Timeframe: February 2024 - April 2024
Team Size: Just Me
Description: Plane Game is a Flight Simulator where you fly around an island collecting key points so you can learn about the island and it's culture
Biggest Inspiration: Wii Sports Resort
Engine: Unreal Engine
Important Concepts
- Verticality in the mountains and the other plane so the level is not just a flat island and is interesting to explore
- Landscaping and Foliaging
- Key points to give background about the island and to be the main game loop
- Post Process Shader that pixelates the screen to give a "Nintendo DS" feel
The Player Start camera is very important for this game. On player start, the player's eyes are drawn to 2 places. The city is interesting to the player because of the color contrasting with the green nature. The second place their eyes are drawn to is the hilly area in the background because of its verticality contrasting with the flatness of the rest of the level.
The key points provide little insight into the background and history of the island. They are slightly see-through so that the player does not get blindsided by something that could be behind them while the pink text makes it easy to read.
Version History
Version 1: Detailed Island but it is a little flat and unnatural. The player spends more time flying left and right than up and down
Version 2: Added this landscape to the island to promote verticality and more dynamic movement. It uses a separate material for the grass to signify it is a new area.
Final Version
What did I learn how to do that I had never done before
- Using contrast to draw the player's attention to different areas
- Thinking about the camera's positioning on player-start to make the player interested in the level
- Creating my own shader to give the game its own art style
- Staying on theme with multiple different asset packs that keep the theme coherent
- Creating plane physics and a fun way to move around the level
- Designing a level that plays into the player's unique form of movement
- Presenting a game to a recruiter and marketing myself to them through this game