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Mote Valley

Game Page

Project Type

Project Duration

Software Used

Languages Used

Primary Role(s)

Team Size

University Collaborative Project

3 + 3 weeks

Unreal Engine 4

Blueprints

Game Designer, UI/UX, VFX

10 Students

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Game Design Document

Mote Valley is a collaborative project that I was a part of in my junior year at Staffordshire university. The project was made by a team of 8 students consisting of a mix of Techs, Designers, Environment, Character and Concept Artists. The project was one of 2 prototypes that were pitched to lecturers and was ultimately the one chosen by the lecturers for us to focus on.

Trailer

To create the trailer we used for the game I used a mix of sliding shots from the engine, gameplay as well as art created by our 3D artists to tell a short story about the creatures that the player is taking care of which I put together using Adobe Premier Pro.

Loosely based on Slime Rancher, the player plays as a zoologist who, to fight back the darkness that has begun encroaching on the planet, has to nurture the mysterious Motes found around the areas, themselves creatures of light, to release their light and thus pushing back the darkness.

As the designer with the most experience outside of level design on this project my contributions to the project where:

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  • Wireframe and Implement the UI

  • Create numerous Niagara particle effects

  • Design how the Enemy (Darkness Sphere) interacts with the world and the player

  • Create the trailer

  • Assist the tech team with various minor blueprints to allow them to focus on larger issues/mechanics

  • Create a material for when the creatures are teleported away

Darkness Enemy

The enemy of the game which is the darkness sphere that can be seen constantly getting closer to the players base starts affecting the player as soon as they leave the inside of the sphere, after a short duration the player will get killed and respawn at their base without the items they were carrying in their two inventory slots if they were carrying anything at the time.

For the darkness sphere enemy I did not build the functionality of the sphere itself but I designed, together with some input from the other designers, the way the darkness interacted with the player and the world themselves.

UI Implementation

Mote Valley UI 2.PNG

With the UI I wanted to keep the screen as clear as possible to enable to player to interact with the world without the UI cluttering important elements that they need to see but still give the player enough information for them to be able to keep track of their progress.

Dissolving Material

We wanted a way to show that the creatures are teleported away when the player is interacting with them so using some experience that I had gathered working on materials before I made a dissolving material that when added onto the creatures would allow them to dissolve when getting teleported away.

Particle Effects

We wanted a way to show that the creatures are teleported away when the player is interacting with them so using some experience that I had gathered working on materials before I made a dissolving material that when added onto the creatures would allow them to dissolve when getting teleported away.

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