Steven Kastelec
Game & Systems Designer
A lot of my notes came from my notebook and I really didn't want to scan pages into the documentation. Instead I recreated the next few charts. Take a look at my research page for more context!
This was how I was trying to communicate damage falloff to my team.
On top of weekly visitors we also had weekly mentorship meetings with Certain Affinity's Mike Clopper. This included us as well as a second team making their own similar project.
A lot of my notes came from my notebook and I really didn't want to scan pages into the documentation. Instead I recreated the next few charts. Take a look at my research page for more context!
Since I started school in 2016, I always wanted to develop my own FPS. This was my first opportunity and I went hard into the research of FPS'. I looked at all sorts of games from Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Borderlands, etc. I made notes on everything I could think of from Hitscan vs projectile motion to every possible weapon stat and there meaning. If you want to see my research, click on the PDF below !
About
Turtle Soup is a 4 player, Co-op, Ability FPS . In this game, 4 players are tasked in exterminating the giant turtle beetle located in an rundown aquarium. Take hold of the prototype Tesla and Edison guns, each with their own unique abilities and play style.
Made in:
Unity
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My Role:
Game Designer, UI/UX Designer, Programmer
There were multiple design phases as the project went along. In the early months, much of my time was spent designing and documenting how guns and shooting would work in our game. Our teams design goal was to create an arcade shooter like experience, drawing much of our inspiration from DOOM. Later on I got a chance to design part of the boss AI that would unfortunately get cut in the end. However much of my time in later months was spent designing the UI/UX of our guns and revive systems.
Credit to my teammates for putting this together. This was an early game loop demonstrating how the boss would evolve over the encounter.
Credit to my teammate who put this map together. we wanted to map out our guns synergies.
I'm definitely not a UI artist but decided to make a few designs for the health bar. The hope was that would make something to display all the info a player needed such as their health and ability cooldown.
Credit to my teammates for putting this together. This was an early game loop demonstrating how the boss would evolve over the encounter.
Moving onto the prototyping stage, I got the chance to build out our first weapon, the Tesla gun. It was designed to be a shotgun type weapon that would deal high damage at close range. It's main ability would be to attract and launch large boulders similar to how the gravity gun worked in half life. We did a lot of playtesting with other designers in the building as well as outside help from the nearby schools. They played an instrumental role in developing the UI for the game which I made a paper on! You can read below by clicking on the PDF icon.
This is a bit in development. I had implemented damage, recoil and ammo counters and needed a dummy to test on. I got the idea of adding damage multipliers to the enemy to highlight critical spots on the boss. Even developed some jumping damage numbers to help communicate this to players better.
Our boss needed a death animation to complete the game loop and let players know the game had ended. This was temporary but a good laugh for a while.
Ok... so... all teams did weekly progress presentations. This was me at one of them between speaking roles. I guess I found the camera and stared into the lens. Our team got a laugh out of it.
This is a bit in development. I had implemented damage, recoil and ammo counters and needed a dummy to test on. I got the idea of adding damage multipliers to the enemy to highlight critical spots on the boss. Even developed some jumping damage numbers to help communicate this to players better.
With the emergence of Covid-19, many of the resources our team depended on was cut off. Together, we made the difficult decision to end production early. This meant a lot of work that I wish I got to refine, never actually got a chance to be reached. That said, I learned a lot from my first FPS. Including how elements such as sound, VFX and animation can give a weapon most of it's "personality".
It also taught me to design whats best for the game and not necessarily what I wanted. A lot of times I got caught creating military shooter mechanics (tactical reloads, ammo reserves) when the game was supposed to feel arcadey (ammo drops). Thankfully, I often got my team to test my gun who would call me out on it. This trained me to separate my wants for what feels good for the project.
To Mike Clopper: Thanks for taking the time out of your day to help us and mentor us. Your wisdom and support helped us all learn a lot through the 8 months. To my Team: Thank you for choosing me as your teammate. I couldn't ask for better people to work with nor better friends. Good luck to you all!
