Itch.io: https://matchagatcha.itch.io/until-dawn-or-death
Until Death or Dawn is a 3D tower defense game made in the span of 2.5 months. Players are able to hop into the hero tower, and enter a first person shooter mode
Pre-Development
For this video game project, the only requirements from our professor were to make a game in 3D space. My team of 4 really wanted to work with a genre we didn’t really have experience developing, which is how we got to tower defense.
However upon feedback from our professor, we needed an element that incorporated 3D space, as the tower defense idea would simply be a 2D game with 3D graphics. I suggested the idea to take the POV view of a tower to temporarily turn the game into a shooter, which is present as a main mechanic in our final implementation
Additionally, my team and I really wanted to have a horror-based aesthetic, with a dark struggle in the night being the core idea of the project, which is also how I came up with the working title, Until Death or Dawn, that eventually ended as the final name.
Development
During the development process, I mainly focused on creating 3D models in Blender from scratch. This process involved sculpting the base models, making sure to follow good topography practices, slicing and UV mapping, and finally painting custom materials in Adobe 3D Substance Painter.
Afterwards I had to export it into Unity properly with correct settings for the coordinate system, and assigning normal maps and such. Additionally to the creation of 3D assets, I also was responsible to animating them within Blender to bring them to life. Below is a full comprehensive list of what models I helped developed.
- UV Mapping / 3-D Painting
- Zombie
- Skeleton
- Whole Process
- Lich Miniboss
- Arrow Tower + Projectiles
- Flame Tower
- Oil Tower + Projectiles
- Farm Tower
- Hero Tower + Projectiles
- Heart (Unused)
- Coin (Unused)
Below I’ve used the Lich and Archer tower to show off some UV-mapping, painting, and animating
Continuing the line of design work, I also worked to outline, color, and finalize our game’s poster in order to present it at our school’s game showcase. During which I helped present it to participants and collected feedback from their playthroughs.
Post Development Reflection
My team and I was quite satisfied with how the final implementation came out to be. However, there were more features that we had planned should time permit, embellishments that were nice to have but not prioritized as they were not crucial to the base game. These following features were cut due to the time constraint of the project.
Some ideas that I pitched:
Dark Night:
The game field (excluding the castle) was going to be pitch black to mimic the middle of the night. Players would have to buy torches and other lights to expand their vision. Towers would not be able to spot enemies not within the light’s reach.
Air Field:
As the difficulty scales, more enemy types would appear, with some flying towards the castle. This would have its own path, and would take the form of bats, gargoyles and such.
Tower Synergies:
One of the key towers in the game is the oil tower, while we made it a simple “lock on and shoot tower”, initially we had more complex behaviors planned. The oil would splatter and slow enemies while the fire tower would ignite them, dealing extra damage.
During this project, I took more of an artistic role, which I was not quite used to due to my background as more of a programmer. However, I really enjoyed this process, and it helped me gain a deeper understanding behind how to implement home-made assets and how that pipeline works. It also showed me how difficult creating good designs can be, and gave me skills to work on in future projects.
