Prototype reached!

Hello everyone! The title says it all. I’m really excited to announce that last weekend we built our prototype package. I want to talk about it all day and this seems like a good place to do it. So let’s jump in!

What is our prototype?

Each team and company define a wide range of different results as a prototype. For Vessel, we are considering major versions as a playable version of the golden path with the features reaching an agreed average quality. That is a weird way to say that each time the game is playable and all the features are up to the same quality bar we have a major version. 

Prototype is our first major version, and features combat, interactables, puzzles, and a completable golden path. Since this is the first version of the game, our quality bar is essentially making the feature exist and give us some clarity and answers to the questions we have around it. 

Which were the questions?

Essentially we had to figure out camera position, the size of the map, the amount of elements that we need to achieve a 30 minute gameplay, and how the level will look from a design perspective. Essentially, we wanted to understand the basics of the game.

Information office of Gemino Harbor

Building the answers

Once we reached a camera placement that appeals to our needs, we started defining the level. While we will explore the map construction more in depth in future posts, the summary is that we defined the playable areas of Gemino to understand space distribution. Then we drafted a very basic map of the area that we are focusing on for our demo: The Harbor. 

Once this first draft looked interesting enough, we jumped into the editor to block out the levels. This process consists in drafting the space using simple volumes to understand the dimension of the things in the game. In here we don’t really care about if an obstacle is a container, a crate, or a fallen wall; we only want to know that in a certain place there will be an obstacle. We started using a humanoid mesh that is a placeholder for Lucas and built a space that makes sense around it. 

Employee parking of Gemino Harbor

Again, this first pass is to understand the basics and it can be modified depending on the desired feel and impressions. During this step we realized the map was too little to hold a 30 minutes gameplay of a representative quality so we expanded it and added few areas. 

Passage to Gemino warehouse

Once the map was blocked out we built and added the initially planned key events and puzzles. Building the golden path, this is the path that we expect an average player to do to complete the game. At the moment, completing this path (without the puzzles fully implemented, and with an unrepresentative combat) takes around 10 minutes to complete. It might seem too little, but we have confirmed that we can make this path last longer in the current space. 

Sewers of the city

What’s next?

From a code and design perspective, next weeks will be crucial to achieve a satisfactory combat that is representative of what we want in the final game. From a narrative design point of view, now that we have defined the space we can start defining the events of the demo and assess the amount of narrative that we want to undisclose in this area. From an art perspective, we want to achieve a whiteboxing of the level, which is similar to the blocking but with more defined and detailed meshes. Finally, from a production point of view, we are aiming to submit Vessel to Epic Mega Grants by the end of this month so we are trying to make a big push in the next 2 weeks.

Ship hanging in the air in the demolition area

That’s all for this week! We will publish a video with our Mega grants submission later this month, and probably hold an AMA session on the Discord server, so join us to not miss it!

Since I’m planning my next posts to dig in the different areas of the prototype, let me know what you want to know in the comments and I'll assess it!