Shattered Veil

Shattered Veil is an Action-Adventure FPS game taking place in a Dark Celtic Fantasy world. Possessing the power of the secret sight and your Ritual Dagger, uncover all the secrets in the environment and seal away invading forces from another world.

Take on a dark fantasy environment inspired by Celtic mythology and reveal what was hidden from mortal eyes with your special Sight. Wield an enchanted blade and the mystic magic of your sect to survive in this dark land, and heed the advice of the heroes who came before you before the forest swallows all.

This was a group project made at Futuregames.

Concept

Role | Combat and Enemy Designer

Genre | Action Adventure

Team Size | 14

Download |

Duration | 4 weeks

Engine | Unity

Designed combat system, enemies, boss and gameplay mechanics for the project.
Collaborated with programmers to make sure all the systems are implemented.
Led the animation design and closely worked with animators to implement all the animation features efficiently.
Worked with UX designers to enhance the gameplay with overlays and UI additions.
With collaboration with level and narrative designers and programmers, implemented the puzzle mechanics for the game.
Planning and setting up meetings with different disciplines and making sure all the tasks were aligned according to our deadline.

Responsibilities:

My Design Workflow

Combat Design

For this project we had some rules to follow which included making a the player with a first person camera and with either melee , ranged or magic attacks.

After discussing with the team we decided to go with a first person range attack style of combat. I started researching and also checking out third person combat mechanics which might go with first person as well. I stumbled upon the god of war axe mechanic and thought this seems really interesting. I researched some more on throwing weapons and finally decided to design the weapon of choice as a magical dagger.

Additionally with the magic throwing dagger , we wanted a defensive system for the player through which they can dodge or evade enemies. I decided on designing a stun orb. So now the player will be equipped with a throwing dagger for offense and a stun for defense.

The goal was to make sure the combat mechanics go hand in hand with the movement we have and give the player enough opportunities when they enter a combat state.

Combat Prototyping and Implementation

Combat Planning

Planning the combat involved what the player can do and what mechanics are technically feasible in a 4 week timeframe.
The systems were designed to be simple yet powerful when the player engages in combat.
The two most important mechanics involved the throwing dagger and the stun effect.

Throwing Dagger

The throwing dagger was inspired by Cyberpunk knives and God of war axe throw.
The axe can be thrown by the player and then it returns back to the hand in a certain amount of time.
Collaborating with our combat programmer we started making adjustable values for the throwing pace and return values of the dagger.

Stun

The player needed an ability to defend himself while the dagger is returning.
A stun made the most sense as it can stagger enemies and give the space for the player to get the dagger back.
Adding the stun proved beneficial as the players used it strategically if there are enemies coming from all sides.

Problems

A lot of Collison issues. The dagger was clipping through objects and going through almost everything in the world which made it look very unrealistic and could sometime bug out of damaging enemies.
The stun was working but while playing the game it felt like its very underused as it was only getting applied to one enemy at a time.

Improvements

Having the dagger on collision hit rather than trigger fixed our issues. This also enabled us to do multi kills as when the dagger comes back and if enemies are in sight it can kill enemies from behind as well.
We added a simple AOE to the stun so that it staggers multiple enemies at a time rather than aiming at one.

Prototype

Final

Enemy Design

As the world was set in a mythical universe , we wanted our enemies to be dark and mystifying and also wanted to give them variety in their attacks.

We needed the player to feel the tension when they engage in combat and the enemies should be able to force the player to move into certain spaces and use their abilities to their best to get the perfect outcome.

Along with the mini enemies we also decided to add a boss at the end of the game. Adding the boss was a very late decision from the team which meant we won't be able to deliver a mighty boss , but still we challenged ourselves and found out a way to design a simple boss which fits in the game.

The decision to add a boss came from the fact that the players wanted more variation and something challenging to face. This gave us the idea of trying out a simple boss battle at the end of our game

Enemy Prototyping and Implementation

The enemies were implemented with 3 states :

Idle
Chase
Attack/Attack in given radius for ranged enemies.

We wanted to keep the enemies simple but still give the players a bit of a challenge when they would enter combat.

The important thing to note is for our game we did not wanted the enemies to be already spawned in the areas instead we wanted them to spawn when the player does some trigger actions.

In this way , we could control our spawners and amount of enemies spawned based on which area the player stumbles in.

Enemy Prototype

Enemy Final

Boss Implementation

For the boss, it was a very late call for us to design and implement it so we decided to go a bit simpler at the start.

Goal:

The boss should be hard to beat but not in a sense of it having variation in attacks but with simpler ways. (In our case just a higher health pool)
Should be big , fast and menacing.

With these goals in mind the following states were added to the boss:

Chase
Attack

Attack variations:

The first iteration of the boss only had one slam attack when the player is in close range.
The problem was if the player runs away the boss is going to have to follow and get close to the player in order to try and kill them.
This meant we needed to add somewhat of a ranged attack which should be stronger and makes the player use every skill they have in their arsenal.
The final iteration for the boss had a slam attack and laser eyes.

Boss Prototype

Boss Final

Learnings & Conclusions

This project helped me understand feasibility in game development. As a technical designer I need to know the capabilities of my programmers and need good communication with them to know what is possible to make or not.
Collaborating across all disciplines be it UI , art or animation is extremely important and need to know that all of them are aligned with the vision.
Ask questions even if they are silly. If you don't know or don't understand just say it out loud , it will help you learn.
As a feature owner it is your responsibility to check up on tasks and timelines to see everything is in motion properly.
Knowing when to cut stuff and explaining it properly to the team to as in why cause everyone is giving their best.

Thank you for reading!