Javier Belda
Design
Project Overview
Being part of the Design team I've been able to work in different fields across the development of the game. To assure a correct and fluid development, I tried to stay updated about the work of all my classmates and to prevent future problems I tried to design and do all my tasks taking into account what the other departments will have to do in advance.
The main fields I've worked on were Level design, Narrative, Trailers, Playtests and Enemy design.
My contribution
Level Design
I modelled the blockout for all the levels of the game, this simple representation of the scenarios were useful in order to prototype and test how the gameplay felt. In addition to this, I was also in charge of the assembly of some of the final art levels in the engine. Meaning by this to import the FBX, add the textures, the colliders, environmental particles as well as traps and other terrain modifiers. Furthermore, I designed some rooms.
Narrative
One of my main inquietudes in game development is the narrative aspect, so for this project, I've tried to be always involved in some way around this. At the beginning of the production alongside two of my teammates, I wrote the main plot of the game. Later on, I was in charge of adding some of the dialogues in the code and after that in the engine. In the latter part of the development, I put all the dialogue portraits in the engine and I designed and created the "pre-boss room", a special room with narrative purposes where you have a chance to talk with the friends you made across the game before taking the final fight.
Playtest
To assure that we were developing a game that was fair and easy to understand for the future players' Pol Galán and I were in charge of the playtests, we did two sessions through the subject, one during the development of the second alpha and the other during the gold. Apart from the playtest session itself we prepared a guidelines document, questionnaires for the testeds to be filled, and after the session a conclusions document with things that needed to be fixed, the importance of this fix and how we thought that it could be fixed.
Enemy Design
In one of the milestones of the subject, my scrum was in charge of designing and prototyping a first iteration of the third level enemies, being the last of the game we had to assure a fair but challenging experience. To do this we firstly wrote a design document with all the important stuff about each enemy (such as the behaviour, the animations that will be needed, the stats...) and later on, I made a prototype in Unity of the Imperial Heavy Trooper, a melee enemy with a spear that chases the player through the level.
Trailers and teasers
Apart from video games, one of my passions is cinema and Audiovisual Communication so I asked to be part of the marketing team of the game. I made the Stormtrooper trailer, the gameplay segment of the Wampa and Skell trailer and worked on the latter part of the announcement trailer.
Tutorial
I was the second in charge of the tutorial, I made some of the pop-ups where the players get info about the game.
Other stuff
Other things I've done are:
- First HUB Iteration: NPC random spawn system.
- Skill trees: First navigation iteration and usage.
- Death sequence design and implementation.
- Terrain modifiers (traps, barrels...) design and protype.
- QA: Look for bugs
