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VICTORIA CHASTAN
UI DESIGNER, ARTIST
About
Platform
Project Details
Role Summary
Built from scratch using DirectX, Voxel Smash is a 3D hack-n-slash game in a voxel-based world. This was a two-semester-long game project into two parts: the first semester was spent in an overseas immersion programme in DigiPen, Redmond, USA and the second spent in DigiPen, Singapore.
PC
Team Size
Duration
8
September 2012 – April 2013
Lead Artist
UI Designer
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Created and managed 3D environment assets.
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Created concept and character arts.
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Conceptualized art direction and colour scheme.
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Worked closely with the team on problem-solving and overcoming issues to improve the gameplay direction.
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Designed UI assets such as menus, buttons, title and gameplay assets.
Development
At the start of the alpha stage, we originally wanted to make a side-scrolling beat-em-up game using a voxel editor. Programmers created the game engine and level editor from scratch while designers discussed on the core mechanics and the concept world. With the aim being a beat-em-up game, we strived for a fantasy theme with knights and monsters like kobolds and boars.
Once the level editor was completed, we proceeded to creating all of the assets - items, characters, enemies, world assets and even basic animations. Below are some example of how the editor was used and how the assets were made.
Concept
Concept
Model in Editor
Model in Editor
Below is the alpha version of our game. However, with how much time restraint we had, we decided to make the world into an arena-based action game. Most of what we created was luckily not scrapped other than the world revamped to fit the new direction.
We decided to push further on game mechanics and gameplay like random spawning and enemy difficulty progression. One core aim we wanted for Voxel Smash is an enemy's death - the voxels breaking down without the game losing its performance - for dramatic effect. There were a few minor difficulties regarding this that for each round, we could not include a large number of enemies in the same screen.
During the beta stage of Voxel Smash, we wanted to keep to the voxel look and feel to our GUI design but with the difficulty of the game's performance, we opted to do two choices: design 2D assets in a similar style and convert already-made 3D assets into pngs/jpegs for the game.
For the final stage and homestretch of our two-semester project, we looked over for bugs, improved gameplay and revamped art assets. We attempted to improve the game's performance and playability since we were using a risk in computer-based modelling. Thankfully, in the end, Voxel Smash was completed on April, 2013.
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