MANDATORY_UPDATE
Project Type: Group (9 developers + 8 external contractors)
Focus: Development Pipeline, Game Production, Narrative Design, Game Design.
Role: Narrative Designer, Game Designer, Dialogue Writer, Quest Designer.
Game Engine: Unreal 5
Description: A 3D Action-Platformer, MANDATORY_UPDATE is a story about the choices we make under oppressors, and how those choices may impact those closest to us. For the project, I led Agile sprints, worked closely with all other departments, and wrote dialogue which I then directed the voice acting for and implemented in-engine.
Case Study
The process for the project starts with the ideation stage, where I work off of a Miro board and compile all my story and character ideas into an organized sheet. At the same time, I worked with our tech team to iterate upon our prototype.
After ideation. I begin to work on fleshing out the overarching story. The story is never written in stone when it comes to my development process. Changes are always able to be made so that it adapts with any mechanic and scope changes. For example, we had planned for only 2 Acts, and 2 bosses. With the final rescope for the game, it ended up being 3 acts with one final boss.
After finishing the idea for overarching storytelling, I prepared for the project to be voice acted. I aided in the process of creating a voice acting presentation for prospective actors to review and submit voice lines. From there, we used a Discord server to keep actors notified of their status and at last announce the casting decisions. The voice acting was also not set in stone, as I chose to do a second round of voice acting after a major rewrite due to changes in the impetus of the game. I utilized color coding in order to aid actors in identifying where the new lines were in the sheet.
After completing the voice acting and having our sound designer, Jessica process the sounds, I went into cutscene development. This process started with very rough animatics and communications with tech team to figure out how to implement the UI into the cutscenes. Then, I went in and made very rough block outs for the cutscenes in what was a temp version of the level.
The level was modified soon after, and we rescoped our animations pipeline. Due to this, I re-blocked out all of the cutscenes into simpler, less animation-heavy scenes. I also scoped down, cutting two cutscenes and replacing them with regular in-game dialogue sequences.
Around this time, we had a Beta Day event at SCAD, which I attended to facilitate playtesting and collect bugs and feedback for the game. I also took this opportunity to play games from other teams and see what I can learn from them as well, on top of giving them feedback! Our Tech Lead, Linus Winter, then put everything into an organized spreadsheet.
We adjusted our scope accordingly, and I aided in the development of the Steam website and trailer, making mockups for both and eventually taking ownership over the Steam page. Our project lead, Ethan Overcash, then took over and cleaned up the trailer into its final version.