bachelor final thesis
Blast was created in a team with Thomas Frey as our bacheolor final thesis from January to May
2008 at the University of Arts Zurich. It was created in 20 weeks with the GIANTS-engine. We have
been coding most of the time and had only about 3 weeks for the graphics. But we've set up
a consistent framework which allows us to create more content without too much trouble.
We really want to build the remaining 3 levels in our spare time to complete this game.
Genre
With Blast we mixed two genres: First-Person-Shooter and Shoot 'em up
and the result is an utterly new Sub-Genre of the Shoot 'em up called "First-Person-Shoot-Em-Up".
There are some shoot 'em ups using 3D elements for visual purposes like REZ, but there is not the
possibility of moving freely in the 3D space, which is a key gameplay element of Blast.
Story
A soundtrack has been destroyed and all its pieces were scattered and have been captured by
creatures. By destroying these creatures the trapped sound pieces are liberated. But you have
to find the core of the soundtrack in order to completely restore the whole soundtrack.
Sound
As you can imagine, the sound is an important element of Blast. Each enemy species has captured
only a little piece of the soundtrack. For instance the centipede enemy has captured the
high-snar-rhythm, which will be added to the sound scape of the game, if you destroy the centipede.
But its sound will disappear after a while. This concept allows the player to interactively control the
music of the game. In fact the whole game could be seen as a sequencer, where the player activates
the diffrent tracks.
Gameplay
Basically, you fly through a cave and you are shooting at the enemies, while avoiding to be hit by
their shots. A cool feature we added is that the player can slow down the time, while he can move
and shoot at normal speed. This gameplay element is used to escape from difficult situations.
Point-System
As soon as an enemy is destroyed, a chain counter starts. If the player can kill another enemy
within a certain time, the chain counter will be increased by one. This is continued until you can't kill
another enemy within the remaining "chaintime". Then all the points will be multiplied with the chain counter.
This gameplay element is important, because we want to reward the player for moving
fast forward and killing lots of enemies in a short time, which causes the player to move fast forward.
The points can then be used in a shop to buy power-ups like more lives, a stronger shot,
faster movement, or a faster auto-fire.
Technics
Engine: Giants-Engine
Editor: Giants-Editor
Scripting:LUA and external XML-Files
3d modelling: 3ds Max
Texturing: Photoshop
Time: 20 weeks
Screenshots
