Doxx
Unreal,Third Person, Stealth
Doxx was the first game I have created using the Unreal engine. The game has you take on the role of the Deception Operative 20 also known as Doxx. They are an advanced cybernetic enhanced humanoid with various technologically aided abilities that allow for exceptional stealth abilities. The first of these abilities was Invisibility.
Invisibility
I wanted Doxx to be quick yet challenging and to rely on peoples innate ability to remember where things are. To do this, I created an invisibility that can only be turned on when standing still. This created a heap of fun new game play options as it forced players to remember guard routes and hide accordingly. The other ability available to the player is Slow Time.
Slow Time
While invisibility is powerful, I wanted player to feel like that had something to make them more in control. This train of thought brought about the ability to slow time. The initial idea had the slow time reduce the FOV as the player used it however this became problematic it terms of the balance of the game. In the end I settled on the idea of players would have to manage a resource as they explore the facility and once they ran out, there was no way to get more until the next level. This rewarded players for doing tasks that were on the edge of their skill level by allowing them more use of the time slow in potentially harder areas of the map.
Lessons Learnt
The creation process of Doxx was not one without hardships. Learning a new engine comes with many unexpected problems that can slow down development. These things can be as simple as function names or process. In the case of Doxx, one of the problems I didn't anticipate running into was my ability to search from errors and answers online. Because I am use to using Unity and thus use to searching for answers for Unity's problems, when faced with Unreal's terminology I found myself looking in the wrong direction for answers. While there were frustrating parts to learning Unreal, I found it a very beneficial experience and gain good feedback from my initial work. This feedback made me change my plan of simply publishing it once it was time to submit the assignment to instead working and developing the game more before publishing it.