Cameron Thomson-Game Designer
Insannatus
Earth, a home you once knew but no longer familiar, ravaged by a nearby supernova has been thrown back into the dark ages. This event gave some the powerful ability to shapeshift, both a blessing and a curse as they find themselves hunted in this word that has built itself back in the ruins of the old. You are one such shapeshifter, recently captured by those who fear and covet your gift, which you must use to escape capture and help yourself understand and survive this new world.
Introduction
Insannatus was a second year university team project. It was created by a team of 10 people most of which had not worked together before. This project was about world building and the world the game is set in was created by a member of team as part of an assignment prior to production. We decided to make a 3D game revolving around two core mechanics. The first was the players ability to "morph" into animals at will and the ability to use plants to do magic.
My Contributions
For this project i started on level design. I worked with the writers to understand where the start of the first level should come in terms of the story. After talking to the writers i knew that the player would be captured by the enemies and have to escape. This would be the first level with a tutorial at the start. When starting the design process i knew that i had to make it easy for the player so that they would be eased into the game and its mechanics. I started by drawing up concepts for the level on paper before finding one the whole team liked and moving into engine. I made a first block out from my first designs in engine however it was decided that it was too long so i had to work on shortening the level. After getting some assets from the teams 3D modeler i was able to get the scale of the level right so it wasn't too long. Unfortunately due to personal issues i was not available to do the designing for the second level. after i returned i was set the task of making the environment look like the overgrown, nature filled planet the world was meant to be. this meant that i placed all of the environmental assets (trees, bushes, flowers, etc) by myself. This took a long time as we were going for a feel of openness so i had to fill out lots of space beyond the border of the map to give the player the sense of being deep in the forest. I created the forest in level one and in level two. I also made the mountain range inside of level two. This was quite enjoyable but caused some problems as it became difficult to keep the map boundaries secure, there were several points during testing where i would fix one spot only for another two to become known.
Development issues
There were a few issues with the development of Insannatus. Firstly we did not sent up a proper pipeline for work so it took a while for things to get done as people didn't know who to ask or where to go to. Another issue was over scoping. About halfway through development we realised we were never going to achieve everything we wanted to in the time we had. we realised this was a result of us being too ambitious and therefore decided to cut back. Unfortunately we cut back too much and the second level didn't end up with enough content. we also didn't get as much character artwork done as we would have liked which left the enemies unfinished.
