Midterm Devlog: Blockout and Functionality

For my game I took a lot of inspiration from the Payday games, making a short heist level at a heavily guarded dock. It's a little rough around the edges, because I haven’t had the time of day to fix everything I want to, but I know the next steps I’m taking (and most of that will be listed below). First a showcase of some basic functionality. This video shows the dashing, ability to avoid the enemy, the distraction rock (which was working more consistently in the editor I swear), hiding, and the enemy detecting noise and sight (plus my additional mechanic of a detection period)

Most of the unreal engine implementation is shown in that video, but for the last little bits I have a couple more videos. First though, I must say I haven’t reskinned any assets yet, and I don’t have a checkpoint system in the game because the level is just too small/short for that to make sense. But here’s a video of the death and win, the text has stopped displaying on them and I can’t seem to figure out why, but otherwise the widgets and reloading the level are functional (also the win is done in the editor so I could place the loot to be picked up next to the extract).

Now for the Design portion, I’m mostly going to cover this bullet point by bullet point

• Intentional design of mechanics to create interesting gameplay is documented with evidence.

For this section I added two things, the detection period on the enemy, which means they don’t attack on sight, but take a few seconds to recognize you, then attack, giving players a bit of forgiveness and allowing them a bit more freedom of movement, and then for opening the vault there are two buttons, that, upon pressing, start a twenty second countdown before they must be activated again to complete that button (only one button can be done at a time). This forces the player to remain in one area for an extended period, increasing the chance of an enemy patrol walking by, forcing them to stay alert. The first mechanic is shown in the first video of the dev log, if the line of sight is broken before they start attacking they will give up. Here’s the video for the vault button.

• Targeted player emotions are identified and described.

The goal of game is to get the player to feel tension during stealth, fear in the chase, and relief when they become hidden again

• Evidence is provided of design choices that invoke the targeted emotions.

Tension is largely built around the fact that there are enemies around almost every corner, keeping players on their toes (I may end up lowering that count a little though

The fear is built in enemies that can be evaded, but are hard too, this is shown in the first video of the dev log

And relief is built into hiding spots around the map

• Evidence is provided of design choices that encourage the targeted behaviors.

To work towards the emotions and behaviors I want, I’ve built a map with some larger open areas mixed with much tighter areas and hiding spots, to push the players to move quickly from cover to cover, and through enemy counts and patrols, this should be showcased in the previous images and videos. As is the enemy “detection bar” which gives players a bit more freedom of movement.

• Level design includes multiple possible solutions to challenges.

The main “choice” or extra possible solution beyond literally just having extra doors and halls to give players more freedom of movement, rather than linear paths, is adding a cargo door to the side of the ship (noted in main map image), which can be opened by pressing two buttons in the security office, giving the player another, less guarded route to the vault

• Intentional moments of relief are included in the design.

As mentioned before, this is covered with various hiding spots around the map in key locations

• Results of playtesting and subsequent design changes are documented.

While I haven’t been able to do a ton of play testing, or have others do it, I do know some of what I need to change from what I’ve done, I just haven’t implemented the changes yet, that’s my next step. I found that the outside areas could be too large and open, while the insides were a bit cramped. I think the insides will be helped once I start replacing the cube grid objects, but I will decrease the outside space, provide more areas of cover, and maybe add some more elevation changes beyond the one for the lower dock to break lines of sight up. 

I still need to clean up the enemies behavior to make it feel more natural, things like fine tune the sight range and detection timer. 

Finally I want to more clearly mark and direct players through objectives, possibly through text, or more clear level design, and I want choices of routes to feel more meaningful, maybe by allowing player to avoid things like the upper deck of the ship entirely, while having to work harder to open the cargo door

• Design specifications from the Player Character Document are delivered and explained.

This section is already covered throughout the other parts of this dev log, especially the first video.

• Design specifications from the Level Design Document are delivered and explained.

Again, I think I covered this all as I went along.