Weaveborn
A First Person Story Driven Low Fantasy Adventure
Introduction
My intent with this project is to create a story driven, voice acted short and sweet puzzle experience in a dark low-fantasy setting. I want the player to be able to use pull and push powers to use physics objects to traverse difficult terrain, avoid enemies and take an interest in the story of the demo.
Details
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Individual solo project spanning 2 weeks of work.
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Focus on designing and creating an exciting and story driven whiteboxed level.
This is what the product looked like at the end of my hard deadline. Enjoy!
The Process
I began working on this portfolio piece on the 2nd of November with the lofty goal of finishing the project on the 16th of November, giving me two weeks of time. My goal is to have a short pre-production phase where I knock out the base premise of the game loop and the experience I want to craft. After I've made and bugfixed the main features, the blockout can begin.
I came to the conclussion I wanted the following to be at the centre of my piece.
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A homegrown dark fantasy setting with voice acting by myself
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A pull/push power that drains the weave (or mana) from the player
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A level focused around physics based puzzles and non violent enemy encounters based around said pull/push mechanics
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Health and mana (or weave) resources, one of which regenerates over time.
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A fully functioning sprint and crouch for the player
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A functioning build that you can play at the end of this journey!
However, the most important aspect of this project is this, I have a hard deadline. I must publish a build on the 16th of november 2023 or I will have considered myself to fail.
Blockout Overview
The Smuggler's Den
The smuggler's den serves as an onboarding chamber for
using health potions, receiving "weave upgrades" and
is littered with physicsobjects ripe for interacting with.
It also serves as a narrative tool to make the player ask
questions like, what are they smuggling? Why are they smuggling? And why does my character instinctively know this.
In connection to the smugglers den is "the trench". A ravine that runs through the town of Outcast's Rest like an ugly scar. It is used mostly to dump trash, bodies and alchemical waste from the potion manufactories in this free city.
The Lakeside
The most desperate, destitute and wretched souls in Outcast's rest cannot even afford living near the tall stone walls. They huddle in huts near the toxic lake where they attempt to scrounge by by any means neccesary.
This area serves as the first enemy encounter. Magehunter golems stalk the town, and they are after any unlicensed Weaveborn on behalf of the mighty Magisters. They are impervious to magic, and so must be avoided.
The Cliffside
This is where the smugglers and inhabitants of the shore ferry themselves and their goods upwards, however risky it may seem, they have little choice. Were they to be spotted loitering inside the walls by the watch, they would undoubtably be returned to the trench posthaste with a nasty case of lethal velocity.
The cliffside is an area where the player is introduced to the moving platforms. To encourage exploration of theese objects, voicelines are triggered on entering the area that are meant to make the player want to scale the cliffs, somehow.
The Drawbridge
The final area, the drawbridge, serves as the final challenge aswell as a cool moment where they player gets to see the bridge fall.
The bridge leads to the outskirts of Outcast's rest, where the a group of magehunter golems await to cut off the escape of any freeweavers daring enough to try and escape.
The Blueprints
Push - Pull mechanic
When the player presses the left or right mouse buttons projects a line trace by channel which checks for valid actors with the tag "physicsobject". If they are valid and have the tag, a force impulse will be added on the location hit by the linetrace.
Furthermore, there is a constant linetrace that checks for actors tagged with "physicsobject", and if true will spawn a particle effect on hit location to signal that the item is infact interactable.
Pickups
When the player walks into a collision capsule surrounding pickups, they will add different values to the character blueprint depending on what is input through the actor. They can also be made to give different amounts of health/weave and even upgrade.
The yellow "upgrade potions" increase player push/pull power, maximum weave amount and weave regeneration. Furthermore they decrease the windup time between pressing the button and impulse being added along with giving the player a respawn token.
Moving Platform
Using the push/pull mechanic the player can move some objects around the map to progress. In some cases theese are limited to certain axises of movement by physicsconstraints, like the moving platform.
Enemies - Magehunter Golem
The enemies in the game are impervious to magic, and can not be pushed or pulled. They can be killed only by being impacted by some particularily heavy objects like large stone chunks.
They can patroll, navigate and chase the player and will switch back to patrolling after 20 seconds of chasing the player without success.
When detecting a player, the golem starts sprinting, and changes the colour of its perception-gem to red, indicating hostility.
Closing Thoughts
All in all, the project was a semi-success. I managed to scope down, and produce a short and relatively bug-free experience in just two weeks of full time work. I was able to package and "release" the product without any hitches with code or build errors.
What I've learned is to be even more vigilant of feature creep, but not afraid to rework ideas and mechanics even at a late stage. The puzzles in the game went through multiple iterations and sometimes I had no idea how I was going to make things work. It is clearer to me in hindsight that it is imperative to have code review from another developer, and keep things clean in the blueprints.
This is what the product looked like at the end of my hard deadline. Enjoy!