CAMPUS RUSH
Android Endless Runner
Engine: Unreal
Platform: Android
Role: Technical Designer
Project Type: Master's Degree
Campus Rush is an exhilarating endless runner game that has been designed and developed by the highly skilled and talented team at The Alchemy Lab. This game was created as part of a Master's Degree program at the University of Bolton, where the brief was to develop an Endless Runner game for Android devices. During the development process, the team had to make significant changes to the game's development process to optimize it for mobile devices, which was a challenging but rewarding experience. As the technical designer on the project, I was responsible for creating the prototype mechanics for lane switching, player corner rotations, and collectable pick-ups, which was a pleasure to do. Overall, it was an incredible experience to come back to the world of games design and work with such a talented team.
A Whitebox Prototype for Campus Rush was already constructed for the Pitch, meaning the next steps could be taken to improve the Level and its Blueprints that go with it. Below is each feature added at this stage and how they were improved upon heading through Alpha and Beta Development.
Some feedback that was received about the initial Lane Switching was the instantaneous speed at which the Player moves across each lane rather than any sort of smooth transition. Diving more into the Blueprints and Nodes, a Timeline Node was implemented to make the teleportation slower as the player can now watch the character switch lanes. This was then eventually tested and passed over to the Programmer to improve further, something that happened with every Mechanic.
This stage consisted of testing the second iterations of Blueprints and Mechanics with conversations to and from the Artists about applying the Models and Textures that were being created. The combination of these two jobs curated a need for testing obstacle sizes and other Level Objects such as walls, ceilings and floors.
The file size of the game was starting to increase beyond what it should be for this type of game. Investigating the issue, it seemed the starter content found in brand new Unreal Engine projects was still present, leading to a stop in Development whilst the issue got fixed. To combat this in future alterations, it was decided that the Level be made of Level Instances, a type of grouping tool that instead streams the grouped object from another level.
Level Instances saved a lot of memory on the game when also including the Obstacles being used as Packaged Actors instead of being individually placed, which follows a similar procedure to Level Instances. With this stuff in place, it made Level Design so much simpler, leading to a bigger linear design to follow suit. The combination of the Obstacles and the blocked-out areas created a fun mix of making it all fit together and make sense within the setting.
As progress was being made on changing the Test Level into a Tutorial one, Blueprints were created to pause the game and allow players time to read how to play the game, whether that be for the games Movement, Collectables or Obstacles. In order for this to work, multiple Widget Blueprints were created and placed on the Viewport, following what was about to happen to the player and showing them what they could do next. This was also used for the games Game Over and Level Complete screens.