A videogame can now be one thing you slave over for half a decade, pouring love and artwork belongings into it – small items of your self. If it’s a reside recreation, it would even declare your entire profession. But within the not-so-distant previous, earlier than efficiency seize and excessive polygon counts, improvement may very well be completed in months – over earlier than you could possibly say ‘pre-production’.
The benefit is evident, if solely looking back: by making two or extra video games per yr, you may all the time be studying one thing new. Wolfenstein 3D might need been John Romero’s first shooter, however at 20 years of age he had made 74 video games earlier than ever setting foot in a longtime studio.
Love a devious puzzler? There are one or two among the many best indie games on PC.
SolarGun wouldn’t fairly meet Romero’s tempo, however by up to date requirements its improvement was over in a flash – 17 months from its first look in a Ludum Dare recreation jam to its publishing on Steam, the place it enjoys a ‘Very Positive’ person ranking.
The speedy creation of this first-person puzzle platformer is a narrative of intelligent shortcuts and artistic compromises which have all wound up making the sport higher.
The puzzle of puzzles
In the start, the premise for SolarGun was easy sufficient: you could possibly solely cross by lit areas, progressing by firing orbs of sunshine out of your hand to light up the way in which. By the top it had turn into a full-fledged puzzler, similar to Portal or The Talos Principle. The use of Unreal Engine 4’s Blueprint visible scripting system was instrumental in placing all of it collectively.
“We thought it would be a great idea to establish it as the game engine to explore all the possibilities that it could offer us,” lead gameplay programmer Sergio Sota tells us. “We had acquired some assets so we could start prototyping quickly.”
In one occasion, Mechanical Boss constructed a modular development system to allow quick prototyping of latest puzzle rooms. That Blueprint had a variable which allowed the studio to specify the kind and dimension of the partitions in a brand new room, in addition to the place of any doorways. Elsewhere, the staff streamlined the method of connecting the contents of these rooms – the elements of the puzzles themselves.
“We made tools inside Unreal to create settings in an easier way, such as repeatable walls or adjustable wires,” Sota says. “With this and the paper designs of the puzzles, creating them was relatively easy – we simply had to build the basic structure and then manually place the interactive elements, such as buttons and boxes.”
SolarGun’s puzzles are largely constructed across the connections between activators, wires, and receptors. With the assistance of its customized instruments, the developer might choose a supply part and assign it to a wire with one click on – earlier than linking it to a receptor the identical approach.
“The biggest challenge was the learning,” Sota remembers. “All of the members of the project had a limited knowledge of Unreal Engine 4, so we had to spend many hours learning new techniques in order to tackle the problems.”
When the studio returned to SolarGun for its new Year Edition, the staff might construct ranges with the good thing about all their expertise making the sport the primary time round.
“Creating levels again was a great experience, really fun,” Sota says. “This time we created the levers, taking into account feedback from the players, with a more practical and less complex approach. We also decided to create different puzzles than previously, with new ways of thinking and some new mechanics.”
Neat and tidy
SolarGun’s environments have a clear, untextured look that place it neatly in a style of scientific first-person video games alongside Portal. But it wasn’t all the time this fashion.
“Initially, we chose a more realistic style,” Sota says. “But we found some complications because we had a limited art department.”
Specifically, the staff of former college students had little or no information about 3D modelling – so needed to undertake an artwork model that allowed them to work simply and rapidly. They selected plain colors as a rule.
“In the end, we chose to use the low-poly style,” Sota says, “getting a better result than expected.”
SolarGun’s clear rooms include a useful aspect impact, too. Deciding in opposition to the usage of textures was an uncommon step that enabled the staff to considerably enhance the sport’s efficiency, permitting it to run on many extra machines.
“I think the main challenge was to create a product with an optimal performance and a stable frame rate,” Sota says. “SolarGun has been our very first big game and this makes us proud. We loved the response of the community – it’s thanks to them that we launched the Year Edition.”
SolarGun is obtainable on Steam. Unreal Engine 4 development is now free.
In this sponsored collection, we’re taking a look at how recreation builders are benefiting from Unreal Engine Four to create a brand new era of PC video games. With because of Epic Games and Mechanical Boss.
Source
