Vana
Vana is a Third-Person Platformer in which you use Telekinesis, Glide and Double-Jump to overcome challenges and enemies so you can collect fragments of the soul so the soul can pass on to the after-life.
BUAS Year 2 Games Awards 2022B
Y2 Best Art
Y2 Best Game
Project information
My Contributions
- Project Duration: 21 (5/8/8) weeks
- Team size: 30 (9/7/20)
- Role: System Design, Level Design
- Engine: Unreal Engine 4
- Status: Available on Itch.org
- Creation of Jump and Double Jump
- Creation of Character Glide
- Improvement on Telekinesis
- Creation of Parry feature
- Improvement on Enemies
- Creation of Telekinesis Platform
- Improvement on Jump Pad
- Creation of Checkpoints
- Documentation of Metrics
- Creation of Boss Fight
- Creation of Boss Fight Tower
System Design
My goal as a System Designer was to make sure that the 3C’s, LD Ingredients and Features were enjoyable to the player. Additionally I wanted to make sure that I would bring the 3C’s, LD Ingredients and Features to an enjoyable level in a quick time so the Level Designers and Artist could start working on it at an earlier date and with more clarity as to how everything worked.
I was in charge of creating a enjoyable 3C’s together with help from programmers and a focus on playtesting I was able to rapidly Iterate on it and get each of the features of the 3C’s(Walking, Jump, Double-Jump, Glide) to a enjoyable Level after which I worked on documenting all f the metrics so the Level Designers could start with creating Levels.
Improvement on the Telekinesis feature still needed to be done after the pre-production block I was in charge of it and, subsequently worked on fixing issues with the aiming being off and the speed at which the Telekinesis cube is thrown so it would be more enjoyable to the player.
After a teammate could’t work on the project anymore I took over work on the parry feature which i had to Implement from scratch I used playtesting to Improve the parry features functionality and enjoyment.
Work on the Enemies was continued by me after a teammate couldn’t work on the project anymore. I was able to get both the Enemies working and create documentation on what each of the variables would change and how to set it up.
Work performed to get the LD Ingredients(Telekinesis Platform, Jump Pad, ) to a functional and usable state. In addition to this I created documents explaining what each of the variables would impact when changed or turned on/off and how to place them/set up in the Level.
Level Design
This is the Level Design of the Tower which was originally planned to be used for the Boss Fight but due to time constraints and more Level Design that needed to be done for the Level. I wasn’t able to implement it. Subsequently I converted the Tower so that it could be used for the Level instead.
This is the changed Level Design from the original Boss room. This version is used in the Final release of the game Vana and Introduces and includes the Enemies and a Boss Fight. I was able to keep some of the original Boss Fight in the Level Design by use of the Enemies and the Boss Fight stage itself.
Documentation and Pipelines
The creation of pipelines and documentation was to increase the efficiency of the Level Design process by having each of the LD Ingredients and character metrics documented so the Level Designers could quickly understand what could be changed and in turn make for enjoyable Level Designs.
Planning
During the planning stages I decided to do System Design since I wanted to gain a better understanding of System Design and increase my experience with blueprinting and coding. Furthermore, it would allow me to understand what I was still lacking and needed to learn more about. In addition to this I could facilitate my team members with the features, LD Ingredients, Pipelines and Documentation I made which would increase the projects efficiency.
Research
Research was performed into games which had similar features and playstyles to Vana. I took metrics from each of the games I researched and used them to get to a conclusion of what metrics to use when creating the Jump, Double-Jump and Glide. In addition to this I researched controls in similar games to decide the control scheme for the game.
Playtesting and Iteration
The focus was on playtesting and iterating on features as soon as they were functional, so I start to iterate on the feature to make it more enjoyable for the player I used this method for the Jump and Double-Jump and Telekinesis to make them feel more enjoyable for the player. I additionally used it for the Boss and the parry mechanic but I had a lot less time to playtest and Iterate on them due to having to take over work from a teammate and still needing to learn more about blueprinting.
Experience of the Project
Throughout this project I learned more about what I wanted to do my strengths and the things I was still lacking and needed to improve on. Throughout this project I largely learned more about System Design and Technical Level Design which I used to further decided on what I should be learning to continue my improvement of it.