Scraps
Scraps is a post-apocalyptic 3rd person game. Basts (wealthy individuals) employ the player to go do dangerous missions in the Wastes (run down places). If the player does enough of these missions the player could earn their way into a Bastion (place where basts reside, version of high society).
The Goal
All designers were given a set of approved locations to create a level from. The location that I decided to pick was an abandoned foundry. I decided to look at some reference material for the outside of the building. The results were a lot of cube shaped buildings, so the layout seemed pretty straight forward. I wanted the rooms of the foundry to be different heights and lengths to be interesting because one big room would make for an uninteresting experience, unless the room was broken up into different sections. I wanted the biggest room in the level to be a set piece. Foundries melt down metal, so I wanted to have a giant cauldron be my set piece that the player remembers about the level. The next idea was having conveyor belts to get the metal to the cauldron to have some form of automation.
The Mechanics
Abandoned foundries are in a state of decay and stuff breaks down over time. I wanted the player to go into the place and fix things like broken pipes or fix machines that are missing a gear to progress through the level. The ultimate goal of the player is to melt down valuable melts into an ingot for a bast.
The Adjustments
Originally, the level involved the player climbing into an air vent to get to the cauldron control room, but the project could not accommodate for the tight spaces due to camera constraints. I had to adapt on the fly as a higher up wanted this changed so I opted for an industrial scaffolding walkway to get from one room to another. While it is not what I originally intended, the scaffolding walkway acts as a way for the managers of the foundry to observe what is happening on the main floor.
There was originally a transition area between the cauldron control room and the cauldron room, but in the end it was decided to be unnecessary. Stairs would suffice and look like they belong much more. The transition area was just an awkward place where the player just opens a door.
The Bug
When texturing the level, the team I was a part of was having trouble with the version control software. If an individual made a build of the game and ran it on their computer the game would look fine. They would upload it to the depot for others to get and test. The versions they downloaded from the depot did not look fine. A few of the textures would not look like what they were suppose to be. The textures would look like a sort of rainbow effect. Every time a build was uploaded the problem would go to different textures and ones that appeared broken were not. I decided to play it safe with this problem and only used textures that were already in the game. My potential solution did not work and even some of those textures were breaking when taking the build from the version control software. The project leaders were even confused with this problem. The team took steps to solve the texture problem and there was no solution to be had before the project deadline came. The problems with textures taught me that problems in development are always going to happen and some problems are not even in your control.
Below on the left is the version control depot build and the right is a local build.
Gallery of The Project
