the meta menaces

link

This project was the final project for the games design BTECH course for OCR. The client for this project was iconika

This project was the first project I have done where I had a profesional client, iconika; or more exactly simon horton a representive memeber of the iconika team.

project breif / overview

For this project our class was split into a group of 4, my team was essentially 2 3D modlers and 2 programmers. I was varied between tasks, here is what i did for the project:

I had no part in the gameplay for the “harrison” partition of the gameplay, excluding game basics: power up selection; generation; enviromental models

• full ui design
  • main menu
    • and respective sub menus
    • pause menu
    • command menu
• the power up system
  • sprites (12/25 of them)
  • designed (10/25 of them)
  • programmed (25/25 of them)
  • balanced (25/25 of them)
  • ui design for the selection screen and the in game display
• player characters
  • all 3 of the base game characters
    • all of the sprites for these characters
    • all of the balancing and design for these characters (based off of the meta menaces main cast though)
• enemys
  • the 3 base enemys
    • all sprites for these enemys
    • all balancing and design, they are a take off the original not a one to one.
• codebase (these are using in all areas of the project)
  • libaries / plugins
    • I wrote a custom input system which i am still activly updating and maintaining past the last update of this page, eevee
    • I wrote a config libary used in tandom with unitys player prefs

development history

This will be catagorised into 3 development stages: pre dev; during dev; post dev.

pre dev (planning)

This stage of the game all 4 members of my team worked on researching the ip and creating concept art. This phase was relativly short since we where given a detailed breif as well as already made character designs.

here is the breif i was given:

The constraints of this project that differ from the rest of the coursework we have done previously include:
- The idea
    - The idea behind the project will now be up to the client, which as described by the brief will be the story of the meta menaces
- The budget
    - We are being challenged to make a sort of “vertical slice” of a professional grade game with a budget of £0 and a time frame of 4 months
- The client
    - The client we are working for is a newly formed company meaning that they are less likely to have a streamlined process and collection of assets which could help us out. I am aware that we will be receiving a copy of book1 and a set of character sheets


The purpose of this project is to provide the company iconika with some references and ideas of how their world would perform within a game-like environment. This could also lead to possible internships with iconika in order to further their world and goals within the business space.

This does require us to stay faithful to the lore within the universe of the meta menaces, So anything we add that could be stated lore wise should be requested from the company themselves.

during dev (in development)

At the start there was it was a slight mess due to this being both the first time working with a client and the first time working within a team, however by the end of this project I feel I have grown in both experience and confidence in relation to this, During this I learned a lot about unity practice making sure other team memebers could use and understand the assets i created for the game so they could create their own things.

Along with that there where also regular meetings with the iconika representative (simon horton) here is a summery of how they went:

• visit 1

On the first visit he told me that he loved the idea for the game and he was really looking forward to see what it improved into, a more detailed version of this is in my project journal but no negative feedback was given at all?

• visit 2

Very similar to the first review with it also being more detailed in my project journal but all in all his review was summerisied to “I love the different approach youve taken to this and id love to see more work from you in the future”

• visit 3

This visit was a bit more developed and he got to see a “final production” of the game in which i asked him to create his own powerups which he really enjoyed and he made one called “time device” which set the timescale to 0.8

• visit 4

For this final visit simon said that he was really glad to see the breath of “freash air” that came with our project compared to everyone elses and i was really happy to hear that from him after all the work i pujt in.

post dev (after development had finished // summery)

Honestly, this project was more of a learning experience for me. I learned a lot about being professional and communicating with my client when working on a project for someone else, as well as good code practice, team work, design, procedural generation, etc. I feel like my skills have progressed a lot from this and I am thankful for the oportunity to have worked on this with my team.

results - grades

Total: 15/15 Destinction