Project Summary

Space Sci-Fi Lab is a original single player cooperative level intended for an Outer Worlds Side quest experience. Gameplay includes traversal elements (walking, jumping), and the ability to shoot (to replicate the experience of an Outer Worlds FPS experience. Players will navigate through the modular scifi lab, exploring the various spaces provided. No other gameplay elements besides cover and placement of Health pack models are shown in-game

Occurrence:

A Mad Scientist(s) named Dolan Miers was using humans test subjects and splicing their DNA with Mantisaur blood for research development advances in a larger experiment. He had a team of individuals, as well as scientists named Tallen (quest enemy) and Lileen (NPC). They were originally his team assistants. Lileen stepped down eventually due to the immorality and that she had already lingering suspicions that the previous scientists on the project had been sedated and used for experimentation and DNA splicing by Dolan without consent. Due to the pressures from mad scientist Dolan, on Tallen, he gave in and agreed to receive DNA splicing and experimentation. Dolan Miers had made what he thought to be the “perfect serum” for homeostasis with Mantisaur and human blood (As most test subjects unfortunately DON’T survive operation/experimentation or suffer defects from mutations).

The cross contamination of Mantisaur DNA and the serum caused an unforeseeable scene of events at the observation lab, and the Mantisaur Human Hybrid (Tallen), arose, and killed the operating mad Scientist(s) Dolan. This encounter with the monster caused an explosion of nearby energy nodes in the lab, and chaos ensued. The Mantisaur Human Hybrid destroyed the lab, and even knocked over some pods that would eventually free more mutated versions of Mantisaur Human Hybrid Monsters. Tallen fled the lab in hopes to repopulate, and

kill anything in its way as he terrorizes Terra-2. The enemy in the quest would be one of the Alien Creatures, Tallen that very closely resembles an evolved humanoid Mantisaur or a 4-legged Predator. Perhaps Dolan did achieve homeostasis with this serum, his work lives out in the world.

Level Features:

FPS Gameplay
Modular Lab Wall Mesh Blockout
Particle FX
Lighting & Post Processing
Decal Addition
Environmental Storytelling

Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Platform: PC
Dev Time: 22hrs- 4 days(2021)

Download:

Design Goals

Blockout Line of Sight using Modular Lab meshes
Created Compelling Landmarks
Create Recursive Path
Create FPS/RPG gameplay intended for Outerworlds or Fallout experience.

Images

This level was an altered copy of Sci-Fi Lab

Blockout Images

Challenges

Creating a space that told a story, had an occurrence, but most importantly included gameplay akin to something with cover and necessary spaces to explore.

I had to make a decisive decision behind what asset packs I wanted to use as my Unreal Engine project couldn’t open the entire project initially. This made my decision for environment/story constructive to be much more purposeful. Eventually I began to just migrate assets from a blank project to allow myself to use as many assets I needed of the five included.
To define my level scope, I had to decide between two or three rooms. Ultimately, I arrived at two large to medium sized rooms, and married the idea of my third room instead being a Hallway. I decided to let the player walk past the area still get the general story of my level and its environment. To make my space also feel larger I added a couple of inaccessible areas within my level. For the sake of the environmental narrative, I decided to make one small inaccessible area, accessible.
Lighting the place appropriately to distinguish two different moods within my environment in my world was the final challenge. Making sure the “Why” of where my light came from and that it felt natural was a heavy focus for lighting.