Ghost Light
Summary: Ghost Light is a horror adventure game where you are thrown into a ghost town to solve the mystery of what happened to this town. Some ghosts are only visible in the light, and some are only visible in the dark. Make sure you don't run out of flashlight charge.
Role: Game Design, AI design, Programming, Level Design, Audio Programmer
Tasks: I was tasked with creating the lighting system in our game, and making sure the right object are appearing in the dark or just in the light. Along with programming and designing the AI for all ghosts. Programming the crystal collection and dialogue system.
Responsibilities: Ensure ghost AI and behaviour works as intended. The flashlight stops at walls and uncovers objects in the dark correctly. Implementing
Development
Milestone 1 Screenshots
Challenges: Player navigation, engagement, and challenge
Tasks: Implement flashlight system, dialogue system, enemy AI, Gem collects.
Player Navigation: To overcome the challenge of player navigation and getting lost in our level, we added more art assets on the ground to give the player a point of reference. The was also a problem with player's ability to tell that they are moving, since travelling across a white makes it seem like you are not moving at all. We also added points of interest to give players a better idea of where they are in the level.
Engagement: In the original design of the game, we had the player just collect crystals, we found it was not engaging as players didn't have any motivations. By adding a story that gives the player purpose and more context to the world, we hoped to improve the player's engagement.
Challenge: At first, our game was basically unlosable; it did have a loss condition that could be met, but it was really easy to never meet the loss condition. To increase challenge, we made it, so ghost moved much faster and more dynamically, along with adding a ghost type that constantly spawns to add to the chaos.
Prototype Screenshots
Challenges: Prototyping, Quick Turn around
Tasks: Prototype flashlight, light charging, health system, AI.
Takeaways: The mechanics will have to be significantly improved if we wanted to implement levels, as it currently didn't work with wall. Also, the gun flash was not revealing enemies like we'd hoped.
Engagement: Players expressed interest in concept. Since the prototype was made in 3 days, not much progress could be made in terms of outside mechanics.
Skills and knowledge gained:
During the development of this game, I learned a lot about AI design, programming, creating challenge in a game and team work. For this year long project, I had to work in a team of 4. While working in this team the amount of knowledge and experience I gained about team work and management is invaluable, learning about how to explain the systems that I added to the game so that other team member can understand and use the new systems for themselves was knowledge I never knew I needed until working on this project. Many of the systems in Ghost Light need and understanding of how they work so that when members add art or other assets that they know how to set them up, so they work properly in-game. I’m excited to apply this new knowledge to my future project.
