The Quantum Games

Term 3 CEA | Rapid Game Prototype | 1 week | UE4 | Team size: 5

Overview

QG is a first-person shooter in which players fight each other inside a quantum arena, but with a twist: the player's height serves as their health bar. Both players have a special weapon that causes the attacked enemy to shrink. Upgrade your gear with the latest tech and be the last man standing!

Documents

Game Design Document

Goals

Game:

A best-of-7 match pits two players against each other. To win each round, the player must kill the opposing player. Each round features a 4-minute timer, during which a dangerous zone shrinks towards the center of the map (much like a battle-royal zone).

Personal:

At this point in our course, we had just begun to work in groups and faced the difficulty of defining a scope, which is something that most of us struggle with as students. Since we only had a week to present the prototype and we wanted to provide something more, something that resembled a shippable title, my goal was to create a small arena that allowed for quick action with shooting in tight places but yet being efficient enough to provide players breathing space and enough regions to explore while retaining the sense of surprise.

Responsibilities

• Rapid Level Conceptualization, Layout & Greybox in Unreal Engine to get the level ready for playtest

• Conducting Playtest and addressing feedbacks to Iterate on the level

• Finding Creative Solutions to successfully incorporate the Game mechanic "Player Shrink as they get shot"

• Final Look Dev and Fx to add affordances to the level pathways and exits

• Assisted in Set Dressing to achieve the final look of the level

Workflow

The original concept was to make a basic but fast-paced first-person shooter. In Unreal, I started with a 50 X 50 square playing area and began cutting shapes with BSP. Keeping the zone shrinking logic In mind, I blocked out a chamber underneath to give player more locations to explore without significantly expanding the scope of the game. Each player had a vantage point near where they spawned to survey the area.

Problem:

During early playtests, we realized that the game is too short. Shooting mechanic was fun but gameplay time wasn’t too long. Roughly lasted 1-1:30 min each round and ended even before the zone shrinking mechanic could be activated

Solution:

That is when the concept of "Shrinking Players" was proposed. It was a creative solution, but it needed to be incorporated into the level in such a way that it was enjoyable and increased playtime.

The level already had plenty of paths and a network of vents, all it needed was a better flow. As a result:

• We made the vents accessible for players as they shrink 30%

• To give the shrinking player an edge, we linked the vents to form a network of paths that circled the level, increasing the element of surprise.

• To begin with, the players could only use 2 out of 4 routes that led to the chamber underneath.

Advantage

• Gameplay time increased from 1 minute to 3-4 minutes per round which is exactly what we were looking for

• The zone shrinking feature worked well as the pathways eventually guided the players to the level's

• Both players were in the game till the end as it got difficult to target after players started to shrink

Problem:

The prototype was running well at this stage, and we had something we liked, but the element of surprise was still lacking from the gameplay. Players did not have enough exits up to the top of the level after entering the vents, which broke the flow and made it predictable.

Solution:

We added a couple extra vent openings, often on both corners. In addition, we experimented with a jump pad in some locations to boost gameplay pace. For affordances, we also added smoke effects at exits across the floor

Summary

We all had a great time working on this project. I believe it was challenging for all of us because we had previously worked on small scoped 2d projects on Unity and had to quickly adapt to the Unreal Engine and figure out elements needed for a multiplayer first-person shooter. Personally, I got a firsthand look at what rapid prototyping is all about. I was surprised by how quickly and effectively we were able to identify problems and devise solutions.

Here are a few shots of the final set dressed level:

Roles/Credits

Shubham Beri (Level Designer) Anand Mohapatra (Cinematics, Lighting) Aakash Kumar Bhagchandani (UI Design) Oguz Bicer (Game Design, Project Manager) PB Giridharahn (Programming, Technical Design) VR Siddarth (Character Design, Set Dressing)

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