Dev Blog #1 - Shapeshift Dungeon

Hello, my name is Kilan Sky Larsen (or just Sky) and I am the Game Designer for Shapeshift Dungeon. I'm thrilled to be working on this game project with a strong team of... 14 students?! (Well, including the Producer, myself, and a part-time rigger, but still). Throughout the next 3 months of spring 2021 we will be creating a 'One Room Roguelike' as I like to call it. That's right, a Roguelike with randomly generated monsters, level layouts, items, and more, all taking place within a single room. This is accomplished with a 19x19 square grid where each floor tile within the grid can move up and down vertically as well as swap out the top surface terrain to other types such as stone, dirt, lava, spike traps, etc. Shown below is the first proof of concept prototype that I created even before pitching the game.

Since making this demo scene I have created a 30+ page Game Design Document to help guide the team along this journey, and the team has begun coming up with the first concept art and assets for the game. Words aren't enough to describe how excited I am to see everyone's hard work coming together so rapidly!

LEVEL DESIGN

For our Level Designers, Marc and Branden, they took quickly to using a software called Tiled to create 2D mockups of the dungeon maps. While Tiled is usually used for creating detailed world maps for 2D games, its customizable grid layout made it a great resource for the 19x19 tile dungeon and they were able to create quite a few introductory map layouts. They even found a method to work in the game's verticality into their map designs so that the dungeon doesn't feel super flat.

Not only did they create a multitude of maps for the early portion of the game, but they also blocked out these maps out in Unity! Each unique tile piece is a prefab, so that when our 3D artists finish modeling tiles we can simply update the tile prefabs and the maps will all be updated with the new assets without having to re-do any level design work.  Now THAT'S smart game design in action :)

Branden's map 4 block-out:

Marc's map 3 block-out:

3D ARTISTS

The 3D artists in the meantime have been working on creating the stone walls & tiles of the dungeon, the monsters, and the environmental props/hazards.  As an experienced z-brush modeler, I have Devin Spencer working on the monsters in the game and have so far been extremely happy with what he has been able to come up with. He was able to sculpt, re-topologize, and texture the floating skull enemy in almost no time at all, and it looks incredible! If this wasn't enough, Devin also managed to fit in the time for the floating crystal enemy and knocked it out of the park just as hard. Look closely and you'll see realistic looking wear and tear, and some chipping around the edges of the crystal. Simply stunning work.

Ultimately, the game will feature 8 different monster types, each with at least one variant to change the monster's appearance, behavior, and difficulty. Having two of these monsters done in the first sprint makes me confident that we will be able to finish all of them in time. 

The other 3D modelers, Jose and Chance, have been working on the stone walls and the spike trap respectively. While both modelers are less experienced than Devin, they have demonstrated that with time and guidance they are just as capable of creating high quality assets that will be great additions to the game. Jose's stone walls in particular are looking fantastic so far and I'm really looking forward to seeing the final result of his hard texture work!

2D ARTISTS

Our 2D artists Tanya and Alexis have been working on the concept art for the main character and weapon for the game, as well as some concept UI and a health potion icon. I asked that the main character look strong, nimble, adventurous, and stylish, and with only minor adjustments Tanya has come up with an incredible looking character concept which will be invaluable for the team as reference. I think this character really encapsulates all of the points I wanted to hit and will be a fun and interesting character to play as. Now to think of a name...

I wanted the main character to have a melee weapon which is stylish,  has a wide attack range, and makes for quick and interesting attack attack combos. Tanya experimented with different sword shapes and styles before finally arriving at this little masterpiece:

I really couldn't be happier with this sword design, and really look forward to seeing it in the game!

Of course, the combat isn't everything, we also need a clearly telegraphed HUD and health system so that the player can see when they take damage and how to heal up. For this, Alexis prototyped an early player HUD and an icon for the health potions in the game (which turned out great!).

PROGRAMMERS

Our programmers were also hard at work this sprint creating systems and frameworks that will be used throughout the project. We started by breaking the many systems that need to be built into categories to assign people to, and had everyone make class maps for their individual systems. I will be focused on the player character controller & inputs, Joe is working on enemy AI, Justin is developing a level manager to handle the dungeon shapeshifting among other things, and Alex is working on the item and stat modification system within the game where multiple equipped items can simultaneously add percentile modifiers to the players stats. There's a lot of stuff that was worked on, but looking at code is not particularly interesting so I'll just show off the best bits here.

Joe's Floating Skull AI State Machine:

Justin's framework for the level shapeshift mechanic:

And my player movement & 3-hit combo prototype:

ANIMATION

While there isn't a lot that can be done for animation at the moment, we have had Armando and Alexis submit sword swing reference videos, and Eder has successfully rigged the Floating Skull model. I'm super excited to share these animations as they are completed throughout the project!

CONSLUSION

Overall, I'd say that both our pre-production process and Sprint 1 were a huge success and I am looking forward to seeing what we accomplish in the next 6 sprints to come! For sprint 2 we will be focusing hard on getting the player character modeled and getting the core game loop programmed so that playtesting can begin as soon as possible. I'm confident that we'll reach this goal, but there's a lot of work left to do so I best get back to it. Thank you for reading, hopefully we'll see you again for sprint 2!

- Shapeshift Dungeon Dev Team