Zonghao Wu
Gameplay & Level Designer
Narrative-driven
Interconnected World
Decision Making
Resource Management
About the game
Delumination is a story-driven RPG featuring resource management and decision-making. In a loop of 3 days, players need to explore the mysterious Elysium Town, sustain themselves, explore the secrets of the cult "Delumination", and try to stop the imminent "Eclipse".
Contributions
Product Owner
As the product owner and lead designer of the game, I ironed out the basic core gameplay and narrative for the game early on, which we later iterated on.
When the frameworks of the game were almost settled and agreed upon by the team, I led the discussion and brainstorming among the designers to further flesh out and polish our ideas. Then I set milestone goals for each stage throughout the 4-week development, assign tasks, and drive the team to meet our goals.
Gameplay & System Design
During the pre-production phase, I prototyped most of the systems and mechanics needed for the core gameplay loop, including a basic dialogue system, number pad & door system, inventory system, attribute system, etc.
I prototyped the dialogue system with struct, data table and a dialogue component.
(Dialogue component Blueprint)
I prototyped the inventory system with struct, enum, data table, an inventory component, and an Integer mapped to Boolean variable to keep track of whether certain inventory slot is taken.
(Blueprints for the function of adding items to the correct location of the inventory)
During the actual production, the programmers in my team reworked the inventory and the dialogue system on the basis of my prototypes. I designed and implemented the interactable quest/event system, the date transition system, the player stats system (including resource and attribute), and the save system for the game.
I made the interactable quest/event system into a modular template that can be reused. Depending on different quests/events, I can set different player options, different conditions to meet for those options, different processes and outcomes after selecting certain options, whether to play certain cutscenes or not, etc.
(Some of the interactable events in the game)
(Blueprints for one of the interactable events)
For the save system, I used a basic method for time efficiency. Since the whole game world is built in the same level and we don't have to worry about the save and load of data between level transitions, I used a game instance to store all the player stats as variables in that game instance right before the time travel and let player stats be reloaded from the game instance after the time travel.
(Blueprints for storing player stats before time travel)
(Blueprints for reloading player stats after time travel)
Level Design
I made the sewer area and gave level design direction for other areas of the world. Since I also designed the questline and storyline, I designed how players should navigate and explore the world, what the purpose of each area is, what items players would obtain, and what NPCs they would meet at each area, etc. When my designer teammates finished making the surface world, I put in the actual content to flesh out the gameplay, including NPCs, quests/events, loots, locks & doors, etc.
(Sewer level walkthrough)
Overall Level Progression Flowchart
1
Players spawn in a dark alley. Linear path forward. Encounter the thug event (learn the attribute system).
Find the door password and leave the alley.
3
Players follow NPC hints and enter the sewer, encounter important NPC and unlock the first safe room in the game.
5
2
Players enter the town square, a large explorable space that serves as the central hub connecting all the main areas. Players can see the entrance to each area, but don't have the item/stats required yet.
4
Players grow their attributes, obtain the citizen card from the bar quest and unlock the residential area.
Players grow their attributes, obtain the citizen card from the bar quest and unlock the residential area.
Quest & Narrative Design
I created the main storyline & questline early on and aligned the vision with the team from the start.
Then I constantly iterated upon it to make it consistent with the intended gameplay experience and fit the world setting.
(Initial storyline & questline draft)
(Some of the NPCs in the game)
I designed and implemented all the NPCs (by using a modular character pack from Fab) and wrote all their dialogues (around 15 NPCs and over 200 lines of dialogue). I designed all the consumables & important mission items that players could obtain from either exploring or from certain NPCs, how players could interact with each NPC, and all the main/side quests and interactable events.
(Some of the NPC dialogues, items, interactable events)
UI Design
I made most of the gameplay-related UI, such as player mainhud, tutorial prompt, quest prompt, general notification prompt, inventory interface, etc. Visual clarity and well communication of information is my priority when making these UI.
(Player hud widget)
(Blueprint for the Vitality bar)
Challenges, iterations and learnings
The main challenge I met during the development of this project was the inactivity, constant absence, and lack of communication of most programmers and one technical designer in the team, which severely hindered the development progress of the core gameplay system of the game, especially the inventory system and dialogue system, and forced me as the product owner to do more technical work than I ususally do to ensure the timely delivery of the game.
We tried to have talks with the inactive teammates about devotion, communication and following deadlines to fix the problem, but it didn't make much difference. The people working on the inventory and dialogue system made slow progress and didn't inform the others of the situation until the deadline.
When it was near the end of the second week, I realised that I couldn't just wait for them to deliver what we needed. So I decided to downscale the systems by a large margin and developed as many of the missing systems as I could myself. The initial plan for the dialogue system is to embed the quest/event system into the dialogue system to make it smooth and seamless, but since the programmer working on the dialogue system was struggling to get the basics done, I decided to develop the quest/event system myself as a separate system from the dialogue system and let the dialogue system programmer focus on polishing that system along. I also picked up what the inventory programmer had and used Blueprint to finish the rest of the functions. Due to the lack of time, I chose the simplest approach with the least workload to implement all the core mechanics we needed.
What I learnt during this project was that when I noticed the development progress of a certain system/feature was significantly slower than the plan, I should consider the solutions or backup plan much earlier instead of waiting till the last moment. I experienced severe anxiety during the second week when I saw that time was running and none of the core mechanics were in place. But when I decided to streamline the missing mechanics, make them as simple as possible and develop them myself, I felt much more relieved, and my rapid prototyping and visual scripting skills were significantly enhanced through this project.