REFRACTURE
“Refracture '' is a First Person Wave Survival Action game about utilizing Telekinetic Abilities in order to battle waves of Rogue AI enemies. The goal is to earn a high damage score and combos to earn money. The higher the wave, the harder the difficulty. Climb to the top of the leaderboard by earning the most.
Nicolas Seymour - Project Manager, Game Designer, Tech/Level Designer, Tech Artist
Ethan Proskow -
Programmer, Game Designer, Character Artist, Audio Producer
GD65 Refracture Trailer
INTRO
This project can be summed up by saying that it was a huge learning experience, and that's what we wanted from the start, to learn as much as possible.
This was a two person team, so over the course of 5 months, we had a lot of hats to wear. As the Project Manager I was responsible for a lot of paperwork, the GDD, LDDs, MDD, Project Plan, Task Lists, and Schedules, were my main focus. Ethan had his own TDD to reference too. We both worked on the original concept and design of the game during pre-production. We had 8 weeks to build a prototype. We iterated from there depending on time, scope and what we had completed, which we reviewed daily from Monday to Friday and then I would update paperwork accordingly. We had roughly 3+ months remaining to create game, including detailed documentation and trailers, on-top of classes and other assignments.
I was responsible for the Level Design, Environment Art, Shaders, Prop/Hero Props, Enemy Art, VFX, UI and level blueprint scripting. Ethan was responsible for scripting the player, enemy AI, throwable objects, environmental weapons, and audio. We tried to split up the roles as best as possible from our interests. Ethan focused on the player, which allowed me to focus on having a larger variation of throw-able props, better UI, and overall documentation.
DOCUMENTATION
I will summarize everything, but for those who want to view the documentation to see more of our process you can do so from the links.
GAMEPLAY
This game was created because we wanted players to be challenged with having to use the environment as their form of protection and offense. Using any object in the environment in more than one way will require the player to use spatial awareness, and use certain tactics to perfect our mechanics, and will be a goal for our audience of players. Creating a satisfying and meaningful experience within each wave of enemies was our main goal when designing any situation for our players.
The core gameplay features of Refracture revolve around physics based manipulation, enemy encounters and environmental interactions. All of these components combine to create a high level of manipulation within the world and feed into each other - creating a tight gameplay loop.
The core gameplay focuses on utilizing the Telekinetic gloves. Players have to encounter various types of enemy robots. Using their Telekinesis and movement will be vital as they have to survive waves of these enemies, increasing in difficulty and amount of enemies each wave. The secondary major core of the gameplay focuses on collecting Batteries within the environment in order to Power Sockets to use our Environmental Weapons.
Players rack up a combo multiplier by dealing damage and destroying enemies, their score which is kept in their "wallet" moves to their "bank" when they lose the combo, which will happen if the player is hit or the combo meter runs out of time.
CRATES AND THROWABLES
Crates were a way for us to limit large amounts of smaller props in one area. We wanted a large area for the player to be in when we pushed the enemy count to the limit in higher waves, and we knew they would need lots of items to fight enemies with.
Using the Apex Destruction system the crates have health which takes damage based off of the velocity when it hits something. Once broken we spawn new throwable objects. Small crates fit smaller items, Large crates can spawn anything a small crate can as well as longer and larger items.
SPEARS
Spears are thrown like any other throwable object, but can pin enemies and sever parts off the robots.
DISCS
Discs or blades are thrown just like other throwables too, they cannot pin enemies but will easily sever parts, great for critical areas and can go through multiple enemies if thrown with accuracy.
ENVIRONMENTAL WEAPONS
Powered by Batteries found in the world these can be used to deal significant damage or to slow down your enemies.
Electric Traps are used to stun the robots, staying active for 20 seconds each time its charged, these slow the enemies movement allowing you to herd multiple enemies and then throw large objects or blades, and spears to maximize the amount of enemies you deal damage to when they are all stunned.
The Bullet Train is a malfunctioned system that now only moves when powered by a battery, with no controlled electric current it just blasts through the world at top speed, allowing you to line enemies up on the tracks to take out a whole herd or robots, be careful as this is also deadly to you if hit by it.
Overdraw is an event that takes place if the character overcharges, by gaining a 10x combo you will be granted overdraw for 15 seconds, giving you double the force to throw objects with, half the time to charge to 100% power, and gain faster regeneration rates for energy and health. (signified by electric FX on hands and around HUD edges)
COMBO MULTIPLIER
The Combo system multiplies the score that you earn by whatever combo multiplier you have currently active. Keep and increase the current combo by dealing damage to enemies, max multiplier is 10x which will instantly grant you the Overdraw ability.
If you take damage or your Combo bar runs out, you lose your multiplier. (signified by combo bar burning away FX)
DOORS
Doors are also powered and opened using batteries, enforcing players to learn and use their telekinetic abilities in every area. In the next version we will be taking this system to the next level.
CCTV's
The Jumbotron and CCTV's in the environment are for your fans, they see whatever you see! Every CCTV area has your current kills and the current amount of money you have in your bank. The Jumbotron just shows the current amount of money in your bank.
UI
The UI was meant to be kept simple, we wanted to get everything we needed to show at all times on the player hud. Other info like total score, (the bank) which can be found on the cctv's, are things that the player doesn't always have to be aware of. When the player dies they will see their total score and total kills which will then be added to their local leaderboard.
Besides environment art and props, most of my time was spent on the UI, whether I was planning it, designing it, or implementing it.
Between the player HUD, the Main Menu, Settings, and Crosshair Selection system; these were all things I wanted to learn more about. I fell in love with the process of this, and the results that could be achieved with ease through Unreal Engine UMG, and now Common UI.
MAIN MENU
The Main Menu shows the top 3 high score's on a leaderboard and allows players to easily adjust audio settings, graphics settings, controls, and select their crosshair of choice. You can also adjust these settings in the in-game pause menu.
CROSSHAIR SELECTION
The crosshair selection was fun to make, I use a dynamic material and slider values to calculate the colors, then additional sliders to calculate the saturation and brightness. I would like to take this to the next level in the next game and have a large library of custom crosshairs to choose from.
PLAYER HUD
Click on these photos to see more information.
CHARGE BAR
If you throw an object at an enemy without full charge it will not do much damage at all, spending the extra second to get a full charge will be very useful in the higher waves. I recommend throwing at above 50% charge, releasing with any less than 25% charge will likely just drop the object out of your hands instead of throwing.
ENERGY BAR
The Energy bar will have an electric effect so you can see in your peripherals that you have full energy again.
HEALTH BAR
The health bar will highlight so you can see in your peripherals that it is full again.
TASK MANAGER
The current task will change when you complete that task, in the wave survival mode, it will stay on survive once the tutorial is complete. We plan to completely re-design the way we teach players the mechanics in the new version, possibly bringing a story mode to fill in gaps, and explain how this character got these powerful gloves and ended up in this game show situation.
WIN/LOSS STATE
Dying is not fun, but its a part of being a gamer, luckily we save your score to the leaderboard, allowing you to come back at anytime to re-conquer your personal best.
BUZZBOT ENEMIES
Enemies were our main form of experimental destruction, pushing the physics as far as possible when it comes to the antagonist of the game.
Layers are defined as the external levels of protection that enemies have to defend themselves from player attacks, these are defined as the Core, the Chassis and Panels.
Enemies are dissected into various Components and Layers, each of which affect gameplay depending on the state and Type of an enemy.
VFX
I'm sure you have noticed a lot of vfx happening already, using Unreal Engines Niagara Particle System made our life easy when creating lots of variation with our effects. I was also able to take a lot of the effects I had already and combine them with the Niagara UI Renderer Plugin to create 2D particle effects.
Here I wanted to showcase some of my favorite's, this was an awesome learning experience. Its not my strongest part of development but overall it was great to learn and really helped my UI stand out, it also saved a ton of 2D asset creation.
CHARGING FX
The charge FX have to be my favorite mainly because of the fingers, its really satisfying to see when you pick up an object, and the effect in the middle grows as you charge up turning slightly orange at full charge. I did have some effects made for when you released and when you grabbed an object, but we didn't have the time to get them in this version.
ENEMY FX
When an enemy is struck with a large amount of force or is hit in its critical areas (currently calculated by the bones on the skeleton) It will completely destroy the whole enemy, giving you large reward and increasing your combo multiplier.
LIGHTING
Lighting was a lot of work, which it usually is, and for a game show, we wanted it to pop. The volumetric lighting was expensive, and will be a high priority for optimization in the next version. Other than that the learning process was awesome and I had a blast with doing the lighting.
FLICKERING LIGHTS
These were super fun to make, I was able to link the color and intensity of the light material to the color and intensity of the light which I was then able to change in real time using a random float to create some simple yet satisfying effects.
CELEBRATION SEQUENCE
When you get a cool combo, reach a new wave, or a score milestone, you will get a nice celebration. Crowd cheering, and tons of lights flashing to get you hyped up for the upcoming battle.