Hip Hoppity
Roles: Producer, Level DesignerHip Hoppity is a rhythm-sidescroller I created as a student game team project at DigiPen Institute of Technology. I was the Producer and Level Designer for Team Power Chord, a team of 10: three game designers, three artists, three programmers, and one music/sound designer. Players jump, slide, and grind to the beat through a colorful cityscape in three levels. Each level has a unique music track, and players must move to the rhythm to avoid obstacles and collect all the spray paint cans.
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WHAT I CONTRIBUTED
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PROCESS
1. Concept Pitch: I held group brainstorming sessions with the entire team to define the high concept, core mechanics, and stylistic vision for the game. We created a game design document and a pitch presentation, then delivered our pitch to a panel of instructors. We were given the greenlight to initiate pre-production.
2. First Playable Prototype: The design team collaborated to develop a prototype of the core mechanics in Unity. I scripted a beat detection system in C# and used it to align obstacles to a set tempo. We used primitive shapes to represent gameplay objects. I conducted external playtests and revised the implementation until mechanics were working as desired. 3. Full Level Prototype: While the designers worked on the first prototype, the art team was creating concepts and first-pass artwork. The next phase of prototyping was to create a full level using these first-pass art assets as placeholders. For this level, I showcased the full gameplay loop from starting a level to completing it. I also implemented parallaxing background layers to create depth and interest in the environment. 4. Custom engine development: Over the course of 14 weeks (one semester), our programming team created a custom game engine. For the following 14 weeks, we moved development from Unity into the custom engine. I continuously tested and gave feedback on the engine tools to improve the design workflow. 5. Level implementation: To create levels for this game, I first placed ground platforms. Then, I continuously placed obstacles, played the level from the beginning, listened really carefully to the music, and adjusted obstacle positions to match the beats. In the custom engine, we did not have the luxury of a beat detection system, nor did we have any way to pause and resume music and gameplay in-engine. So I hand-placed objects in alignment with every beat and meticulously playtested and revised the levels to be rhythmically accurate. It was a very organic process that could not really be accomplished on paper! 6. Polish: For the last few weeks of development, we focused on making the levels, menus, and interactions shine. I set-dressed levels with environment props, backgrounds, and particles. I also worked beyond school hours to fix bugs and make sure we could ship on-time. |