JUANITO EL NAHUALITO

Technical Design Process

DESIGN PILLARS

Our team wanted to create a story-driven game centered around Mesoamerican culture and values.

We defined three design goals:

  1. The game must respect and not misrepresent Nahuales and Mesoamerican culture.
  2. Teach the player about Nahuales and Mesoamerican culture through a fictional narrative.
  3. Gameplay systems and interactions must imply a positive connection between nature and humans.

ITERATIVE PROCESS

  1. Paper Prototype:
    I assisted developing a paper prototype to test the puzzle aspect of the game. We wanted to see how interested the players were about our puzzles and mechanics with a low fidelity prototype.
  2. First Digital Prototype:
    We began testing the narrative with the game and if the puzzle more or less engaging once it had a narrative built around it.
  3. Second Digital Prototype:
    We tested a 3D world, camera position, game feel, character locomotion, and puzzles with animal interactions.
  4. Third Digital Prototype:
    We expanded the 3D world, defined art style, allowed full control of camera, solidified character and animal locomotion, expanding puzzle systems, and expanded narrative.
  5. Final Game:
    We expanded narrative further to include fully voiced lines, audio systems were implemented, feedback loops were refined, puzzles were tied together narratively, in-game cinematics and pre-renderd cinematics were used to assist story-telling.
Paper Prototype
First Level Digital Prototype
Second Level Digital Prototype
Third Digital Prototype
Final Game (2nd Level)

GAME LOOPS AND FLOW

Gameplay Loops:
  • 1-5 Seconds: The player explores the area by walking and running.
  • 10-20 Seconds: The player must use game knowledge and stories to figure which way to go.
  • 1-5 Minutes: The player will find obstacles and must work with nature to overcome obstacles.
  • 10-15 Minutes: The player is faced with a new environment and puzzle to navigate and will remember stories that the game told the player to continue the game.

DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING SYSTEMS

Audio Systems:

I designed and implemented music and sound systems to work with Unity's built-in audio engine

  • Adaptive Music: This allowed us to change the music and layers in real-time based on the state of the game.
  • Natural Ambient Soundscapes: This system allowed us to emulate a natural soundscape in a predefined area using several audio sources that would change position in real-time. This was used to emulate birds, frogs, and people in a pre-defined area.
  • Adaptive Terrain Footsteps: This system allowed us to to change footsteps in real-time using a raycast shot from the foot downwards that would collect information on the terrain's texture. That information would then be used to select which collection of footstep sounds would play.
Puzzle System:

I assisted in the design and implementation of puzzles and their components.

  • Animal Interactions: I assisted in the design and implementation of animal interactions and working with animals to solve puzzles via Cinemachine and Timeline.
  • Spirit World Toggle: I assisted in designing mechanic to switch between a spirit form of the main character and their physical form. During this transformation, the player is able to interact with animals and see parts of the world as how it used to be. These visions of the past help the player solve puzzles.
  • Push/Pull: I assisted in designing a push/pull mechanic that allowed the player to interact with objects from any direction.
  • Rotation: I assisted in designing a rotation system using raycasts to detect when they were aligned with with the object of importance.

SOLIDIFYING ART PIPELINE

When our team was beginning to define the game's art style we refrenced our design pillars to explore our options and found two main inspirations:
Both had strong connections to mesoamerica and most of our team had grown up with these figures therefore we had a lot of reference material to work with.

Process:
  1. We created a 3D art mood board that was focused on defining the general shape of models
  2. We created a Texturing mood board focused on the painted design patterns on alebrijes.
  3. We created low-poly models to accentuate the rigidness of faces similar to carved figures.
  4. We decided to paint textures directly on to models instead of UV unwraping to reflect the painting process by alebrije makers.
3D Art Mood Board
Texturing Reference
Fox Model Walk Cycle Test
Rigging of Main Character
Painted Textures on Models

Roadblocks:
  • Strictly using low poly models without extra vertices around joints and adequate weight painting resulted in jarring artifacts in animations as seen on Fox Walking Animation (The fourth image from the left)
  • The art team was exporting models with no set standard.
  • After sculpting there was no process for retopologizing models to get them ready to implement in engine.
  • Painting textures created a bottleneck in our art pipeline and resulted in low turn around time for assets.
  • Weight Painting was only being done by one person.
  • Rigging was only being done by one person.
Addressing Roadblocks:
  • I worked with the art team and assisted in creating models with extra vertex loops around the joints where we would require extra mobility when animating.
  • I worked with our lead environmental artist to set up a standard startup file for the modeling programs that had every required setting as the default and a rectangular prism as a refrence for the player character's scale.
  • I assisted in retopologizing of assets until we had some of our artists with shorter tasks begin to retopologize.
  • I assisted in rigging and weight painting to support tech artists.

Project List