RUINATION
6TH SEMESTER PROJECT
Fight an ancient colossal god, explore a destroyed realm of worship, and discover a long-forgotten tale. Control heavy stones to overcome the corrupted divinity.
PROJECT INFO
Date
6th semester (2022) @ Game Design, HTW Berlin
Duration
16 weeks
Team
Sina Behrend, Kay Priesnitz, Lenja Raschke, Raphael Sindermann, Sebastian Voigt
Coaches
Prof. Susanne Brandhorst, Prof. Thomas Bremer, Zwi Zausch
Technology
Unreal Engine 5, Houdini, Maya, Substance Painter/Designer, Adobe Photoshop, Cubase
Constraints
A vertical slice made in Unreal Engine 5 with a heavy focus on the environment.
My Part in this project
Technical Art | Game Design | Visual Effects
My learnings
I started learning Houdini during this project and also expanded my knowledge in the field of visual effects.
Designing a boss fight in 16 weeks was very ambitious, so making decisions accordingly was crucial.
DEVELOPMENT
Our goal for this project was to build an epic boss battle set in a mature environment, a scene that would utilize the numerous technical possibilities provided by Unreal Engine 5.
Our prototype went through many iterations - especially in terms of what the player is capable of and how he can interact with the boss. It became an intricate net of balancing cinematic boss abilities with gameplay and player agency.
This was the first project working together in the HIVE after the Covid outbreak. It made a huge difference in our production speed to be able to discuss problems and ideas immediately.
We continued to use Miro and Kanban Boards for documenting and planning, which was important as we needed to coordinate a group of five.
Character Abilities
The final iterations of the player's abilities show dynamic projectiles, which can be taken out of the ground very quickly and are switchable between attack and defense mode in an instant. This enables the player to react appropriately to his surroundings.
Besides tackling all kinds of technical issues, my main tasks were to take care of the pre-baked destruction as well as designing and implementing visual effects for our player and the boss. I added a dash for reactive movement and a more agile player character. To stay consistent with the theme of our character abilities, the dash leaves a decoy stone character behind to additionally draw aggro from the boss and leave the player space to reposition.
Destruction
Due to technical limitations, Pre-Baked destruction was used wherever movable objects were to be destroyed. This applies to both player projectiles and boss attacks.
Furthermore, we decided to partly solve the destruction of large architectural structures, such as the towers, via pre-baked animations to maintain the performance and achieve more controllable destruction.
I created the Pre-Baked destructions in Houdini and triggered them as animations at given points.
VFX
I tried to adjust the style of the VFX to our environment, keeping it rather realistic looking. They play a helping role in player guidance, add to the atmosphere, and, in our case, provide essential clues for boss attacks.
VFX regarding Boss abilities are crucial for the player: they provide them with timing and directional clues, anticipate attacks, and create a connection to the boss itself.
To strengthen this connection, I reused colors and shapes from the environment, which are associated with the boss.
I also needed to keep an eye on the performance, so I used various optimization techniques like channel packing the textures for the materials for the VFX.
