Magne-Tech

Game genre: First person puzzle solving.
Gameplay summary: Explore your surroundings, use your magnet tool to solve physics puzzles, upgrade your gun as you go. Critical thinking and trial & error is a must.

Platform: Windows PC.​

Engine: Unity.

Time spent on project: 
Feb 2021 ~ Jun 2021 (Proof)
Jul 2021 ~ Mar 2022 (Major)
Roughly 12 months for entire project.
 

My job role(s): Programmer. Game Designer. 3D Artist. UI & HUD. Sound design. Animator. Particle FX. QA tester.

Software used: Unity. MAYA. Substance Painter. Photoshop. Audacity.

 

Project details:

Magne-Tech is a first person puzzle solving shooter & platforming game. In a similar vein to Portal, this game gives the user a gun / tool to solve environment & physics based puzzles. But in this case your only mechanic is to shoot pods onto magnetic surfaces or objects to solve puzzles.

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This is a now finished team project that first started as a Proof of Concept demo to prove the original pitched idea could work as a full game. We developed and polished it through Major Production and ended up with a large variety of content that shows our many skills in different areas, and to prove our collaboration skills as a team.

 

I pitched the original game concept, and kept it's core mechanic quite simple, because I know how quickly a games scope can get away from you if you're not careful, and I knew this simple mechanic could be expanded upon as we went along in production, so it was easy to initially get off the ground (hence my early prototype you see in the dev video) but left a lot of freedom to expand the core mechanic which is what we ended up doing, electricity, rust, explosions etc etc.

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This project has been a valuable, gruelling and unique learning experience for myself particularly, as due to only having a single Programmer in our entire class when we split into 2 teams, I volunteered to take up the role of the sole programmer for our team so we didn't have to merge into a single large team.

I completed the project as the sole programmer, I enjoyed the experience and challenge... mostly! lol

I volunteered because I had been practising programming in my own self study and felt confident enough to be the programmer for the full project through Proof & Major production.

Suffice to say it's been a hectic slog to learn a lot of new programming on the fly as I went along. Sharing several hats as a Game Designer, an Artist and the teams Programmer was a challenge I enjoyed conquering.

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My contributions to this project:

• Game design.
  - I pitched the original game concept. It was chosen to be produced through a class vote by teachers & fellow students.
  - And while my primary study and desired role is to be a Game designer, I had to focus primarily on Programming for this project, but when I finished up all priority coding duties it freed up my time to also take the co-pilot seat as Game designer again from time to time, as well as contribute to the art side of things.
  - I designed the fan duct maze puzzle, and the giant fan bridge concept/mechanics.
  - Helped work out the kinks in other puzzle designs through regular team brainstorming.
   

• Art.
  - I was responsible for the final magnet gun you see in the game now, model, UV unwrapping, texturing, emission maps, particle FX etc
  - I helped with the art direction, theme and story development of a dystopian sci-fi industrial style world.
  - I followed the game design diagrams / puzzle maps and built the prototype greybox levels using Unity primitives and/or Probuilder.
  - I created all the particle systems seen in game, the lightning bolts I'm particularly proud of.
  - I created the png decals for fleshing out the levels, signs, floor warning stripes etc.
  - Applied my very first shader into a game for the red hologram in the main menu.
   

• Programming.
  Everything in game was my responsibility to program. Everything. 😅 I'm proud of my first gig as a teams sole programmer and pulling it off as well as I did. For more details see the dev video here.
  
  The code I'm most proud of includes:
  - I programmed my first FPS player controller from scratch so I have total control over it.
  - The artificial physics based magnetism used throughout the game, and it's polarity reversal on the fly.
  - The magnet pod logic systems, which dynamically keep track of all different coloured fired and recalled pods so as to avoid overlap glitches etc, and connecting each pod to manipulate physics objects in lots of different ways, managing all the rigidbodies, joints, mass and force calculations etc.
  - The variety of unique puzzle mechanics, such as simulated wind from giant fans, rusty surfaces that react differently, chaining electricity through specific metal objects to close circuits, force fields, magnet cranes to move huge cargo, explosion physics, conveyer belt item spawning / destroying.
  - HUD, UI & Menus.
   

• Audio.
  - I enjoy doing some sound design on occasion, I sourced, created and/or modified lots of the SFX in game, also programming them to change pitch / volume with random values so the SFX don't sound repetitive.
  - Added the background ambient SFX, with transitions in some areas.
  - The robot walking, jumping, landing.
  - The gun firing electricity SFX I sourced and modified so they sounded somewhat similar, and then made sure every time the player fires it's not repetitious, it was randomized to sound unique each time. (The little things!)

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Highlights from this project:
 

• The first FPS controller I ever made was for this game.
  Tested both a Rigidbody & Character Controller version with our gameplay mechanics to make sure which was the best fit.

• First time I implemented artificial gravity and simulated forces for wind & magnetism, tricky code to get right! took lots of testing.

• First gun model I ever made, including different animations for shooting, walking, jumping etc.

• First time using raycasting to aim/fire a gun.

• First HUD selection wheel I made for a game.

• First conveyer belt setup I've made, w/ spawning & destroying objects on the fly, including a robot arm that can take from it dynamically.

• I also made the game teaser trailer & showcase videos 📺, and team CHONK logos, I'm proud of those.