Project: Jade Alcove

Platform: PC

Mission/Side Quest

My roles for this game included:

  • Game designer
  • Scripter
  • Asset designer
  • Asset creator
  • Sound editor
  • Level designer

 

 

This project is an environment exercise where I made as few assets as possible, and created a working level out of them.

I started out by referencing a lot of concept art and chose somethingI found visually interesting. In my search I found some art by Jason Stokes and liked the look of his Jade Alcove concept that he did for Guild Wars.

Jade Alcove - by Jason Stokes

 

I decided that I wanted to make the environment much harsher, the concept art looked cold to me so I decided to make environment frozen.

I wanted to lead the player mainly by light, colors of the assets very close to the original concept art and chose lights that were complementary.

Here is a video of the final product.

Level Walk Through:

 

The image below shows the flow of the game and the paths the player takes.

This next section is a break down of the visual scripting I did, each section will be shown in order that they appear in the videos above.

Each section will have an image of the scripting done in UDK's visual scripting application called kismet, then a description of each in detail.

Clicking an image will open it in a new window to enlarge it.

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This image is an overveiw of all the kismet done for this level, each section is organized and shows what they control.

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This is the health system, within this section the player is told to lose a certain amount of health, "warmth", every few seconds.

All objects or traps that deal damage to the player are told to be activated here.

The health HUD (heads up display) is also activated here, since scaleform(flash) needs to be updated constantly, I set a checker that checks to see if the players health goes over 100%, if it does it sets it back to 100%.

Larger fires will also heal the player, but will kill them if they enter it.

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When the level starts, the original UDK HUD is turned off, so that the new one can be displayed properly.

Default UDK sounds are turned off, and a physics gun is added to the player so the player may pick up objects withing the level.

A Crowd Spawner is activated for bugs that are seen later in the level.

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This section controls the swinging trap the player first encounters, when the player touches the the red rope, the rope is told to be destroyed and the animation for the swing starts.

This section also controls the reset, and turns off the swing so the player may leave safely at the end.

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This section controls the timed door after the swinging trap, it has a true/false bool that recognizes if one door is open or if the other one is open.

When the chain is pulled, it starts both animations and initially destroys the image that tells you which key to press.

This is also what activates the script to reset and stop the swinging trap.

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These two control all of the flickering lights within the level, this is to add a more life like feel to the light around the fire.

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Throughout the level are check points.

If the player was to die, they would be spawned closer to the area they were in rather than starting at the beginning.

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This section controls the light/memory puzzle, each button has a true/false bool attached to it telling them if they should hurt the player or if they are next in the memory sequence.

When the chain is pulled, it activates the animation for the fire to be covered up and timed to turn off/on the lights when the fire is no longer visible, or on if the chain is pulled again.

Each time the chain is pulled, or when the player dies, the bools are checked and reset to their original position so that the player does not get confused and is able to start the puzzle over.

Each button on the wall activates a addition to the puzzle, once the puzzle reaches '4' it then tells the door to open. When the bools are reset to their original position, the amount is set back to '0'.

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This section controls the stepping stone path, each stone is pre-created using "prefabs".

If a stone is needed somewhere else it can be easily placed by dragging it into the level and kismet scripting is automatically created for it.

Each red stone has a touch trigger attached to it and a particle effect. When a red stone is touched it sends a damage output back to the health system and then tells the particle to activate.

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This controls the check point door that makes it easier to get back to the memory puzzle room without having to go back to the stepping stone room.

Pulling the chain tells an animation to play, and if it has already been played then the door will close instead.

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This section controls the torch lighting puzzle, the player must touch each stale torch with the lit torch.

Only the torch with the fire on it can light the others.

When a lamp is lit it sends an addition check to the math script, once the script reaches '3' the lever in the center becomes active and a light surrounds it.

When activated, the lever tells the enclosures surrounding the warmth coat to play their animation and open.

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This section controls the coat, when the coat is activated it destroys the coat to give the illusion that the player has aquired it, then tells the frost damage script in the health system to turn off.

It also activates a trigger that plays a camera animation when the player exits the alcove and finishes the quest.

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