Klemens Reckfort
Level Design - Game Programming - Game Design
Fruit Route (2015)
Catch That Juice:
"You are a Mango, Water Rafting on an Empty Bottle down a River, Collecting the Tasty Juice of the Jungle of Fruits."
About The Game Project:
Game:
Third Person Rail Brand Game (Prototype)
Team Size:
Four
Date:
June 2015 (Three Weeks)
Game Engine:
Unreal Engine 4
Achievements:
• Design a Brand Communicating Game in Four Days
• Develop Efficient and Qualitatively Time Crititcal Workflows for the Team
• Building own Process Automate Level Design Tools
My Tasks:
• Level Design
• Managing Project and Team
• Delegating Workloads
• Supporting Game Programming
Production:
I will show how I got it Managed to Create Workflows that let us as a Team get a Project like this Done in Four Days.
Producing A Short Brand Game Fast Forward:
Design the Game You Need:
Think about Who Plays this Game Where and for How Long and Why.
Find an Answer to all those Questions that Fit Together and Support your Goal creating a Game within Four Days.
How Long should the Game take to Play?
The Game should be 30 till 60 Seconds long and it should be Replayable, so a Highscore would help.
Where do Players Play this Game?
Though it is a Brand Game we can Design a Game that can be Played in the Supermarket on a Monitor Surrounded by the Brands Products.
Who Plays this Game?
Customers, most time Kids and Teenagers will play this Game when you chose a Brand with the same Target Audience.
Why should they Play this Game?
The Game will Stand Out through Endless Replays of the Running Game which you Start and Play by Just Touching it. And then there is a Highscore so there is a Higher Chance this Game will be Replayed at Least One More Time.
As soon as my Greybox Prototype worked properly I was able to Convince my Team and then they Started Working on Concepts while I Started Working on the Level Design.
Working on our Tasks in a Parallel Way we were able to put Everything Together Properly, building a Prototype Describing a Finalized Brand Game.
Level Design:
For the Level Design I created some Helpers that would also work for the Final Game Prototype, so I was able to do Two Tasks at Once.
After Figuring Out, which Dimensions work best, I created a Dummy Object to Measure a River Tile in the Gameworld.
Through some Additional Programming I was able to just Form the Mesh and let it Grow by just Adding New Spline Points.
I also used the Spline for the Paths of the Player later on.
Now I was able to Work on the Level Design.
I always kept the Camera in mind because it should Show Transitioning Dark and Lit Sections to let the Screen become more Attracting to the Eyes of Customers.
Here I just used Placeholders for Cliff Objects, that could be Easily Replaced by the Final Model later on.
For the Terrain I Developed a Method so that the Terrain will Automatically blend between Two given Materials, depending on the Falloff of the Terrain.
This way I just had to Concentrate on Sculpting the Terrain in the First Iteration Phase, the Rest would be done by the Material.
I just had to Paint some Areas manually near the River in the Second Iteration so it will look good near the Camera.
To Build the River with a Seamless Scrolling Material I had to Reuse the Same Plane and connect it to the Last Set Plane.
To do that I imported the Level into 3DsMax and then I was able to not just Build but also Finetune the Mesh of the River.
