Split Aeon

My initial pitch for our end of year assignment at the AIE Melbourne, I was responsible for the design structure which was shared between me and another designer, and Task management of the game's production.

The team was composed of 11 individuals including myself. Two game designers, three programmers, five artists, and one audio designer.

Production was mostly remote work, project was part of our End of year assignment for AIE released on PC on Itch here.

Split Aeon is a first person shooter where a gun wielding theatre magician sits inside of a 1920’s theatre, equipped with a special pocket watch where the player can change between the Past of the theatre where everything is functional, clean, and tidy, and the fallen future where its abandoned charred ruins remain.

The player will swap between the two different play spaces. The player will have the ability to take advantage of this power to get past blocked off areas, access special switches, and use this to fight or evade the enemies in the present and the past.

Early Conception & Production

First Rough Draft of "Split Aeon"

Us Pitching our initial idea in Class

Early layouts of the theatre made in Draw.io showcasing where weapons would be found, which rooms would be connected to which, as well an outline for the objectives the player would do, and highlighting the golden path.

Production

We did have a very rough mock up of the Level Switch mechanic for our project proposal, I did research on the the aforementioned Titanfall mission. I would learn about the senior game designers role on the project, how the idea came about from a history channel series "Life After People". Focusing on about what would happen if humanity left. I also remember a particular quote on the more technical side on how the mechanic actually worked, something like "these two levels are stacked on top of each other".

And initially we did that, we had two identical levels with some key differences in the exact same position in a unity scene. The way we did it was turning on one level off and one on to get that desired effect.

One problem that did arise was lighting, since the levels are in the exact same position. Illumination that was for past level, would leak out in the level for the future.

The work around for this was splitting the level off in scene, so the past would be on top, the future would be on the bottom, this helped fix our lighting problem. As well as still being able to time travel as the level were still in the same vertical alignment.

Pitch Conception

So I initially came up with the concept of an action single player adventure game which was going to be very Bioshock inspired, both mechanically and visually based on a location not far from our campus, being Flinders Street Station. Main reason why I had my heart set on that location was because I thought if I were lucky enough to have my game pitch approved I really wanted to show off the city of Melbourne in our project and what better place to show off then one of the most distinct buildings tons of people walk past everyday.

Although after some feedback, thought, and consideration the idea would change up a bit, with some issues being of that particular idea not being interesting enough as well as hearing another group already having another heavily BioShock influenced game being pitched.

Spent what free time I had in and outside of class thinking of how to address some issues or come up with new ideas as I really wanted to pitch an idea for the end of year project.

I recently finished a playthrough of Titanfall 2, and adored the "Cause & Effect" mission, it was such a cool unique time shift mechanic, I thought it would be an excellent way to make an impression on players to especially pay close attention to the level as I did want to originally show off a 1920's version of Melbourne then turning apocalyptic on the push of a button like in Titanfall 2's level, I would also later realize how mush of a positive impact it would have saving time on asset creation for the most part. However the setting did change, as there were some reasons why it probably wasn't the best location to set the game.

It was suggested a more indoor location instead, being a 1920's Theatre, that idea mainly came from one of our favourite Call of Duty zombies maps from Black ops 1, "Kino Der Toten", while having a semi realistic art style mimicking Bioshock, at the time I would pitch these changes to my other Designer Erik, and we built up the game on these new implementations.

After some refinement and prototyping of the concept we would eventually get greenlit for our second end of year assignment, which would go on for the six months, and be our final major project for the year.

Spit Aeon Past & Future levels setup in the scene

Split Aeon's Past & Future Level

Project Post-Mortem

Overall the projects initial design did not completely stray from what was proposed. What we set out to do we managed to accomplish
Team was really strong and connected really well
Had some Organization & naming convention issues

Auditorium Prototype

Final Auditorium

Responsibilities

Producer
Was responsible for overall group task tracking for each team member
Kept track of roadmap and milestone deliverables
Committed to start of the day scrum practices and values
Organized Crucial Design & Assessment Documents
Designer
Contributed to level design specifically the Past & Present Auditorium, Bar, and Dressing Room.
Refined Shooting and Time Travel
Made Design Documentation for the game.
Plan & Refined level & Gameplay loops
Worked on defining the concept and vision for the game
Defined the narrative of the game

Applications that I used on the Project were:

Unity
Google Suite
Github & Gitkraken
Trello

Acknowledgements:

End of year Project Submission Comment:

"Nice work Karim!

This project came out really strong, and a lot of great quality content was made.

I think the team worked really well together, and both yourself and Erik helped bring a great project into reality!

I think you have a good level-headed vibe with the team, that keeps people focused and aimed on their goals, but also in a fairly relaxed and fun atmosphere.

There was a lot to organize and keep track of in this project, and I'm really impressed with how it all turned out! "

-Murray Lorden - 2nd Year Game Design Teacher