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"Stranded Shallows"

For our Capstone Project, spanning the last six months of our degree program, my team was tasked with using the knowledge we had gained to create our own playable game: Stranded Shallows.

Created in Unreal 4.27 by myself and the four other members of Team Invictus, "Stranded Shallows" began its development as a small open-world survival RPG that would have seen the player travelling between different islands in order to make their way back home. Due to production constraints and limitations, the project was transformed into a two-level traversal project in which the player had to make their way through the remnants of a long-forgotten civilization in order to find a way to contact their team and return home.

Responsibilities as Team Lead

During the development of "Stranded Shallows", I was appointed as Team Lead by the other members of Team Invictus. As such, I was responsible for communicating with our professor, the overall Project Lead, on the team's behalf when necessary. I was also responsible for planning and organizing team meetings, being present in during weekly class times in order to discuss and engage with our professor as he play-tested our project, and making I knew and understood the mechanics and systems designed by each of my other team members so that I could explain them to our professor on their behalf should the need arise during class.

As I became more familiar with Perforce during the development project, it also became my responsibility to maintain Team Invictus's source control folder within the Perforce directory. This included ensuring everyone checked out files properly to begin working and checked files back in properly to submit changes, ensuring the overall folder was up-to-date with all new changes and submissions, understanding and correcting any errors that came up, and compiling, packaging, and submitting the weekly project milestone build before class on my team's behalf.

Lastly, as Team Lead I had the responsibility of filming my portion of our team's weekly milestone video, compiling and editing each member's videos together, and uploading the full team milestone video together to both YouTube and our class's submission page within the campus portal site.

Main Design Responsibilities

I was responsible for four main pieces of the final version of "Stranded Shallows." Firstly, I designed what became the first level of our game, World's Beginning. I also designed three of the main systems and mechanics that were used throughout the duration of the game: the tools and weapons system, the harvesting system, and the construction system.

World's Beginning

World's Beginning served as the first level for "Stranded Shallows." The player began their journey in an underground cave system amongst a small collection of abandoned houses belonging to a long-forgotten civilization. As this was the game's first level, it also served as a tutorial space for the player, allowing them to become familiar with many of the mechanics they would encounter as the progressed through the cave to find a way to reach the surface.

Harvesting and Construction

The harvesting system that I designed allowed the player to interact with other objects in the world in order to gather materials from them. In some cases, such as the simple stone rock, the player could harvest without the use of additional tools required. However, with other objects, such as the iron ore vein, harvesting required the use a craftable axe or other tool to be completed.

The construction mechanic that I designed allowed players to use items that they had gathered throughout the game, along with a craftable hammer, in order to build and repair other objects throughout the game, such as ladders and bridges, that they could use to continue their progression.

Tools and Weapons

The tools and weapons system that I designed allowed the player to craft and use different items in order to complete objectives and defend themselves. The creation each tool and weapon involved the creation of the physical design of each object for the player to hold and use, the scripting and implementation for each's specific functionality, and the creation and implementation of the idle and in-use animations for the player as the utilized each one. There were five key aspects to the design of each tool and weapon throughout the game: attack damage, attack range, durability, crafting requirements and primary function. For example, the axe was designed with higher damage and durability than both the bow and the spear and only required easily accessible resources to craft, but since it was mainly meant to be used as a tool, using it as a weapon required the player to be in very close proximity to whatever they were engaged with. The spear however, though it had lower damage and durability, required similar materials to the axe and allowed the player to be father away from their target, thus keeping them slightly our of reach and increasing the chance of survival. The bow had similar damage and durability to the spear, but it afforded the player the ability to attack from well outside a threatening range. The drawback for the bow, however, was that it required somewhat rarer materials to craft, and also required the crafting and use of arrows, which had their own recipe and required resources to create.

Crude and Refined Axe

The first piece of equipment I designed was the Axe. This was initially intended to be the player's base melee weapon, but after the design plan for our project changed, it was repurposed to become the player's most useful tool. While it was still able to damage and kill animals throughout the world, the Axe's main function was to allow the player to harvest materials throughout the game, such as wood from trees and iron from ore veins.

The Crude Axe could be crafted by the player using stone, sticks, and rope. This version featured higher damage and durability than both the bow and arrow and the spear. The Refined version featured higher damage and durability than its crude counterpart, but required iron ore as part of its crafting recipe, a rarer material in the game.

Crude and Refined Spear

The second piece of equipment was the Spear. Though it featured lower durability and damage than the Axe, it had a higher attack range, making it ideal for keeping targets at a distance. While the Spear's primary use was as a melee weapon, it also had a secondary function that allowed it to be thrown a short distance in order to damage targets from an even further range than it's base. When thrown, however, the Spear would remove itself from the players inventory until they could interact with and recollect it. So players would need to be careful using this functionality and ensure they had a backup weapon to equip.

Similar to the Axe's crafting recipes, the Crude Spear required stone, sticks, and rope in order to craft, and the player needed to harvest iron ore before crafting the Refined version and benefitting from its increased damage and durability stats.

Bow and Arrow.

The Bow and Arrow was the final piece of equipment I designed for the Tools and Weapons systems. Though it had lower damage than the Axe and Spear, it featured a much larger attack range. The Bow also featured the easiest crafting recipe to acquire materials for, with sticks and rope being the only required components.

The main drawback for the Bow came from its ammo requirement. In order for the Bow to function, the player was required to craft Arrows to fire. Though the crafting recipe for Arrows only required stones and sticks, the player still needed to ensure they had enough resources to craft a fair amount, or risk starting a fight they wouldn't have enough ammo to finish.

Other Design Responsibilities

I also had multiple minor design responsibilities throughout the development of "Stranded Shallows."

Designing two additional levels for the game that, while not included in the final project, are still playable through the Level Select screen within the main menu.
- Swamp Island
  - A small marsh-like island that was meant to be traveled to during the original design plan. This island featured some of the other mechanics and systems that were designed by my team members, but also included a terrain effect that I designed specifically for use on this level. The effect I designed had the island coated in a thick mud-like terrain that slowed the player's movement speed, and required the use of a craftable pair of "Swamp Shoes" that I designed in order to move properly.
- Underground Temple
  - An underground temple hidden deep within the caves under Swamp Island. This level was originally intended to be an important place within our original design plan, as it included both important information for the player to discover on their journey and one of the bosses that they would have needed to defeat in order to progress. The Underground Temple also featured two different mechanics that I had designed. The original version of my construction mechanic was featured here, requiring the player to construct rappel points that they needed to use in order to reach the temple at the center of the cave, as well as the rappelling ability that I designed in order to allow players to make use of the new rappel points.
Implementing the objective system created by another team member into World's Beginning, and ensuring that was set up and tracking the appropriate objectives properly.
Creating the original physical objects and implementing the functionality used for the Harvesting mechanic, such as the Iron Ore Vein and the harvestable Tree, as well as the hammer and interactable object for the Construction mechanic and each object that could be created through construction points
- Though some of the original physical designs, including the construction point, hammer, and tree, are still included in the final product, others were replaced with proper meshes created by the artists attached to our team later in development.
Voice acting for the main character throughout the game