Felix Szczesny
Game Designer
VAST
THE SKY IS NO LIMIT
Grow procedural buildings in a vast desert landscape!
Vast is about the exploration of a barren and mysterious world, the construction of procedurally growing structures, and players setting their own goals within the frame of a first person single-player game.
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DATE : 4th semester (2020)
DURATION : 3 weeks
TEAM : Jonathan Veit, Philip Hildebrandt, René Borger, Felix Szczesny
COACHES : Prof. Susanne Brandhorst and Prof. Thomas Bremer
TECHNOLOGY : Unity 3D
THEME: Procedural
MY PARTS :
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System design
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Gameplay programming
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Designing and programming the procedural buildings
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Organisational work
PROJECT INFORMATION
BUILD
Players can build their own constructions out of towers, stairways and roads. They have a playful influence on the way buildings grow by throwing the orb in different ways.
EXPLORE
On their way through the world the players leaves intriguing constructions behind, and it's up to them to explore the ever changing landscape while shaping it into their own.
WORKFLOW EXAMPLES
Working out the concept on Miro
This was our second three weeks project in the 4th semester and we used Miro again. It really is a good solution to discuss, keep track and show us what we are talking about.
One of the first things we decided, was that the player should have a playful influence on the procedural generation. We came up with throwing the orb and combined this concept to an interesting movement system.
Procedural buildings
The growth of all structures is completely procedural and controlled by various algorithms. The results are determined by the input parameters that get calculated at runtime when the orb is thrown. Each structure has its own algorithm that was designed for a specific growth pattern.
One of the influences we decided to use is the orbs flight duration. The longer the orb flies, the more intricate the structures become.
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Home office
We met in calls as much as possible and also organized playtests through screen sharing.
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MY EXPERIENCE & LEARNINGS
The positives
My main focus on this project was to design the procedural buildings in order to achieve our desired game feel. I worked closely with the movement programmer and the game artist until everything worked together the way we wanted. I researched and learned a lot about procedurally generating things and the communication with my team went very well.
The negatives
It is clear that Vast as it is now is just a prototype and proof of concept for something bigger. After playing for more than an hour, most players come to a point where they don't know what to do next. But this is something that can be fixed.
The future of Vast
People liked to play Vast and I can imagine to continue working on it one day.
We already thought about focusing on developing more points of interests, to peak the players curiosity and move them more around the world. The game could also benefit from world events and should keep a strong focus on the creations of the players.
OTHER PROJECTS
