Masterclass in Staying Single
Masterclass in Staying Single, or MiSS for short, is a short anti-dating dating simulator. It was created for the Thoughtful Jam on itch.io from April 12th 2024 - May 5th 2024, hosted by Thoughtful Gamers. The game was developed by my team, 2b2d, a group that I am a founding member of. The development of this project is ongoing, as we continue to add new characters and gameplay mechanics.
My primary responsibilities for this project were UI/UX programming and design, and project manager. Included in UX design for this project was sound design.
Development Process
MiSS, like all other projects, began as a simple game design document created in Excel. Our team asks the same questions for each game we develop:
I begin my UI design by sketching ideas on paper, and frequently on Post-Its. This phase is where I take the ideas I'm envisioning and transfer them on paper. I usually draw many sketches and present them to my teammates during meetings. We then work together to pick a UI design that will work best for the game's overall design.
From this Post-It design, our team ended up keeping the basic idea and layout, but we removed certain features like the "Discomfort meter" to better focus on the player experience. Instead, we used character animation and dialogue clues to inform the player how their date is feeling.
After physical sketches, I move the sketches into a sketching software, my preference is Leonardo. These sketches are usually to get a basic idea of the layout of the UI, these sketches usually are accurate to the prototype. As the development process continues, changes are made that result in the final UI design not exactly mirroring this phase of sketching.
After sketching, I begin acquiring assets and if necessary, preparing them to be imported into Unreal Engine. In MiSS due to the time limit, most assets were acquired from resources like UE Marketplace or Itch.io. However some were designed by myself using Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Additionally, I was responsible for the animation in the introduction and outro scenes, which I used Adobe After Effects to accomplish.
Below is a preview of what the final design for the UI looked like at the time of submission for the game jam:
In this image I was responsible for the level layout and placement of actors. The level is built in a 3D environment and is a series of 2D paper sprites layered in front of a fixed camera (the player's perspective). In addition, I designed the dialogue box and the continue button, as well as the timer on the clock and its functionality. The dialogue box is a simple User Widget with a text box inside. The timer is an actor placed into the scene with a text render attached to it. The drawing of the clock is not built into the background so that the timer can be moved around the level as needed.
In the opening sequence, I designed and programmed the main menu functionality, the "Enter name" screen, and the sequencing for the opening scenes. While our artist drew the images, I was tasked with implementing and animating them to be more engaging, instead of just showing static images. I did the animtions in Adobe After Effects, and combined them with animations using blueprints in Unreal Engine 5. To display the scenes, I used a media player placed within the level, away from the player character's camera. I then attached a cinematic camera to the media player, set up a playlist and changed the player character's camera.
