was working on this test, I felt like I was envisioning what was happening in this area in the story and pairing that with what the player should be doing in gameplay.
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I think I've been too much of a perfectionist with what is just a grayboxed level. I've been trying to make sure everything lines up perfectly and is even and the scale is correct, even though it's not a final product and it's mostly concept right now. Getting the scale correct is good but I think if I just messily block out the level faster I can go back and iterate faster which would make it easier to conceptualize story elements and player gameplay.
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This is something I want to improve upon going into next week. I want to finish the layout I've been working on and take a good look at how I can craft the story of the level and turn it into something that can actually be experienced in gameplay. I want each room to have a purpose other than "Well it's a mansion it should have X, Y, and Z because that just makes sense."
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I was struggling to get my motivation back once I got back from my vacation but, even though I didn't get the contract, I'm happy I got to work on this test as I feel like it did a lot to get me back into the groove. I've also had an uptick in prospective job offers so I'm planning on being able to work on the project more next week in between the few interviews I have lined up.
Update 6
3/15/2024
It's been a lot longer of a break between updates than I meant it to. I went on vacation and missed a couple of weeks' worth of updates. But since coming back I've been extra stressed and anxious about how long I've been unemployed so I've been finding it difficult to get anything going. This week I've been mainly trying to break out of the funk and get back into working on stuff. To do that I wanted to start with something a little different than where I had left off before my vacation. I've always loved 3d modeling and is part of the reason I knew I wanted to work in game dev in the first place. Unfortunately, I can't afford Maya so I wanted to take a crack at Blender since that's easily the most popular 3d program outside of the Autodesk products. I took some time to adapt the program's control and theme to feel closer to Maya, which I'm most comfortable with, and I started modeling out a concept for the main character for this game. In my head, I've also been thinking about what I would want this character to look and feel like and it's something I've been trying to focus on more this week to get back into the swing of things. I knew I wanted to bring over the anthropomorphic animal characters to this game but I didn't want to just do the main character as "Sly but a different animal." On my test character I made in Unreal, the character is just an oval with an arrow on the front but since I made it I've been thinking of it as an owl in my head. In the Sly games, an owl is one of the main villains though, and I felt like it seemed like a weird reference that I wasn't really trying to make. But the character as an owl has really stuck with me and no other replacement has felt right so I decided to run with it. I've just started working on it so it's extremely early as can be seen on the right-hand side. Even though it's a really small update I wanted to put one out regardless this week so I can keep pushing myself to continue working and keep up the pace on what I was doing before. I'm going to continue working on this character into next week so I can keep getting myself back into the groove and have a much beefier update for next Friday. Personality-wise, I'm imagining the character being a bit of a meat-head who excels in the heat of the moment on missions but maybe doesn't always think things through. Whenever I see an owl I always feel like they have the build of wide at the shoulder and then their form slims in as you get to the feet and owls are always thought of as this smart animal that's thought of as a wise creature but sometimes it looks like they've got nothing going on in their eyes.
Update 5
2/16/2024
This week has been mainly working on technical fixes, additional work on some enemy AI, and additional level design concepting.
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Last week I mentioned altering my point jump mechanic to be easier to design around by making it independent of any structure the player would need to land on. To do this I added a collision box that the player will land on when they reach the designated jump location. I also had the collision toggling so if the player manages to land on the point themselves then they won't get bumped off by an invisible force. This brought about an issue where when the player would be on the point and press the interact button again, the collision would disappear but the player would still be on the point. I had this clamped down initially but the expansion brought back a similar bug and I went through a similar logic to make it more concrete whether or not the player is on the point or not, that way they aren't able to activate the interact button in that instance.
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Currently, I have it so when the player is within range of a platforming interactable it sets the player's location at the designated point. Ideally, I want it to smoothly move the player to the target location but I was happy with the current implementation as a prototype. I had initial ideas on how to implement my idea and was working on trying out those solutions. The main way I thought to do it was to have a spline attached to the player that would when the interact button is pressed, set the locations of the start and end as the player's current location and the designated platforming target's location. I worked on this for a bit but was unsuccessful with the idea I had. I didn't want to spend too much time on it as I'm still happy with how the prototype works and there's other systems/designs that are more pressing that I wanted to work on.
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One of these systems is a basic patrolling guard that will have an editable list of acceptable disguises that it will ignore. I've still got a lot of work to do on the guard but I was able to get it up and running where the guard is able to differentiate between disguises. This also brought some work on tightening up the player's ability to put on disguises and to fix bugs involving putting on multiple disguises.
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I worked a little on a central dining room area within the mansion as well and I've included some screenshots to the right.
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I will not have an update on 2/23 as I'll be out of town but there will be an update the following week on 3/1
Update 4
2/9/2024
Missed out on last week's update but that just means I have a couple of weeks of progress to update with. I was shifting between a few different focuses these past couple of weeks. I started off by continuing to graybox out ideas for my first level. I'm still working on the foyer and got the itch to try and set a little bit of the mood in the level with some lighting. I was working on the foyer and felt I'd established the important landmarks that I was imagining, the next area I wanted to work on was where the workers who would be supporting this house/event would work. I wanted it to feel like a distinct contrast to the foyer that's supposed to feel very spacious, airy, and welcoming and make it feel a bit hidden and cramped. The ceilings are a lot lower and I wanted it to feel a bit darker. This sparked me to mess around with lighting a bit. I had this idea that the people who lived here wanted to have it feel like everything was lit with candle and torch to emulate what it would be in its golden days but have it exist in a more modern time with electricity. Contrast that with the worker's area where maybe it would be lit with a torch to "save money." I also wanted to set the mood outside a bit so I worked on having the lighting outside be night.
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One of the next things I jumped to was how the player was going to be able to infiltrate this mansion. I want the player to start on the outside having just pulled up in their own ride. From here, I wanted to let the player have the choice of going the platforming route or to have a stealth option that would bring them to the worker's area where they would have access to a disguise right off the bat.
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I also worked on improving both the point jump and the rail run. I wanted the point jump to be able to be placed on anything so I made it so the point jump comes with an invisible platform, that way it doesn't need to be placed on a flat surface and can but placed so it has the option to look like the player is balancing on a point. I also altered the rail run so that it's consistent on being able to jump off of it and have both of the player's jumps. I altered it so that when the player jumps on the rail, it will check how many jumps the player has and then increase it so they still have two. Then once the player lands it clamps the jumps back down to 2 total.
Update 3
1/26/2024
This week I wanted to tackle the next system I wanted to implement which is going to be disguises. I'm generally the type of player who likes to run in and get into combat but I also love a good stealth game. Particularly my favorite form of stealth is social stealth like early Assassin's Creeds, Hitman, Lady Boyle's Party mission in Dishonored 1, and certain levels in Sly 2 and 3.
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I started out by creating a test disguise that the player is able to pick up and take off. This can be seen in the video to the right, the player is able to look at the orange triangle on the table and put it on with the interact button. If they choose to take off the disguise, currently it returns to its origin point, where it can then be picked up again. I want each disguise to have varying levels of access/suspicion so the player has to weave in and out of social situations. Conceptually I want to use the immersive-sim approach to level design where I'll have a fairly open the level that the player can approach as they see fit and encounter various dialogue or events that cater to their playstyle. For example, the player is able to overhear two NPCs talking about a detail that could help you reinforce your disguise if anyone were to question you. With this, I prototyped a patrolling guard which can be seen by the moving object with the flashlight-esque cone coming out of its body. I wanted the guard to have a definable path that is easily editable by myself or, in a team environment, someone else. I show this towards the end of the video where I can change the spline the NPC is following in the editor and the NPC will move to the location without having to change anything in a blueprint or move any empty objects.
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I also wanted to start gray-boxing out what I want for a first/test level. Taking inspiration from the aforementioned Dishonored level, I wanted a mansion party that the player has to infiltrate using platforming and then find a disguise to blend into the crowd. I inserted a picture on the right, it's not complete yet but I wanted to show the start of what I was working on. Currently, I'm outlining the layout of the mansion and where certain rooms would be. Right now I'm working on the foyer where, if the player enters in the front, will give them a good place to start out as a guest. It also can immediately show how many floors the mansion has, I want the foyer to have stairs that immediately head up to where the occupants or guests would sleep, while also having entrances to the downstairs areas where the workers would go for their own rest or the kitchen. This area also branches out to the other rooms on the ground floor and can give a peak into the events happening in the other rooms.
Update 2
1/19/2024
This update is going to include stuff I was working on during the last update and stuff that I've been working on this past week. Last week I talked about the first platforming interactable I had prototyped, the point jump. The next interactable I worked on I've just called "Rail_Test" right now, I've made it to work as a horizontal traversal option that the player is walking on using a designated path. I've implemented it as the player moving along a spline that can be placed on an object and morph it to the platforming needs. This can be seen by the orange beams with a spline. I wanted to design these beams so that the player would be able to connect and start at the point closest to them. There's still some work to be done to make it smoother and more consistent, but I'm pretty happy with the results so far. My plan for these was to be purely a horizontal form of traversal, but I also wanted there to be options to climb vertically or have an obstacle where the player was hanging and crossing vertically. Thankfully the Rail_Test was able to work in those cases with a couple of changes. I have a public boolean that, when turned on, will disable gravity for the player and disable collision on the beam. This way the player can move along the spline vertically or horizontally with no support. This has brought the challenge of jumping off the rail where the movement doesn't count it as a valid jump so you don't get your double jump back and often don't get to jump and just detach.
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I've also gotten a respawn system put together so I can start blocking out level design ideas to get additional ideas for platforming interactables. I want the checkpoints to be visible in the world so I've set them up to display which checkpoint is active as can be seen by the green ball at the start and the red ball that turns green on the opposite platform.
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I also did some really early thinking about what I want the main character to look like and what manner of tool(s) they might use. Right now I'm thinking of a hammer that can double as a combat tool as well as a platforming and environment manipulation tool.
Update 1 - 1/12/2024
In this first update, I'm going to be focusing on the initial progress I made while still in 2023. I started working on this before Christmas and New Years and I started by getting my bearings in Unreal Engine 5. I'd been working on 4 on my other project, Fantasy Factory, and UE4 was what we used when I was in school. Along with this was learning how to use UE5's new approach to movement binding and getting some basic platforming mechanics set up. Right now I'm using a lot of base features of the enhanced movement so that I can start prototyping platforming interactables.
The first one I worked on was what I've called the point jump, it's a jump where the player lands on a single point and is restricted to staying at that point with only the ability to jump off. In the video on the right this can be seen as the cylinder with the red ball on top and in gameplay can be imagined as platforming onto anything that ends with a point or is narrow on top with the only room being to stand. In Sly Cooper this would be things such as the tips of flags, points on a wire, or the tops of pipes. As can be seen in the video, I do have other stuff I've gotten prototyped but I'll be putting that in the next update.