HIGHWAY CODE | Junior Mafuta

ROLE

Design Lead

TEAM SIZE

PROJECT LINK

itch.io

LENGTH OF DEVELOPMENT

11th March 2024 - 17th May 2024

GENRE

Driving

PLATFORM

Unreal Engine 5

TRAILER

WALKTHROUGH

SOFTWARE

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Highway Code was my first experience working initially as a senior member and eventually as the lead of a design team which meant I had to continuously communicate with the rest of the design team, the project lead and even the tech team. My main responsibility was to design some of the gameplay elements and mechanics of the game such as the game end conditions, the three C's, the world manager & states and the power-ups.

KEY CONTRIBUTIONS

Design Considerations

I formatted research for this into images so that the design team would have good starting points looking into important elements of the game.

Three Cs Diagrams

I created diagrams for how I felt the camera, character (vehicle) and controls should be handled for our game and then pass that on to the tech team.

World Manager and State Diagrams

I also made diagrams for how the world manager would operate and the different world states that it would select.

Power-Ups Implementation

I implemented a decent amount of the power-ups the design team came up with into the project. This GIF shows the smoke screen power up.

Shader

I volunteered to make the shader and the aims were firstly to add an outline to the objects to make them pop and secondly to enhance the game's 1930s art style.

Controller Inputs for Menus

I implemented a UI system that could detect both controller and keyboard & mouse inputs (controller inputs are bugged).

POST-MORTEM

Amongst the design team, I think we all got along well for the most part; there wasn't too many instances of anyone having nothing to do and when they did speak up, it was quickly sorted out. Also, most of our team were consistently present both in person and online, especially in the latter stages of the project as we started to push towards how polished our game could be from a design perspective. There were breakdowns in communication and conflicts, with one of them resulting in the role of design lead being transferred to me but for the most part, I'd say there was a great chemistry amongst us.

Amongst the entire team, there wasn't that same consistency in always turning up but we did well enough for it to not hamper the outcome of the project and there were standout members from each discipline that were able to keep the ball rolling when we would lose contact with other members. I personally ended up modelling the UFO, Bomb, Boot and Hook assets on Blender. Thanks to the project lead, we were all able to remain on the same page for what we wanted our project to be despite its constant changes.

A difficult process for this project would be balancing this module with another one as it caused communication breakdowns; our team had set up a server on Discord to make it easier to get in contact with people and it mostly paid off. Another would be becoming design lead during the project; by the time I received this role, the project was already in full flow and having already been a senior member, I didn't really need to do much extra but it was definitely challenging having a new load of responsibility placed upon you midway through.

Our team definitely had a lot more members that were consistently on top of their stuff than you find with most collab groups and all of the other discipline leads did a pretty good job managing their teams which I think reflects on the quality of our game. Whilst I do believe I improved on being a more present member of the team and was able to consistently turn up, I still probably could have communicated a bit better - especially outside the design/tech disciplines and with the other leads. I was inconsistent with staying on top of assigning Jira tasks to the rest of the design team and whilst the maintenance was the root of this, there was still probably enough time to get back on top of it once it came back. However, I could argue that I definitely kept in consistent contact with the team throughout the project's duration through other means such as Discord, Teams or in person when not on Jira. Nevertheless, I'll look to and will be better with Jira next time.