Devlog #1 — Altaïr, an open world made with 32 students
This devlog series is about the project Altair (a name code). With a team of 32 students, we wanted to create an open world in a horizon zero-down style.
Hello! I’m Isaac MENARD a French game designer student, and game director of the project. This project is my second made with a team that I manage. My first project was Tenders Fight, a fast fps platformer that sold more than 2,000 times. In this second project, I wanted to make things bigger and better.
At first, we were only 2 people who worked on the basic project. A third-person shooter where you need to shoot in creatures' weak points.
In this animation, there was only a spider where you needed to shoot the articulations.
There was Lancelot BERNARD as a game programmer and me as a game designer. The first idea before starting to add more people to the project was to see if the core game loop was enjoyable. So we directly choose to code a boss creature.
Document of how we designed the IA of the spider:
To attack we wanted things that follow the player like the roquets of Adam Smasher in Cyberpunk 2077.
The result as a prototype:
After it was time to make some level design! Before trying to make an open-world we wanted to create a demo of the game with a little sandbox.
The first thing I did was to make the prototype the most intuitive possible to show all the mechanics intuitively. We didn’t if we could help players while playtesting the prototype.
So there was the plan: The first thing that I wanted to present was the history concept, the player arrived on a planet after a ship crash. To explain that without text, I just had to put some spaceship debris around the starting area.
After, the player needs to find the first gettable item, a mushroom. To let him find I just had to put a high contrast element in his way and hope he would follow it (Spoiler, that worked!)
In the last part, it was more complicated. I wanted the player to choose between two points of interest. To make him choose, I had to create a vista with the 2 POIs.
Note: assets came from an asset pack
The idea was to put POIs in the vision of the player by using photography tips like the Z reading of the image or the 9 1/3 rule.
After I realized that with only one enemy, it was hard to make a funny game. So we chose to design new points of interest for the players:
- The boss, they are visible without engaging in the fight. The idea was to let the player choose if he thinks he is ready to beat the creature.
- The monsters' camp, basically it’s just a zone with lots of creatures and a hidden chest inside the camp.
- The towers, in a Zelda BOTW style, the idea was to show the map from this point.
- The mushrooms. even if it’s small, it was used to guide the player and heal him.
At final, we only added new enemies, mushrooms, and chests.
When Lancelot and I work, sometimes we use publics voice channels of our school. This was where we met Ana and Romain. Ana wanted to create the UI of the game and Romain the 3D concept of the character.
But there was a problem, a 3D concept is only a draw of the model and can’t be integrated into the game without modelise it. So we started to look for new people to join the project. Also, we didn’t know with Lancelot how to manage a project with game artists.
This is why Lucile came to the party. She is our artist director, her role is to manage the artist team and choose a direction and a style for the game.
After we had to choose a scope for the game, that means what we want at finally to know how many people we need. The idea at first was 10 biomes, 11 enemies, 1 character, 10 music tracks, and lots of props. Also to define the art style we needed a better story (also what we call the LORE of the game). What is the message of the game, the aim for the player… So we hired 6 narrative designers.
After it was time to find our artists! Each needs to have a precise role based on his specialty. We need creature artists, character artists, environment artists, user interface artists, and VFX artists. We found 14 people to make this!
After this point, many people joined the project, for music, combat design, or programming. Today (04/02/2024) we are 32 students on the project!
More information about my profile: https://isaacmenard.github.io