Advanced Storytelling Course
Course Teacher: Kim MacAskill
Run by Into Games
I had the amazing opportunity to participate in this short course packed with different tasks and useful information. I learned and built upon a variety of skills including:
Writing a Character Bio
Writing a Trigger List
Creating a Dialogue System
Writing a Cutscene Script
Writing a Location Bio
Task 1 - Character Bio
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Task 2 & 3 - Trigger List & Dialogue System
Task 4 - Cutscene Script
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BRIEF
Write a one page document describing a building or area that fits in the world of your character.
Questions it should answer:
What is the area used for?
Who lives there/doesn’t live there?
What is a player likely to find that is of benefit and of detriment?
BRIEF
Write a character bio with an inciting incident, wants vs needs, themes, a voice print sample and a conversation with an NPC.
Questions to answer:
Who was your character before the incident?
What was the incident?
What has the incident pushed them to achieve?
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BRIEF
Player character wakes up in a room with no idea how they got there. There is at least one other character in the room, and they are not friends. Yet they must use their strengths and weaknesses to escape this strange place.
BRIEF
Player character is being attacked by three waves of enemies and each wave increases with difficulty. These enemies are most vulnerable from behind where one of the player character’s weapons is effective, but their second weapon won’t cause any damage. If the player character is wounded, they have thirty seconds to find and use a healing item or they die. Healing items appear as additional loot when defeating an enemy.
Task 5 - Location Bio
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This is not exactly what I have in mind for my game, but creating this level was a really good way of figuring out what I can make work and how I want certain things to play out (also depending on how complicated some aspects would be to Blueprint). This level makes for an excellent springboard for me to take this game idea forward and working in engine and on different design elements during this bootcamp really helped me understand what I want for the mechanics for this game.
One-pager Document
Game Design Bootcamp
Run by Think Employment
I participated in this bootcamp from July to November 2024. The bootcamp consisted of a variety of game development areas, as shown below in Think Employment’s bootcamp content. Since this bootcamp would be mainly focusing on using UE5 and the goal was to create a short playable level by the end of it, I used the opportunity to take my idea from the Advanced Storytelling course above, which allowed me to take this idea further and play around with different design areas.
Final Playable Level
Everyone participating in the bootcamp was given a brief to follow for making a playable level, which was:
Player Character: Implement a third-person player character with basic movement and animation controls
Main Menu: Design and implement a user-friendly main menu interface with options for starting the game, adjusting settings, and exiting
Enemy AI: Create basic enemy AI behaviour, including movement, detection, and attack patterns
Door and Key Mechanic: Develop a simple puzzle mechanic involving locked doors and keys, requiring the player to find and use keys to progress through the game environment
Gameplay Prototype: A playable demo showcasing the core mechanics and features outlined above.
Video Recording: A 3-5 minute video recording with a voice-over commentary, providing an overview of the gameplay mechanics, demonstrating key features, and highlighting the game's potential