Prototype Horror - Production - Progress 1
'Pripyat Horror' is a first-person Horror Survival game prototype set in Pripyat School No.1 - The first school to be built in Pripyat - in its abandoned state years after the disaster.
In this series of blogs, I aim to document progress made during the production - implementation stage of this project, for future reference.
Project Management / AGILE
I will be using the AGILE development model for managing and developing the title. Major Sprint tasks will include: Environment Art, Player Mechanics, Enemy AI, Game Menus and User Interface.
As is key with AGILE, each sprint task will be taken through a planning stage, a development stage, a testing stage and finally a demo stage where it will be shown to the team so possible changes and/or improvements can be discussed, then progressing back into the planning stages and continuing the cycle if necessary until eventual completion.
Implementation Progress
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The project is moving along slowly but steadily. Working on and off among employment, the previous four months have been spent on creating the game environment and all game-play mechanics and menus to go into the title.
So far, blueprints for menus, player stats, an inventory system, item pick-ups, ladders, fall damage, player death and save/load functionality have been created and are working correctly. The level has been successfully laid out, and majority of the art assets have been created. This 'toolkit' of blueprints and level were created beforehand, to make for easier level and event design, as I did not want to run into issues later on - such as having planned a certain gameplay system, but not being able to implement it, therefore having to re-design the game.
Challenges - Save/Load Functionality
The hardest blueprint system to implement so far was the save/load functionality, I call it a system, as it composed of several blueprints that came together to create a working save spot which when interacted with would open a UMG that would present the player with 8 save slots, selecting which would create a file specific to that save slot. To then load a game, a player would select a slot from the main menu, which would load that specific file, if it exists.
The 'MainSave' Save Game blueprint would store all variables specific to the saved game, whilst another Save Game blueprint titled SaveType would save whichever slot you selected to load a game from. The load button would cast to the SaveType the specific slot you selected, and then check if this save game exists. If it exists, it would launch the game level. Following the launch of the level, it would load the SaveType blueprint to get the name of the save slot selected, and then load all the saved game variables from the file of that name.
Progressive Screenshots / Comparison
Environment - Early September Progress:
Environment - Current Progress (Late September):
Showcase / Videos
Additionally, here is a mechanic showcase, of the blueprints that have been created for the game so far:
And here is a short demonstration of all these blueprints, plus an event, coming together in the level:
