TechSupport is a first-person shooter where the goal is to get the highest score before you run out of lives.
Synopsis
In TechSupport, the hero’s computer has been infected by malware. The only way for them to get their computer functioning again is to go into the computer and destroy the malware themselves using whatever means are at their disposal.
Game Download: https://osf.io/qfzae/
Design Process
The design process was a very rapidly evolving one for us. As we grew more cognizant of our limitations with respect to time we ended up doing a lot of pruning and reshaping. We started out initially wanting to do a game with a narrative, but very early on we realized that wouldn’t be feasible within the time frame allotted. Then one of us had the idea to be inside of a computer destroying viruses. After which we started planning how that would look exactly. Once we had an idea of what to do we were able to start working within Unreal. We had a great many ideas but only ended up using like 1/20th of the ideas we came up with. Most of the design process at that point was more centered around what we could actually figure out within Unreal.
Skills Learned/Credits
Matt
“Tech Support Map editing, model creation (motherboard, computer case, monitor, keyboard, desk and exterior room, CPU, large heat exchanger, maze, wires and wire plugs), adjusting proportions of the map to seem realistic, provided some input for weapons system features, added additional chips and capacitors (only a few to certain areas I felt were sparse), textured the models (maze, computer tower, desk, monitor, keyboard, exterior room, wires and plugs). Learned how to use cloudforge/tortoiseSVN and Unreal Editor.”
Michael
“Tech Support Map editing, model creation (capacitors, microprocessors, heat sinks, RAM, motherboards plugs/pins, and other “micro” sized details), populating and positioning models within map, texture creation (using Photoshop), importing into SVN, and configuring for custom models in Unreal.”
Jesse
“Version control and repository hosting; Unreal Blueprints (visual scripting implementation of C) language; interfacing and interconnecting systems between player and enemies/world, especially damage/health; generalized, flexible AI systems including character, controller, blackboard, behavior tree made up of sequential and parallel condition-based decision-making, resulting in an AI enemy that can move and attack with modest intelligence, while the framework remains incredibly easy to upgrade, diversify, and customize.”
Anthony
“Player systems (Health, Armor, Energy, Lives, Score); Heads up display; Main menu, Game Over, and pause screens and main game loop; Three weapon systems and damage mapping + particle and emitter effects; some mesh design and 3d modeling; Player controls; Player pick-ups. Learned the basics of C++ and Unreal Engine 4. Learned some of the nuances of C design by using blueprints, which are Unreal’s visual scripting language that is compiled into C. Learned how to use version control (subversion) through a GUI (TortoiseSVN) and the best practices for collaborating.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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