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Balaam Manor is a single player puzzle game. The player unravels the mysteries of the mansion while diving into the dark depths of ungodly, troubled souls.
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It was the fourth project in line, made in Unreal engine under 4 weeks of development in September 2020.
About the game: Balaam Manor
Project Length:
Team Size:
Genre:
Engine:
4 Weeks
9 (Two Programmers)
Horror, Puzzle
Unreal
MY CONTRIBUTIONS
Gameplay
Blueprint Scripting
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Prototyping
System Design
I got to work on prototyping. The possibilities with our ideas were many, so I enjoyed immersing myself in this part.
CODE SNIPPETS
System Design/BP Scripting
System Design & Scripting
Swapping Painting Manager:
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We needed a manager to have control over the swapping of paintings, so that it does not happen at the same time. It was obvious that the experience of a painting changing to a scary version of it would not be as immersive if the player expected this to happen contineously and simultaneously.
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What does this code snippet do?
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It uses a timer to check the painting over a given interval and swaps if is needed.
If the painting has not been rendered then It is time to swap to the scary material of the painting. It puts the painting on the swap array and waits until it swaps. Once the event SwapPainting is called in the SwappingPaintings Obj script, it puts the painting back to the available paintings and waits until it has gathered a satisfying amount of paintings to redo the cycle.
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In the case that the painting has been looked at, so therefore rendered, the SwappingPaintings Obj swaps the painting back to normal material in and sends the event HasSwappedToNormal to our Manager script.
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SwapPainting Obj script
Swapping Painting Manager script
System Design/Audio BP Manager
System Design & Scripting
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Audio Manager:
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In the second project in line, called "Extreme Galactic Ball" and first project made in Unreal, I was in charge of the sound. It was a very fun time for me but I didnt have enough experience to work on the audio system just apart from putting the sounds in. That is why, I got very excited to design the audio system for this second project made in Unreal.
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What does this code snippet do?
It loops through an array of sounds to play two different creepy sounds coming from a random place in the house. Given the time duration of the gameplay -10 minutes- it felt more natural if the player would listen to two creepy sounds in this time interval. This design increased the authenticity of the mystery around the house.
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How does it do it?
It loops though the audio components and if non of them is playing, it sets a timer that waits a random interval until it PlaysNewSoundAtLocation. There, the timer gets cleared, and the specific sound is played at one random location in one of the three random VolumeBoxes set in the house.
Audio Manager script
PlayNewSoundAtLocation function
The creative process/Game loop
The creative process
Prototyping:
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In this project I wanted to implement the design concepts i accumulated throughout my education. I engaged as always in prototyping and tried to implement the concepts discussed by the group as well as the game loops that were designed. I wanted to explore the captivating concept that haunts Silent Hill™, Dead Space™ and Resident Evil™. The survival horror genre.
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Game loop - flow chart prepared for testing.
Game loop:
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The player will complete two puzzles and one riddle to be able to get all the clues for the final puzzle.
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The final puzzle placed in the main hall would be solved using the clockwork mechanism.
We prototyped and tested the tick-tock puzzle to figure out its strengths and weaknesses in both Unreal and prototypes made out of paper.
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Architectural design:
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The player always has eye contact with the main hall in order to keep the focus on the final puzzle.
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This design promotes the visual storytelling and enhances the mystery around the main hall. This ambience serves the horror genre.
Planning the level early served also the artists who could build the different rooms with focus on the visual storytelling.
The weaknesses:
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We figured out the weaknesses of our gameplay in the beginning of week 2 out of 4 and effectively shifted the scope of the project to a more realistic one by designing a simpler final puzzle. We kept the same game loop.
Initial game level built in Blender.
Final game level architecture.
Creative Game Trailer
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