For about the past two months, I've been working on and off, along with three other people, on this prototype game demo, which is a real time interactive game cinematic. I've recorded myself playing the demo on my computer to showcase that I am playing it in real time. I solely animated every character and prop asset in this demo and it was all put together in Unity.
Credits:
Rb Reber - Planning, Animation, Environment, R&D, Sounds
Jeryc Paragua - Technical Director, Lighting, Environment
Rick Roman - Programming (Overall)
Jeremy Lim - Programming (UI, VFX, SFX)
I've had this idea for a while now to make an interactive type of game in which I can animate the entire game sequence. I asked help from three of my friends whom I work with, who are also programmers that make up our division's Technical / FX team. Before one of those guys who was the Technical Director, their team lead, left our studio, I asked him for a favor if maybe they can help me program this idea of mine to turn it into a real project. They all happily agreed and so they labeled me as kind of the "Producer/Director" of this project since it was my overall main idea. I was in charge of the cinematography of the game and I had to work with the limitations that we had in order to publish a playable demo. I couldn't have done this project without them and I am very thankful for their hard work and support.
I started to plan a lot, having digital and traditional notes all over my workstation, planning everything, from the hierarchy of how the gameplay and story will flow, to sketching the floor plan and making a layout of the entire environment for the game, and many other things. I had to plan out what will happen if the player started choosing different choices in the final game. I have a couple of plans for the final game which will result in different endings each time the player picks a different choice. For this prototype demo, I made it a priority to finalize just one branch of the game hierarchy in order to finish it in the time that was given to us. That is why the choices that were not able to be selected were grayed out.
I also searched for abandoned places on the internet and ended up with an old worn down office for the setting of the game. I then made the 3D block out of the environment based on the floor plan that I have sketched. I just made simple geometry since this was just a prototype demo of the final game, but not too simple so that the player would still recognize what kind of object it's supposed to be. For the dog, I watched a lot of dog videos on the net for reference, observing how they behave, talk, play, etc. For the free rigs I used, I got it all from the internet.
Since this is just the prototype version of the game, we were not able to provide background music for it but I was able to find and edit a few foleys (footsteps, gunshots, door, etc.), which I then gave to the sound programmer to put in the game. I got the dialogue from the net, which was a compiled audio file for a multiplayer game.
We had a lot of resolution problems but we were able to settle down on a final one for this project, this is because we had errors in the UI part. Because of this I also had to put down the resolution of this recorded video in order to upload it smoothly.
As some of you might notice, a huge inspiration of mine for this project is Telltale Games and their awesome games. I love narrative and story driven games and how the player is responsible for their own decisions. I loved every bit about making this project, I learned a lot and it helped me improve a lot with my craft.
I would also like to thank the following people for their support on this project:
Laurence de Castro - For giving me feedback and tips on my animation
Gani Nañagas - For lending a helping hand when we were having problems
Jeff Ortiga - For helping Rick with the programming side of this project
Colleagues and Friends - For supporting us on this project
I hope you guys like it! :)
