S1LV1 : A PORTFOLIO PROJECT ABOUT REFORESTATION
This is my first blog post about a specific portfolio project. If you would like to take a look at this project, you can find the portfolio page I made here.
After doing posts for my course assignments during the Level Design course on CGMA, I really got found of making those and treat them as postmortem. I love to reflect on what went well, what could be better and what I would like to learn for my next projects. Those time of reflections are super important in my opinion.
THE IDEA
INSPIRATIONS
I had the idea for this project a while back while I was doing the Level Design Course but I never got the time to make an actual level with this. It has been on my mind since a bit and I wanted a little break from my project ECLIPSE. I decided I would work on that for about 2 weeks and make something interesting with it.
I was first inspired by the work of Goro Fujita. I've been following his work since a while and I love his little robots illustrations and animations. As I wanted to play with the Unreal Stack-O-Bot project, I thought this would be really fitting as an inspiration.
I also was inspired by the game "Stray" and " Endling". I haven't played Endling yet, but I find the art style captivating and the subject matter of instinction really touching.
As the environment is really important to me, I wanted to talk about a subject that got pretty real in the last years: Forest Fires. I remember really well the last 2 summers where sometimes, we couldn't go out because of the smog from distant forest fires. 2 years ago, the fires were so big that the air conditions in the whole province was bad. It really got me and I decided that I wanted to make this game about reforestation.
THE REFBOARD
References & Notes Board
I wanted to find a cool name for my project and after some research, I found that the therm used for the "farming" of forest was Silviculture. This inspired me to call this project S1LV1, that being the name of this little reforestation robot unit the player would be impersonating.
ASKING QUESTIONS
If you guys I've seen some of my previous blog posts, you know that I like to ask myself some questions to help me guide my choices during a project. Here's what I've come up with for this one:
WHO: A little reforestation robot (Seedbearer)
WHEN: Now/Near Future
WHERE: In a burnt forest
WHAT: Planting SEEDS TO REGROW THE FOREST
WHY: Because you want the life to return there
HOW: Exploring the forest, finding seed beds, avoid open spaces (crows can steal your seeds).
THINKING ABOUT INGREDIENTS
Asking those question help me make design decisions that make sense with the core of my project. It also guides me into making ingredients that make sense with this project. I decided I would prototype some ingredients that I could add to make it a more fuller gameplay:
1. CROWS: The follow a predetermine pattern in empty clear areas and can steal your seeds
2. SEEDS: You need to carry them and plant them in their appropriate places but they slow you down.
3. SEED BEDS: They are the only places where you can plant seeds.
4. DROP BOXES: You can pickup seeds their and request new ones if you lost them all. Also, the number of boxes in an area represent the number of seedbeds available in that area.
5. FIRES: These are remaining flames from the environmental disaster. They can hurt you and they will burn your seeds.
6. WATER: Hurt you, but you don't loose your seeds.
7. SPORES: These are collectibles. you need to find them to clear an area properly. They are little remains of the old forest you can collect to discover new vegetation species.
Some additional ingredients that you can find in this project are things that were already in the Stack-O-Bot blueprint. I will talk a bit about those later.
A LITTLE BIT OF PLANNING
So with all of that, I started to gather more references to inspire me and I did a little rough sketch of what I wanted to make. I add this idea of little islands of forest after watching a survivor show that took place in Alaska.
Additional References for Inspiration
Layout Sketch
THE MAKING
SOME THINGS I LEARNED
While making this project, I encounter of course many different problems here and there. As I am still new to all this, I needed to learn a lot. Some of the things I learned include:
🔥 Tweaking the character movement speed
🔥 Integrating simple animations
🔥 Make an object move along a spline
🔥 Make more complex boolean dependencies for things like the seeds and seedlings
🔥 Use simple physics to make more interesting puzzles
🔥 Make interdependencies between many blueprint actors
🔥 Integrate sounds and make it spacial to hint the player when they are near an important gameplay element
I know that my visual scripting skills are not perfect, but I am really proud of the knowledge I gained and the work I've done.
INGREDIENTS CREATED
To illustrate a little better what I am saying, here are the different ingredients I did in blueprint for this project:
SEEDBEDS : S1LV1 can only plant seeds in seedbeds.
DROP BOXES : Pickup seedlings in drop boxes. S1LV1 can request new one if needed.
CROWS : Crows can steal seeds. They follow a pattern S1LV1 can avoid.
HAZARDS : S1LV1 takes damage in fire and looses the seed if transporting any.
SPORES : S1LV1 can discover and collect "Spores" to get new vegetation species.
MOVABLE BOXES : S1LV1 can move yellow boxes to reach new heights.
ADJUSTEMENT TO THE STACK-O-BOT CHARACTER BLUEPRINT
I also tweaked some things into the Stack-O-Bot original blueprint. First, I killed the option to change the color of the bot. I adjusted the colors of S1LV1 to my liking and I didn't want anything to interfere with the visual I created. I wanted it to still feel clear. I also change the character movement so when you are transporting a seed, S1LV1's walk is slower. And finally, I adjusted the maximum printing to 4 so you can only print 3 copies of yourself.
CHARACTER MOVEMENT : When S1LV1 is transporting a seed, it moves slowly.
PRINTING MAXIMUM : S1LV1 can only print 3 copies of itself.
GUIDING THE PLAYER
When I work on a level, I always like to hint the player with visual cues. I am still learning how to do that really good, but I think as I personally love to find patterns in games, I have a decent sensitivity to it. Here are some of the things I tried to implement in my level to guide the player:
🔥GRASS: I used the grass to indicate paths. I put grass patches strategically around seed beds, check points, spores and boxes. I wanted the grass to feel safe and hint the player to where things are.
🔥YELLOW COLOR: I use the color yellow as a contrast. Seed beds are lighten by a more yellowish light and interactions boxes are yellow. I also did a yellow overlay material to hint the player when they come closer to a possible interaction. Of course, the yellow is also present in fires although they are not friendly, but I think it still creates a good contrast and attract the eye so sometimes I can also guide the player toward an objective by strategically put hazards in their field of view to make them look in a certain direction.
🔥BLUE COLOR: The blue color helps the player to find the check points. I made a big column that you can see from far away. When the drop boxes are empty, they also get a blue overlay to indicate to the player that you can request new seeds from the entity that dropped S1LV1 there.
🔥GREEN COLOR: Only 2 things are green; Spores & Seedlings. That color represent a task done in the case of the seedling. It's associated with successful vegetation, therefore that's why I chose this color for the spores too as they are a collectible of new species.
I also tried to guide the player a bit with sound and visual effects. Moving things really get to the eye so I tried to use that to my advantage.
EXEMPLE: I placed grass to guide the player to the spore location.
EXEMPLE: Yellow is used here to indicate that the boxes are ready to be interacted with. You can see also a yellow light that hints to where you could push the box.
NON LINEARITY
This was the first time I tried to think about a level that can be achieved in numerous ways. For instance, you can do any area you want. By the placement of my islands, I suggest to the player an order of achievement, but it is not mandatory to do it in this order to finish the level. You could do any section in any order, same with the seeds and all the little things you can do. I made my wining conditions interdependent so it doesn't matter in witch order you do it, as long as you find all those spores and get all of those seedlings planted.
I also tried to implement different challenges slowly so you can learn new things progressively.
1. On the first area, you only need to take care about the spores and the seedlings.
2. As you move to the next area, you are introduced to crows and higher platforms to reach. I also want to teach the player that spores can be hidden.
3. On the 3 others, you are introduced to the physic cubes that get you to even higher platforms.
I made myself a little guide to help me make platforms. The harder ones that needed help from the environment (either by using a rock or a yellow cube) where the highest.
TAKEAWAYS
All in all, I'm pretty happy with this little project. It was fun to make something quick and prototype things that were different from what I have previously done. Of course, there are some things that I could have done better, but for now I want to call this one done and visit other ideas to grow as a designer and not get stuck on the same project for too long. I feel I can always chose to revisit this project in a couple of months if I feel like it. Taking a step back from a project always help me to make it greater the next time.
WHAT I LEARNED
During the making of this project, here are a couple of things I learned:
🔥 You don't need a lot of dialog to get your point accros. Be as visually clear as possible and trust the player. I don't say I did that to perfection, but I tried to not rely on text to get my ideas accross.
🔥Puzzles are hard and physic is costly. It can seem obvious, but I didn't know before trying to make some. I wanted to make more complex physics puzzle but I didn't know how to make them less heavy so I was not even able to test them as the lag was too painful. I ended up making simpler one.
🔥Contrast is great for grabbing attention. Use it to your advantage.
TO KEEP / TO IMPROVE / TO LEARN
TO KEEP
🔥I love to use gray or variations of gray as a base for everything but give it an atmosphere and use colors accents to communicate ideas. I think this is something I find works well with me and that I love to do. I guess this could be seen as my designer "style".
TO IMPROVE
🚀 Something that could improve this project is to have a visual countdown of all the seedlings you have to plant. I think you can guess the number because the number of drop boxes are equal to the seedbeds but it could be even more obvious to the player as this is your objective.
🚀I also would like to make more puzzles and more complicated ones. Maybe I could use the printing ingredient a little differently. I'd like to think about all the ways I can use a mechanic and make my levels richer.
🚀Maybe I could have added more storytelling. What was this forest like before the fire? Was there anything interesting happening? What makes this place different?
TO LEARN
🎓I want to learn some more notions about UI to help me make better on screen cues.
🎓I also want to learn new ways to tell story visually. Basically, I want to know more about storytelling and use that in my levels to make them awesome!
CONCLUSION
I think that's pretty much it for this project! It was super fun to work on and I still have ideas in this universe I could explore. I think that having something that speaks of my values and what I care in this world (I'm talking about the environment) is really important and can tell a lot about what kind of project I would like to do in the future. I'm glad I explored this idea!
I made this little commentary video for you to look at if you'd like! You can also find the complete playthrough video on my project portfolio page.
Thank you for following my journey into level design and game making! I hope you're having a great time!
See ya!
- Caro
