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Darts Odyssey - UDK

A cog in the small, school project machine

As a final project for the Game Design program at VFS (Vancouver Film School) we were asked to form a team and create a vertical slice of a game during our last 4 months. I was part of a 4-person team (initially 5 . . . more on that later) and after our first meeting, we decided to go with UDK since we felt it was the engine we were the most comfortable with and felt would help us deliver a product of high quality. Once that decision was made, we moved on to team roles. While we would all have input in the design, we did set out specific roles for each of us in order to be more effective. One would act as a project manager/documentation person. Another would focus on prop modeling, another on level design and texturing and another on Programing, Gameplay Design and prop modeling. 

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My role in the team included:

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  • Game Design

  • Game Mechanics

  • Concept Art

  • Character Modeling

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Having said this, we all contributed where needed and we also had people from outside the Game Design program contribute with some things (Specifically character animations and music)

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A bump in the road

As I mentioned before, in the beginning, I was part of a 5-person team. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case in the end. This was one of the hardest things we had to go through as a team, but it was a good learning experience in an area of game dev that you don't really get any classes for. So, the issue came from 2 people that were butting heads with regards to the direction of the game. But as time went on, we felt that in reality, it stemmed from one person's personal issues with the other. It was a difficult situation because we considered both of them friends, but it was starting to affect development and it was slowing us down. We looked for advice from our mentors and instructors, and we were told to have a chat with the person that was making things hard for us, to try and reach a solution, but that if that didn't work, we should consider the possibility of parting ways with him, as difficult as that may be. So we did, several times, we had meetings with him trying to reach a solution and trying to better understand his point of view. After the meetings, things would go back to normal, but it wouldn't last. This happened a few times until we realized that it just wasn't going to work out, things would eventually go bad as he had it in his head that another team member was just doing things to spite him (which really wasn't the case). In the end, we decided to make the difficult choice of letting him go. It was hard, he was our friend, but it was affecting all of us and it was affecting development as well. So we sat down with him and let him know of our decision. He didn't take it well, as was expected, but it was done. In the end, some of us were able to retain our friendship with him, but not all. After this, it was back to work, and we were all finally on the same page with regard to the vision and direction of the game. He also now had the freedom of doing things exactly as he wanted on his own project, so maybe things turn out for the best. 

A second bump

Ok, so what is it now right? Well, let me tell you. As part of the final project, we would work with people from other programs within VFS that would help us lighten the load of development. For us, they were 3 people: 1 for enemy character animations, 1 for our main character animations and 1 for music. 2 of them worked great, 1 however, did not. The worst part of it all was that it was the one in charge of our main character animations. No big deal, just the one character that the player would control and see during the whole playthrough. So we got this news pretty late in development, which made us all die inside a little. But, we had to make it work. So, being the only one with some knowledge in animation, I stepped up. I hadn't done any character animation before this, but I've been a fan of animations, 3d modeling and everything 3D art-related, so I had seen tons of behind-the-scenes where they explained animation basics and had seen some animation courses as well. Thankfully, it was just enough to let me pull of some basic animations for our character and have him do what was needed in our game. I have to be honest, this was probably the highlight for me in the development, since it gave me the chance to help the team out of a bind. It also didn't hurt that it impressed some of our mentors since we managed to solve something that could have really hurt our final project.

Project reception (By industry profesionals)

At the end of development, as part of our final project, we had what was called "Industry night". This was a night where all groups would present their games to industry professionals invited to judge and rate our final projects. This would also be a chance for us to network and meet more people from the industry.

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After a nerve-racking presentation, people would then exit the theater and get to try all of our games and talk to us about our development process. It's a night I will remember fondly. Even though we got second place, we received great feedback and were told that out of all the projects, ours was the closest to an actual marketable product. You can try it out yourself by downloading the game installer, just keep in mind that it was created to be played with a controller. However, if you don't have a controller, there is keyboard and mouse support as well.

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