Dischord
DigiPen Institute of Technology • May 2014 - Feb. 2015
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Dischord is a 3D action-adventure game idea where music plays a mysterious role in a collapsed civilization’s narrative.
For Dischord I personally:
Summary
Dischord takes place in a collapsed robotic civilization and charges its player with piecing together the civilization’s lost narrative. However, rather than using traditional storytelling technique, the game will utilize interplay between harmony and discord to lead its players forward –musical beacons that play distinct motifs will guide players through the world of mechanical noise, or melodic layers will fade in and out as players head to and from surrounding natural wilderness. The game also plans to feature a deep combat and mobility system, letting players defend themselves from robotic aggression using a deadly energy spear, or get out of danger with dashes and dives. The player is tested on their ability to use these tools in increasing complexity, culminating with the final challenge and narrative reveal.
For Dischord I personally:
- Collaborated with our lead artist and lead sound designer to initially concept out the game idea.
- Implemented the windowing and input API.
- Designed and implemented our player controller, creating a test arena to play and iterate on mechanics.
- Designed and implemented a camera implementation in collaboration with another programmer.
- Wrote our GDD pertaining to high concept, summary, game flow, mechanics, enemies, and levels.
- Tested all proprietary tools, submitting countless bug reports, and prioritizing feature requests to better enable other designers and content creators to effectively use our workflow.
Summary
Dischord takes place in a collapsed robotic civilization and charges its player with piecing together the civilization’s lost narrative. However, rather than using traditional storytelling technique, the game will utilize interplay between harmony and discord to lead its players forward –musical beacons that play distinct motifs will guide players through the world of mechanical noise, or melodic layers will fade in and out as players head to and from surrounding natural wilderness. The game also plans to feature a deep combat and mobility system, letting players defend themselves from robotic aggression using a deadly energy spear, or get out of danger with dashes and dives. The player is tested on their ability to use these tools in increasing complexity, culminating with the final challenge and narrative reveal.
Game Flow
Dischord’s game experience will work by using juxtaposed motifs and synchronized audio-visual cues rather than narration to advance players through its world. Players enter the game with virtually no introductory information regarding the backstory, control, or objectives. In order to compensate and engage its players, Dischord will start with an immersive opening scene: a humanoid robot denizen lies in stasis amongst many identical denizens held in massive, factory-like machinery. As the machinery sputters to life in a scripted sequence, audio and visuals will present themselves in a cohesive fashion: the duration of sounds will coincide with the duration of lights, changes of pitch will occur with changes in color, and increases in volume will occur with increases in brightness. This media cohesion will create a point of interest as one of the robot denizens is brought out of stasis and presented for players to control. Dischord will then shift the synced audio-visuals from the machinery to the now player-controlled denizen to help introduce players to the first mechanic –walking with the control stick. Layering the mechanics into the media cohesion players are now able to navigate the world. Throughout Dischord the player will be progressively taught additional mechanics via media cohesion, audio-visual media and techniques blending together with the additional mechanics. These mechanics include dashing; diving; dash-diving; running; charging, firing and recalling. Additionally the game will include combating various enemies; losing and restoring health; spawning at factories; and activating musical beacons. After teaching the mechanics needed for the journey, a Dischord play through will take players roughly an hour to complete with a checkpoint system appearing approximately every ten minutes of playtime.
Dischord was in developed in C++ from scratch with minimal use of third party libraries.
If you want to learn more about the game check out the website or feel free to shoot me an email below!
Dischord’s game experience will work by using juxtaposed motifs and synchronized audio-visual cues rather than narration to advance players through its world. Players enter the game with virtually no introductory information regarding the backstory, control, or objectives. In order to compensate and engage its players, Dischord will start with an immersive opening scene: a humanoid robot denizen lies in stasis amongst many identical denizens held in massive, factory-like machinery. As the machinery sputters to life in a scripted sequence, audio and visuals will present themselves in a cohesive fashion: the duration of sounds will coincide with the duration of lights, changes of pitch will occur with changes in color, and increases in volume will occur with increases in brightness. This media cohesion will create a point of interest as one of the robot denizens is brought out of stasis and presented for players to control. Dischord will then shift the synced audio-visuals from the machinery to the now player-controlled denizen to help introduce players to the first mechanic –walking with the control stick. Layering the mechanics into the media cohesion players are now able to navigate the world. Throughout Dischord the player will be progressively taught additional mechanics via media cohesion, audio-visual media and techniques blending together with the additional mechanics. These mechanics include dashing; diving; dash-diving; running; charging, firing and recalling. Additionally the game will include combating various enemies; losing and restoring health; spawning at factories; and activating musical beacons. After teaching the mechanics needed for the journey, a Dischord play through will take players roughly an hour to complete with a checkpoint system appearing approximately every ten minutes of playtime.
Dischord was in developed in C++ from scratch with minimal use of third party libraries.
If you want to learn more about the game check out the website or feel free to shoot me an email below!