The Corporate Ladder

Dev Blog #7 – The Final Demo

Meet the new two models, a cake and a coffee maker. Our coffee maker is capable of creating infinite amount of coffee. I mean, who does not want infinite amount of coffee?

On our last week working on Corporate Ladder, I mostly spend my time on implementing the steps of the scenario, using the functionalities we added before. I also did some clean up in the Blueprints, and of course bug fixing.

Dev Blog #6 – The Printer

This week I have added a new model; a printer, a must have in a office. I did not want it to look like a huge rectangle so I decided to add more detail compared to the models I did before. It ended up being the most complicated model I have done. Also, it broke when I imported it to Unreal Engine, if you count having a huge triangle shaped hole in the back of the printer to be problem. I removed few unused vertexes from the model and that fixed the problem.

The scenario we wrote required few interactable objects. Objects that are stationary, that you can not cary but they have some sort of interaction. So, I created a new Blueprint and added some generic variables and function. And I have functions that are specific the an object in their own Blueprints. The printer is probably the star of our story (sorry Stan Dart) and its blueprint ended up being huge and scary.

Really scary 🙂

Dev Blog #5 – The First Look

Here is the first look at our game!

Dev Blog #4 – Hello Blueprints

Apart from making the models, I wanted to gain experience in Unreal Engine.

In the story, Stan Dart can read other people’s mine, so I decided to implement this. I created a new Blueprint that we will use for all of the Coworkers. It took few tries to figure out what should be the Parent Class, and I ended up extending the Character Class. I programmed it so that when Stan Dart is close to his coworkers a text appear on their head. But as you can see from the image below, the first version did not look so good.

Later on, I created a widget for thought boxes and this made it so much easier to make the visual changes I want. I have added the widget to the Coworker blueprint as component and now it looks much better.

Before using Blueprints, I liked the idea of actually writing code much more than visual programming. However, I enjoyed visual programming while working with Unreal Engine. Even though it sometimes gets frustrating to find a way to do something that you could have done with 2 lines of code, I can say that it was fun.

Dev Blog #3 – Switching to Maya

After learning that one of my teammates have experience in Autodesk Maya and since it is free for students, I decided to switch to Maya. If I ran into any problems, it will be easier to overcome them. Even though it might have been better to make this decision before, I do not see the time I spent on Blender to be waste of time since I enjoy learning new things.

So I re-modeled everything in Maya.

Dev Blog #2 – The Making of the Models

I have decided to create the needed models for our game because I want to learn about it. On our meetings our team liked the idea of having a low-poly aesthetic. With low level of detail, I managed to create basic office furniture models.

My first decision was to make the models in Blender since it is free. After watching introduction videos and tutorials, I managed make my first model: a desk. Basically, a flat surface with four pointy sticks attached to it, really easy and basic model for a beginner 🙂

At the end of my first day of modelling, I created; a desk, a chair, a small bin, a computer with screen, keyboard and mouse.

I really liked making models, though working with small edges and vertices can be challenging. The decision to make the models with low level detail definitely helped me time-wise.

Biggest challenge I had with Blender was selecting an object. I had to google how to select, because left-clicking is used to position the 3d-cursor. My brief introduction to Blender did not teach me about what 3d-cursor is used for but having to right-click when selecting is like going against the nature.

Dev Blog #1 – What is Corporate Ladder ?

Corporate Ladder is the name of the game that we are making as a 6-people team for our Computer Game Design course in KTH.

The idea started with making a dungeon-crawler game but instead of going down a level, like you would in a dungeon-crawler, you go up when you complete the level. As the idea progressed the gameplay began to settle. In the end, we decided that the game would take place in a office environment. Each floor in our skyscraper would correspond to a level and after completing the objective for that level, you can go up one level, as in going up on a corporate ladder.

The objectives will be build around ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ idea. So the main character will go about stealing his coworkers’ work or feeding them peanut even thought they are allergic to it. We plan on giving a broad objective at the start of the level. There will be various paths to achieve that objective and it will be up to the player to choose which one.

The game will be built in Unreal Engine 4 and will make use of the engine’s capabilities. The of models for the game will be produced by us.