ARCHIPELAGO PROMISE
GAME DESIGNER
Project role
UNREAL ENGINE 5
Engine
6 MONTHS
Duration
‘The Archipelago Promise’ is a short first person survival game set on an Alaskan archipelago. Sail between islands and gather resources as you survive the cold temperatures and dangerous animals who call these islands home.
PAGE NAVIGATION
ABOUT
NAVIGATION
Unravel what happened to Thomas, by following his trail using the detailed directions he left in their notes. Create your own story and make crucial decisions on where to go next by using your compass, and learn how to survive in this immersive exploration and survival experience.
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CRAFT & SURVIVE
Monitor your well-being by checking your watch for updates on health, temperature, hunger, and thirst. Utilize your trusty notebook to craft items, and increase your likelihood of survival in the harsh wilderness.
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SAILING
Traverse the rough waters of the Bering Sea with your sailing boat! Maneuver past obstacles and sail from island to island, all in pursuit of finding your brother.
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WILDLIFE
Whether you're hunting down rabbits for food, or trying to sneak past a sleeping bear, there are all forms of wildlife. Both harmless and life-threatening!
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DAY AND NIGHT CYCLE
Explore the islands on a sunny day or a cold stormy night. But beware even though you might see the beautiful northern lights, the cold nights bring low temperatures and hide the danger lurking in the shadows.
PROJECT ROLE
Before starting my internship at Galaxy Grove in the second half of my last year at university I was part of the third year student team creating The Archipelago Promise. Because of this I was only present for the first half of the project and most of my work revolved around prototyping and concepting for the game.
As a game designer...
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Prototyping various interactive objects for the game world
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Prototyping and developing a dynamic temperature system
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Concepting and exploring in creating a small open world island environment
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Work with plug-ins for dynamic weather to tailor the desired player experience
PROTOTYPING
Not just a walking simulator
The project brief for the project stated that we were not allowed to include a building system in the game. Which presented us with the challenge of finding other ways to engage the player in gathering resources and exploring the world.
At the start of the project I prototyped a lot of different interactable systems for the player to engage with as they explore the island.
Interaction prototypes
To make my work as efficient as possible on these interactable component I created a parent blueprint that held all the logic for the interaction prompt appearing and disappearing, including variables to tweak the behavior of this text. This allowed me to quickly create extra interactable elements through child blueprints of this parent component. The only logic that I needed to create in the child blueprints was what would happen if the player pressed the interaction button.
Parent interaction blueprint
Child blueprint for logic
TEMPERATURE SYSTEM
Adding realism
To add challenge in exploring the islands I developed a temperature system. This system was based on real life metrics with wind chill and air temperature. A wind system was already in development for the sailing part of the project, which left me to create a system that allows us to determine the air temperature on different parts of the island. This could then all be plugged into my calculations and give a realistic result.
Calculate temperature
Figuring out air temperature
After experimenting with different options to change air temperature as you venture around the island I ended up choosing a low poly performance friendly plane underneath the island. By painting a selection of special physics materials on this plane I could then in blueprint line trace to read the desired air temperature in that section of the island. Once the base air temperature was known modifiers could be added based on conditions such as weather or whether the player is inside yes or no.
Temperature painting
Adding a plug-in
Later when we added the Ultra Dynamic Sky and Weather plugins for our day night cycle and weather system I found out that this plug-in included a system for air temperature based, which would already perfectly tie into the weather and time of day. However we still wanted to control of being able to set some areas of the island to be colder and some warmer. Because of this I reworked the previous temperature painting system to instead be a modifier on the temperature calculated from the plugin.
Calculating final temperature
LEVEL DESIGN
Procedural generation
A part of our project brief was to use procedural generation in the creation of the environment. As we did not have the technical power in the team to create fully procedural islands. Instead we opted to use procedurally generated heightmaps as a base to quickly create based island shapes that the level designers could then iterate on. For this planning I made use of overpaint sketching on top of the basic heightmap imported in engine.
Generated heightmap
Island planning sketch
Iterations
Iterations were made using the built in Unreal Engine landscaping tools to sculpt the landscape into something looking like a more realistic island. Lakes and pathing were added together with basic set dressing. Once that is done I moved on to placing resources around the level so the project would have a full playable island. This was key in our ability to properly test our designs and player experience. Sadly I didn't get to be around for the polishing of the project anymore, however the island I created was used as a base for further work on the project.
Before landscape edits
After landscape editing