Category Archives: Project Management

Group Project, Level Design, Project Management, Visual Scripting

Unreal Engine 4 – Ascendance

Role

Project Lead

Assigned Tasks

Assigned team tasks, created weekly game builds, debugged, worked on side tasks, provided direction, and mentored other team members.

Tools Used

Unreal Engine 4
Axosoft
Slack
TortoiseSVN
Trello
Google Drive

Skills Utilized

Level Design - Mentoring - Project Management - Concept Paper Maps - Quality Assurance Documentation - Source Control - Task Assignment - Unreal Visual Scripting

Overview

Ascendance is a first person survival game. This project was created by a group of students at UAT (University of Advancing Technology).

Game Story - Read More
Game Story

    Ascendance starts off as a world set in the year 2065 after a biological warfare started by the Russians. The United States put project Bastion into motion which was giant underground self sustaining bunkers to help protect its citizens, however the bunkers were not built to withstand chemical warheads. The story takes place inside of Bastion: 01 also known as the presidential bunker. After the chemicals seeped in only 10% of the inhabitants remain un-mutated. The player makes choices with the half-Asian female main character who has grown up entirely inside of the bunker, not knowing what the real world used to look like. The player must survive, as they are entrusted with the information about a fail-safe opening with Bastion: 01's doors, which have been locked shut since its original lock-down. The player must race against time and mutants they will face in order to make it out of Bastion: 01 before it is too late.

Project Start - Read More
How It All Started

    The project started as a student innovation project and was moved into the production studio course. There the project recruited 31 members for the first semester in the game studio. We utilized management tools such as Axosoft, Trello, Google Drive, TortioseSVN and Slack in order to help keep organized and on track. The project went through several stages of minimizing scope of the project and scale of the levels in order to make a working prototype by the end of the first semester. The project was presented at the Greenlight event at UAT and was accepted for another semester in the game production studio. During the second semester the project started out with 15 members. During this time I made a call in order to re-vamp what levels the game would feature. Originally the game was planned to feature 4 unique areas, however due to the scale of this the project fell short of having fully completed levels. Instead the focus was to create only 3 unique areas and to split the first one up into smaller bits for each designer. By doing so the team was able to divide and create the settings required for the game. Ascendance was also posted onto Unreal forums and several other social media locations in order to spread word of the game. Towards the end of the second semester in the production studio, Ascendance was pushed through as a playable free-demo available on the website.

Before & After (Hover to Flip)

**Full credit to team members Aaron Ramirez (Level Design), Mike Demo (Environment Assets), and Chandler Demming (Concept Artist / Environment) for creating the above scene.**

Above: Showing my main menu blueprint; the options sub-menu.

Blueprint_Showcase

Above: Picture may be enlarged for closer viewing. Shows the behind scripting for the main menu image that is above this image.
Above: My behind scenes work for persistent level loading / unloading as the player moves throughout the game. Affects screenshot above this one.
Above: In editor modification of character texture made into material to add pores and other attributes to add realism.

**Credit to Gabriel Vielle for the original character material / model.**

For Additional Information

 Documents of Work:

Ascendance_GameDoc_Snippet

Above: Screenshot of the Game Document on google drive showing the story and story-line.

Ascendance_GameDoc_Snippet_2

Above: Again the Game Document, this time showing the start of the weapons section.

Ascendance_Axosoft_Snippet
Above: Showing of Axosoft and the agile software that was utilized for the first semester.

 

Full Game Documentation