eRATicate
10min Playthrough of the game
Year
2023
GENRE
Third Person Game
PLATTFORM
PC
UI/UX and Gameplay Programmer
Description
This was the second project and our latest work. The challenge was to make a third-person game so we decided on making our version of Ratchet and Clank. my main focus on this project was UI and UX but I also made a bit of gameplay.
I hope you enjoy the read...
Main Menu
The main menu, aka "my baby".
This project, as in all of my projects, I sat down and talked very early about what I wanted to do in this game for the UI and UX, by this time the group knows where my passion lays and that I love doing UI and UX.
​
so I created a task force for the UI and made sure everyone was on board, which of course they were!
​
I said that I had the vision to remake the Splinter cell conviction main menu, it was an ambitious project, and it would require a lot of work from all disciplines to get this going.
​
Elric had a specialization where he made a Cinematic camera system, and by implementing that into the game we could add some really nice camera movement.
​
I wanted each part of the main menu to be "alive" and as far as I could I wanted to avoid Images, so the majority of the menu is made fully in 3D.
Tutorial Cameleon
Gameplay / UX
I read about a game that had a pretty extensive tutorial, but the players never really understood that they were playing a tutorial. they referred to it as the "tutorial Cameleon". I really liked this and wanted to implement the same "idea" into our game, so when I designed the tutorial system, I keep this in mind the whole time, the idea was simple, don't make the player understand that the first level is a tutorial.
Examples will follow.
Tutorial Cameleon
Intercom text/sound
The first thing I implemented was an Intercom system that would talk to you, the player, while playing.
it would tell you things that would help you conquer obstacles and help you get from point A to point B.
Tutorial Cameleon
Spawning Holograms
Combined with spawning holograms that would visually show the player what to do made it clear to the player how movement, weapons and enemies worked. Without ever pausing the game, showing the player a popup "information" image or in other ways interrupt the flow of the game.
This turned out really well.
Non Invasive HUD
Gameplay / UX
We decided early that we wanted to follow Ratchet and Clank's UI philosophy and implement a HUD that was as non-invasive as possible.
This resulted in me making each element on the HUD a separate component, all of which was part of the UI manager, so we could individually control each part when we needed it. each action in the game had a responding action on the HUD.
Shooting showed the Ammobar, taking damage shows the health bar, and so on.
​
Keep reading for a more detailed explanation.
WeaponWheel
The weapon wheel is the main way to navigate between your different weapons, when you activate it we also slow time down so you get time to make a good decision.
Quick Weapon Select
There is also a way to select your weapons with a quick select button when you decided to use quick selection instead of the weapon wheel, it only showed with a small image down in the left corner for less than a second, unless the key was pressed and held, like in the preview here to the right.
Take damage and Heal
If you take damage your health bar will show, if your total health stays below 75% it will stay visible until u Heal above 75% again.
When you heal, with a pickup, a small "plate" will show under your health bar indicating you increased your health.
Shoot and Pickup Ammo
When you shoot your gun, first the crosshair will show, then your ammunition bar will be visible to show the current ammunition. if you pick up ammunition the version and amount you picked up will be visible with a faded "plate" under your bar. after a few seconds, out of combat, the whole HUD will go invisible again, except for the current active Quest.
Quest system
Gameplay / UX
One of the requirements from our educators for this project was that there has to be a story-driven progress throughout the game, so I implemented a Quest system, this was meant to be a little bit more advanced than it was, but due to the limited amount of time we had, it turned out pretty simple, but effective.
​
Combining the Intercom system and the quest system made up a fairly good storyline.
Level Transition
Gameplay / UX
To make the transitions between the different levels less abrupt and "hard" I implemented a delayed transition and added the fadeout interface, this was used in a lot of different places later in the game, fading from the menu to play, fading from level to level, and also from cutscenes to game/menu.
Other Contributions.
Gameplay / UX
-
Killbox - To kill/damage players in water.
-
Pickup Container - Hit to spawn pickups.
-
Pickups - Tuch to get ammo/Health
-
Spawn points - On death, Respawn on the last triggered spawn point.