Junior / associate producer interest in Game design
Team size = 8 people
Genre:
Horror
My Role:
Product Owner & Sound Designer
My Role as product owner
Under 4 weeks, I was the Product Owner of a team of 8 people, where we created a First Person Horror game. The theme was centered by conflict within where we focused on cacophobia (fear of ugly / ugliness). The game idea started on the whiteboard with a mind map.
Whiteboard
This bullet point list will show all the tasks I took as the Product Owner:
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Primary Responsibility: Led and guided the team to realize the game vision and meet the milestones.
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Communication: Collaborated with the Scrum Master, organized stand-up meetings, and reviewed tasks on the Jira board each Monday, so that the team had task for that specific sprint.
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Clarity and Alignment: Developed a Game Design Document (GDD) to give a clear vision of the game and why we should do certain ways to complete the project.
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Project Milestones 1: Created presentation pitches for the Jury Day.
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Project Milestones 2: Created builds for all the milestones for playtest session but as well for milestone deadline (First Playable, Alpha, Beta and Jury Day)
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Budget: Budget for Assets (due we didn't have any Artist for this project)
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Researching for assets packs in Unreal Marketplace
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Planning the budget
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Creating the document for the budget to later hand in for the admins to clarify that we are in green for the budget
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Implement the assets packs in the engine
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Marketing:
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Game Cover
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Trailer
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Documentation
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Installation for Itch.io
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Challenge: Sustaining group dynamics, make clear what type of game we were making.
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Solution: Holding stand-up meetings, talk with all in the team to see both if there are okay mentally but also the amount workflow they had wasn't to much. Every Monday morning having retrospective to talk about the feedback but also guide the team when certain mechanics, feel and overall game flow for each milestone was set to the stone. By making this all the team was in the same page and none unnecessary confusion was created.
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Perseverance: Maintained team motivation and alignment. Updating Jira board for task so the team always had something to do and maintaining good team work to craft an exceptional game
Game Design Document
Art Assets Budget
Pitch presentation for Jury Day
My role as Sound design
Concept of how I work in the DWA and the engine for sound and music
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Goal: Compose game music for "Part Of Me" with authentic sounds matching the theme.
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Inspiration: Drew inspiration from old horror movies, old houses and paranormally sound that house can make sometimes.
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Main Soundtrack: Created the main soundtrack by incorporating down tuned acoustic guitar and having a piano loop on low pitch to fill the void.
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Sound Effects: Designed sound effects that align with gameplay and art, such as stealing objects, interactions, out of breath, and more.
Process:
Recording sounds / music by using a DAW (Digital Audio Workspace)
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Mixing and effects such as
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Pitch changing
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EQ adjustment (Bas, mids and amplification)
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Fade in / Fade Out
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Reverb
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Mastering for optimal quality
Example how I create certain custom sound
Example how I mix different channels, Having is starting on the low dB and later on on the middle where all sound connects. This to create the sound to be more around the "room" and not being flat.
Implementations:
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Structure project in Unreal Engine 5, easier to navigate through the project
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Assign sound/music to appropriate sound classes to enable access from different blueprints.
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Drag and drop sound effects/music, adjusting radius and falloff of the sound.
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Sound implementation on objects where looking in the blue print to add the logic of the sound play
SQ_HouseAmbient
Ambient sounds que for the sound trigger scattered around the house
I created a Sound Attenuation on the AI to let his audio be dynamic, meaning the further AI is from the player the less he's sounds will be heard. This by having the radius low and the falloff distance high
BP_Guitar
Made a little funny Easter egg where the player can interact with the guitar and play a tune with help of this blue print
Other Task I did
Made a light switch where the player can turn on or turn off the lights, making it hard for the AI to find the player and adding the strength of hiding.
BP_LightSwitcher
Made a interaction UI Hand so the player will know when them can interact with object in the game world.
W_InteractHand
By connecting BPI_Interact with the hand Widget I could now add this instance to all the classes of all object in the game world. When player is hovering the Blueprint actor the hand widget starts, when the player looks away the widget goes away.