Hellfist
VR Rhythm Game set in a hellish Marsian environment, 2nd Year Student Project
Roles: Level Designer, Tech Designer | Engine: Unreal Engine 4 | Platform: PC | Duration: 8 weeks | Team Size: 5
HIGH LEVEL SUMMARY
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Hellfist is a VR rhythm based game that offers the unique power-fantasy of punching and ripping through monsters on the beat of epic metal music.
Hellfist is created by 2nd year game design students at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
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Responsibilities/Contributions:
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As a technical designer for Hellfist, I was responsible for the creation of a modular track creation tool prototype as well as a save and load system.
In order to achieve this, I needed to research the behaviors of splines and manipulating objects using spline positions and developed my understanding of Unreal Blueprinting/Visual Scripting and its technical limitations.
I conducted competitor research and singled out the essential components to create the prototype of the track creation tool.
Pre-production phase
Competitor Analysis and Research
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After receiving the first concept of the project, I conducted competitor analysis on various rhythm games such as Osu!, Beatsaber and K-shoot mania. I researched the pros and cons of each track creation tools, difficulty scaling and highscore significance in order to create a plan for the track editor prototype.
Engine limitations and reference
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As a technical designer for this project, I wanted to understand the engine limitations of the Unreal Engine 4 regarding splines and timelines. I created a task list of what competitor track creation tools used and compiled them into two catergories "musts" and "nice to have".
In such a way I could familiarize myself with the engine prior to the creation of the prototype and layout a detailed plan.
Planning and documentation
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This project was meant to be an exercise to understand what pre-production was. As a technical and track designer, my intentions for this phase was to layout a "track design" guideline for the production phase. I was held accountable for the creation of a production pipeline and a level design guideline taking into account various roles required to finalize a single chart.
I held strong inter-disciplinary communication in order to accurately determine the time estimates for each stages of a track creation.
Track creation tool prototype
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As a technical designer, I was responsible for the creation of a fully documented track. Since this project was supposed to be a pre-production phase, I understood that in order to make the production phase more efficient, I needed to create a track creation tool.
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My goal was to be as modular as possible by enabling developpers to chose their time signature, and then decide which beat of the music and which spline to attach beats.
Furthermore, I worked on an importation system enabling developers to save their progress and load various beatmaps.
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My peers thought that this was a great representation of what the tool should look like and was a useful prototype.