Ryan T. Miller
Game Designer
Vectromirror (Full Game)
Description of Game:
Stylized Indie First Person Puzzle Platformer
My Role:
Lead Programmer
Time on Project:
1 year
Tools I Used:
Unreal Engine 4, Perforce, Hansoft
Project Team Size:
15+
My Contribution to the Project:
I work with the production and design teams to coordinate high level vision and implement or delegate all code related features in the game (using blueprint visual scripting currently). Primary areas I work on are gameplay architecture, world mechanics, and AI.
Thoughts on the Project:
The project had gone through a lot of versions since the first time we made that initial game jam version. Now that I had hte time to join the team again, it was time to review the vision.
Joining the team, I knew I would be doing programming (visual scripting really), but it wasn't clear how many other programmers we would have, and it took some time to establish my full role at the studio.
Whilst making the game, I led conversations on high level vision and rescoping the project to work with what we had. Which was an abundance of designers and artists. To this end, I started organizing our goals to focus on delivering polished art, sharp levels, and few, but re-usable core mechanics, to lighten the workload on the small programming team, and deliver a game that would capture attention (looking at the success of other indie art titles in recent years)
Now came the challenge of finding the core vision for the game. Guiding the team through this, we must have tried at least 8 different overall core gameplay loops. Each time we did find something that worked, and something that did not, and we have trimmed down to a good minimum viable set of features for a core gameplay loop. It was important to keep the spirits up during this time of discovery, and keep pushing through it.
At this time, we have the vision we want, and it's just about getting the last remaining pieces of tech in place (game architecture is good now) to allow designers to rapidly iterate on a single level, and demonstrate a minimum viable gameplay loop.
I'm extremely excited for the next stage of this game, as we finally are hitting the "payoff" period, where you can see the gameplay, see the ways the player can enjoy the experience emerge through natural play. If the core gameplay loop can hold up, the remaining features and mechanics will be much easier to implement thanks to the gameplay architecture having such a solid foundation after being developed in tight unison between production, designers, and programmers. We also kept the art pipeline in mind, but without a solid gameplay loop to demonstrate yet, we haven't been able to test it with lots of assets.
Every minute I get to experiment with this game feels like pure creation at this point.