Specifications

My Contributions

10 week school project (part time).
Team size: 11 (2 Level Designers, 5 Programmers, 4 Artists).
Created with in-House tools.
Features 7 exciting action packed levels.
Voted for "Best Graphics - Space Shooter" 2014 at The Game Assembly.

Level Design
Mission Design
Sound Effects using Wwise & Audacity
Balancing

Ordain - Call for Crusade is a space shooter that was developed by Galactic Eagle during a 10 week period at The Game Assembly by 11 ambitious students.

Our goal with this project was to create a fun shooting experience inspired by the games "Everspace" and "Star Wars: Tie Fighter" within a short time period.

For the Level Designers, our requirement was to design interesting space levels and to learn how to lead the player through a complex 3D explorable environment as well as provide fun missions for the player to complete.

Summary

The Planning Stage

We all planned out how the game would look and play early on but the true challenge was nailing all our goals in such short time especially since we had a bunch of other projects on the side. In the level design department we had to figure out the best way to lead the player through the given environment which proved to be a challenge at first but by our usage of uniquely shaped props and focal points we had nailed our goal. The only problem we faced later on was the question, what if the player looses control of his ship for a moment and looses sight of all the "level leading signs"? We dove into our level designs multiple times to make sure we could prevent all possible means of becoming lost in a level.

Gameplay & Story

In Ordain you play as Alaine who becomes infatuated with a special space crystal called "Elyium" and stops everyone who would dare to harvest such a crystal. So in a sense you play as an antagonist trying to stop a company called Solis who only want to use the crystals power as an environental friendly substitute to fossil fuels which are currently ruining Earth.

In space you control your spacecraft in a 3D space and avoid asteroids and other hazardous objects along the way. The player is given machine guns and rocket launchers as weapons to use against enemy ships. The player's spacecraft is also given a speed module which allows the player to speed boost away or into conflicts if he/she wishes to do so.

Windows start to break when at low health.

A Good Workflow

Since I wasn't working alone on this project my main goal was to achieve a good means of communication with the group and especially with the other level designer I worked together with. We pitched ideas to each other and eventually found a common ground on which we could design our game off of.

I was also given the task of working with sounds and implementing the game music given to us by Simon Petersson who is an excellent music designer I might add.

In the end, we all learned a little more about what it was like to work with each other and I am proud of what we achieved with our teamwork as a group.

Ending Results

After all the designing, coding and crunching we delivered our game before the deadline. I feel it was our dedication and hard work that pulled us through the hardships and conflicts we met along the way.

We had also learned a lot more about each other since some of us didn't work with each other beforehand and it was a lot of fun.

I felt like I personally had learned a lot more about space environments and how to deliver an easy understandable environment in space shooter games. I believe that the experience obtained will help me a lot in future projects.