After creating a model of The Futurist in Nottingham, UK, using Blender and UE4, I am now reimagining it in a cyberpunk Style. Below are the original model and the same area and a showreel video.

Just completed my first game jam. We worked as a team for 36 hours to produce a prototype of a game focused on sustainable energy. Our team worked hard for the entire duration and created a brilliant project that we’re all really proud of. I personally did the majority of the programming.

Here is a playable version for testing, please feel free to offer feedback.

https://patrickekallen.itch.io/ioh

I have decided to allow people to test the game and take feedback and suggestions from anyone who wants to try the game.

I will update again as soon as a playable version is uploaded.

This version has an array of new features, many of which are visual. Version 1.0.1.1. looked largely the same as the previous build, as most of the changes were internal, including reworking the movement system’s code to eliminate frame rate issues and adjusting the physics and mechanics of the jump and the speed of player projectiles.

In terms of changes visible to the player, the road now features side rails, distant scenery and landscapes, lines on the road and various lighting effects. The cars have been colour coded into two groups to match the player’s projectiles, and the cars are now two varieties, either larger trucks or smaller hatchbacks. The road now has three lanes of traffic, and the game features an increasing difficulty system, where each time the player reaches a dynamically determined target distance they will complete a level, or “phase”, and the spawn rate of the cars will increase.

Camera positioning for the player character has been adjusted, as has the camera on the title screen. The speed of the cars and the lines at the centre of the road dynamically increase as the game continues, and parts of the distant landscape also move slowly toward the player to provide the illusion of movement on a larger scale. I also began it experiment with creating an adding music, and attempting to create a video that was more like a trailer.

In version 1.0.1.0, I have rebuilt the entire game from scratch, with my player character remaining static in the gamespace whilst objects move toward her, giving the illusion that she is moving without the danger that the player will venture outside of the boundaries of the working space in Unreal Engine.

The new game features a full game loop, with the game showing logo and main menu screens, then allowing the game loop to run until the player dies, then a death screen which the player can use to return to the start of the game loop. The game counts time, score and distance (also a time measurement, in order to simulate measuring this statistic).

The player character moves down a highway at speed, avoiding oncoming cars and firing a projectile weapon. These projectiles, and the jetpack the character wears, are both colour coded to either blue or green, with projectiles able to destroy vehicles only of the opposing colour. The game spawn cars in one of the two colours randomly, and despawns them when they pass the player.

As the player character is now equipped with a jetpack, she can hover slightly when the jump button is held. As time passes, the speed of the cars coming towards the player increases exponentially. Destroying cars not only rewards points but increases the score multiplier that calculates the distance from score, meaning the more enemies the player destroys, the faster their ongoing score will increase.

This version made substantial progress, but was also unfortunately not going to be a viable build going forward as there is a bug which causes crashing resulting from a fundamental problem with the design of the player character.

This version contains real endless runner mechanics, with the player advancing forward and tiles being generated ahead of them. Each tile features a random assortment of obstacles, with fewer objects placed in the middle. The obstacles generate in one of two colours, which correspond to the two weapons the player can use, with obstacles only being damaged by the opposing coloured projectile.

The build also features a functioning game loop, allowing the player to press enter to start, play the game until they die, before facing a death screen and their final score. After an animation and a brief pause the game resets, allowing the player to press enter again to take another turn. The player can also pause at any time and be presented with the pause menu. The player’s score is set based on distance travelled and multiplied by a small fraction which increases as the player destroys more obstacles.

Unfortunately, UE4 generates worlds from an origin point and is designed to despawn objects when the player moves outside of 100000 Unreal units from the origin point of the play area. This means that in practice, if the player does well in this version then after two to three minutes of successful play they will reach a value of around 100000 by my in game measurement of distance. At this point the game crashes. As my entire project is set up to move the player forward and all spawning mechanics use trigger boxes which activate when my player reaches them this problem is not easily resolvable. As such it is likely that I will be required to rebuild the project from scratch for the next version, which I will likely call 1.0.1.0 to account for this change.

In this version I have implemented targets and mechanics for the two resource bars the player has. By left or right clicking, the player can fir weapons that use either bar, and the targets are appropriately coloured so that only the opposing colour can hurt them.

The player can also boost or break to speed up and slow down, with these actions also having associated costs to the two bars. Each of these actions will also charge one of the two bars.

As I progressed with working on my prototype, I decided that the best way to accomplish the feeling of constant forward movement that I wanted was to force the player to constantly move forward. I added forward movement and the ability for the player to move left and right. At this stage changes to the movement forced me to reduce animation, which I accomplished by putting the character on a moving disc. This issue arose as I wish to have full 3D aiming but also endless runner movement, which created challenges with directional movement.

I also created a start menu with basic options, and an intro screen that looks like a retro computer booting up. These features were largely designed to test the concept, as I imagine design elements will change, and the current design and layout are both based on artwork I created for other projects in the past. This version also no longer has working shooting, as I need to overhaul the entire system to balance the two bars (which will now govern two weapons matched to two types of enemies).