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Project 01

Night Cell is a retro dungeon-crawling RPG blended with unique elements. For instance, as opposed to a high-fantasy setting, the title features a future-funk aesthetic, as well as mixing up the traditional RPG gameplay to allow for newcomers and intrigue veterans.

Development of Night Cell began long before its brief, where I spent most of my summer developing a random dungeon generator, which proved as difficult as it sounded, requiring me having to rewrite it once. Eventually however, I managed to create a 95% reliable dungeon generator (the other 5% is accommodated for in a fail-safe implemented in later development) before the official start of term:

Alongside this I compiled a moodboard of aesthetic inspirations, which leaned towards that of 90s/80s anime and neon:

Furthermore, I mocked up an image of combat, having been in the process of developing an interesting yet simple and fun combat system:

The idea for how combat would work, is the party is assigned a set number of 'Ability Points' (AP), and can distribute them amongst their party's abilities as they please, as opposed to each member sequentially getting 1 order per turn. For example, you can spend all your AP on one character's healing spell by selecting multiple orders of it, or instead select it once and spend the rest on another member. This idea evolved into the final version in the trailer.

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To gain AP, the player would need to either successfully hit with a basic attack (the top option) or successfully defend (bottom option) against one, this was turned into the party member's 'Stance': the attack stance granted a free hit (subject to accuracy and status), and the defense stance granted resistance to crits and reduced regular damage. Using these two elements, the player would have to strategize when and when not to utilise their abilities and stances dependent on the situation of combat.

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This gameplay style also brought up an issue of something I noticed in traditional RPGs: something I call "Dungeon stamina". What this means is how far a player can go in a dungeon before having to retreat, the player can heal with the use of items and mana until they run out and have to go back or risk defeat, Night Cell does not feature mana. In response to this I incorporated health kits and medic packs, the former are small items that heal the party, the former are items the player can use in battle to boost their healing abilities or heal outside of combat. In the final game, there are plenty of these two items scattered throughout the levels to make up for the large amount of damage sustained in battles, wether or not this makes the game too easy, ruins the "dungeon stamina" concept or stands on its own would require further and more critical feedback.

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At the start of term, me and my partner had begun to research and experiment in recreating the 80s/90s anime artstyle:

After recreating the style, it was time to apply this to original character concepts, applying a future-theme, 80s style, and having to make their roles clear:

(The player takes control of a character called "The Captain", who due to being hospitalized has to participate via a drone, explaining the floating hands in VR)

The way our game would be displayed is in a 2.5D fashion, which raised some eyebrows from our lecturers, in response, we had created a mock-up of how we intended the final game to appear:

Unfortunately, due to the scope of this project, I had to leave the art and majority of the environment art to my partner, and I instead concentrated on coding and designing the game, as not only did we intend for a regular PC build, but a Virtual Reality one too. This decision was more of an experiment as to how well this old formulae could work in VR, as the roots of this style of dungeon-crawler was once seen as immersive experiences. Before this could be taken into VR however, the base game needed to be created first, so while we created the standard build for our first term's submission, we had experimented with the HTC Vive and Unity plug-ins.

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The next step in creating the main game, was for the movement and battle system, which I had created a small prototype of, being able to blink between tiles and for the combat menu to pop up.

For our first submission, I had created a framework and engine for the game, the game had a pre-made city level, 4 randomly generated floors (with a variation of over 100 tiles), and one pre-made dungeon floor. In terms of mechanics, the dungeon generator worked, most of the battle system was made, and there was a music player to shuffle through music tracks (all of which were future funk).

To make the submission however, I had to cut a good chunk of features, some of which were added in later:

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  • Functional hub level with NPCs to talk to (A basic model was available to view, but cut in the 2nd submission)

  • Character progression (Added later)

  • Items (Basic health kits and medic packs were added later)

  • Keys and doors (Implemented into a premade level later in development)

  • Some player abilities

  • Boss battle

My original goal for the audio was for it to cycle throughout a level and remix/corrupt in combat, but due to my lack of musical expertise, I had to settle with several existing songs and apply a filter in battle. Some examples of the music used listed below:

After the first submission, we had properly begun development on the VR version of the game, which proved to be challenging for several reasons, our group's access to VR facilities, the glitchy VR UI system, ensuring elements worked across both versions and translating things to work in an VR experience. For example, in the regular version of the game, the "head" turn with the body of the character, using this method in VR was disorientating, and so it was substituted for moving in the direction of a rotatable cursor at the players feet, allowing for the player to turn their head at their own comfort.

Navigation:

Standard Version

VR Version

Combat:

Standard Version

VR Version

In the last phase of development, my group gathered some of our peers to test our game, and the feedback proved to be extremely useful. It helped bring to light areas of the game that weren't only buggy or glitchy, but also parts that could help balance and refine the mechanics. For example, the 'Drone' enemy would call for back-up when it was the only enemy, this would entice the player to kill it quick, however, when they managed to kill the original drone, its comrade would summon a new one immediately. This frustrated a lot of testers, and so I altered the AI to only call for back-up once in a battle to avoid the indefinite chain of enemies, before this mechanic wasn't "broken", but it wasn't fun for the player and had to be worked out.

Furthermore, due to the unique gameplay of Night Cell, we would have to explain it to the player without actually having to be present, and as such I had created a tutorial level. This level would explain how to move, fight, use keys on the doors and figure out how health kits and medic packs worked.

Despite a large portion of our intended scope being cut down, I feel that it helped us focus on the core mechanics of the game and refine them into an enjoyable experience both on PC and the HTC Vive. If our team had been larger or we had more time, we may have been able to incorporate these extras, however I do feel proud of what we had created as it came out far better than I thought. Play testers very much enjoyed the game, especially the experience the VR version offered. If I were to do this project from scratch, I would likely rewrite most of the engine, focus on the PC version only, and handle the art side myself to create a more unified style.

 

From this project I have learnt how designing a VR experience differs from a standard one, how crucial game-testers are, how to tailor a game around their feedback and being able to prioritize features and content for the time allocated, which should prove useful in becoming a game designer.

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