Vault Of Heaven Gdd

Design Document for:

Vault of Heaven The search for heavens vault begins in the sky

All work Copyright ©2009 by Breakneck Interactive Written by Tyler Flesher, Michael Scala, Andrew Ferguson, and Dave Snell

Version 1.0

All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Table of Contents Intro Story Creative Outsourcing

Name of Game Design History Overview

Game Overview Goals Theme Atmosphere Sound Marketability Common Questions What is the game? Where does the game take place? Who do I control? What is the main focus? What separates this game from others?

Features General Features Game play

Camera View Overview Third Person Shooter

Concept and Art Work Characters Weapons 3D Models

Level Design

Introduction All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Vault of Heaven is First Person Shooter for the PC and Xbox 360 that is built using the Unreal Engine 3. Players get thrown into the role of an airborne steam punk era pirate that is caught in the middle of an all out war. As the war continues on, the dreaded and feared colonial army raises from the dead and attempts to retrieve the Vault of Heaven.

Story Level 1 Colonial Town Game is started up and the player is quickly introduced to the main character. The main characteris on the pirate airship tending to his captains orders and waiting to arrive at the colonials’ city to raid it. A peaceful couple of seconds are quickly interrupted when all of a sudden the airship is attacked from behind and the bright sunny sky is interrupted with a dark cloud that is created out of enemy pirate ships. (At this point the player now realizes that a fight is going to occur). The captain now orders the crew members to get to the colonial city very quickly. With the combination of guns a blazin, cannons firing and all hell braking loose, mixed in with your fellow crew members and yourself trying to get to the location as quickly as possible makes for one hell of an opening.( This could be done using storyboards or a cinematic, who knows) As with any new game the opening area will be a tutorial introducing the player to the shooting mechanics and who exactly the enemy is. The airship now crash lands at a base at the edge of the colonial city. ( The player is now introduced to the game play and is now in control of the main character.) As the main character comes off the airship your orders to accomplish the objective are reiterated and you are told that pickup will be made once the objective is retrieved. Your mission now begins as the player is joined by fellow crew members. Scripted events such as, explosions, enemy gunfire, possibly destructible environments, etc. occur as colonial troops stand in your way to be eliminated. One be one your fellow crew members are taken down and the player is left alone in the colonial city. As the player makes his way through the city, enemy gunfire continues to be an obstacle for the player to get past. After a number of minutes and countless colonials dead, the player finds themselves at a dead end. ( The player is given an indicator that the colonials are coming from behind and the player must defend themselves for a set time. Once that time has past, an explosion occurs and the player can now make there way through to the final part of the level.) The player makes their way through the rubble and arrives on the street where his objective can be found. Before getting to the objective the player is confronted by a ominous character (The colonials captain). A cut scene ensues. Quickly after the cut scene (The player is once again in control of the main character) the player and the colonial captain are in a battle for survival. The player will ultimately win, and after doing so the objective will be retrieved. The player now has on screen indication as to where to go for drop off. After backtracking through the previous battle, the body of the colonial captain is nowhere to All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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be found. (The game goes into cut scene and out of the smoke filled atmosphere a silhouette of a person very similar to the colonial captain appears and disappears, leaving the player and the main character to question). Level 2 Pirate Headquarters After our protagonist his fellow shipmates retreat from an unsuccessful raid, they are under the impression that they are safe at their floating pirate town. Unfortunately, there is a fleet of colonial ships heading towards your base, which followed your hero’s airship during the retreat. As your hero’s fellow shipmates go into a panic, he decides to take action in fortifying your position. This is the first objective of this level, and this done by standing behind a cannon turret, and fighting off waves of Colonial ships for a brief time. Again, the colonial fleet is too much to handle and like all pirates, your hero is forced to fall back into your town. As the protagonist evades on coming cannon fire from the fleet some colonial foot soldiers have decided to stand in his way and he must through them. When finally arriving at the docks to board his escape airship, he makes one more call to his fellow crew that they are falling back. During this time, one the pirate’s pet Kraken releases itself from its cage and your hero is forced to do battle with it. After defeating the Kraken, he boards the ship and flees the town. Level 3 Aerial Battle As you wake up from your black out, you realize that the airship you were on, has collided with one of the colonial ships and is still floating in mid-air. As you look around you see that the mangled ships are intertwined so much, that there is no way to cross over to the next ship. When you realize this, the level then begins and you have control of your character. Your character will start at the by the helm (the the ship's steering wheel) of the airship, where most of the wreckage and entanglement occurred. As you make your way down the steps from the helm, you notice that the crash did much more damage then anticipated. You see fallen and wounded shipmates pleading fortheir lives, broken down masses and sails that are now obstacles in your way and making it more difficult for you to reach the bow of the ship. As you make your way through the wreckage atop the ships main deck, a number of of colonial soldiers board your airship to cut down any survivors. The Colonial Soldiers didn't anticipate any resistance at all, but serve your own brand of sky pirate mayhem. When you finally reach the bow of the ship, you notice your captain has been severely wounded. With your captain's last dying breath, he asks you avenge his death and "hoist the colors" on the colonial ship that smashed into yours to establish victory. Of course, there lies a problem because there is no way to get across to the other ship because of all the wreckage. That’s when you have to get crazy, "pirate crazy" that is. You decide that walking through wreckage is not an option to get to the colonial ship, so you decide to blast yourself out of one the giant cannons that is conveniently located upon your airship. The cannon shoots’ you through the masses and clear across the sky and you land quite hard to the enemy's main deck. When you finally find your way back to your feet, you notice that the colonial airship is just as bad in shape as your ship was. You see All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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several colonial decks scurrying to put out fires and salvage the ship as others lay wounded and beg for their lives. This of course does not stray from the task at hand and motivates you to show no mercy. You start cutting down anyone who stands in your while making your way through the debris as you creep closer to the main sail. When you reach the main sail, thing sonly get harder as more colonial soldiers try to send you to the depths of Davey Jones' locker. If that wasn't enough adventure for you, as you climb the sails to place the pirate flag atop the colonial ship, cannonballs and shrapnel hurl themselves at you. When you finally reach the top of the colonial sail, you raise the pirate flag signaling victory, but it is far from over. You notice down below the colonial officer that you had killed at back at the town raid. You were sure that you killed him, but somehow still alive. The colonial officer shouts from the bottom of the main deck all the to you atop of the sails, "You have no idea what kind of powers your meddling with, boy. Your fate will soon unravel itself, and you will be cursed to death."This event signals the end of the level.

Creative Outsourcing Throughout this project we had to keep in mind that we were not creating a full game, we were essentially creating a demo to present to a client to present the potential for a possible full game. We had to deliver a clever, creative story with as much information and story as possible to get our point across. With creative outsourcing, we were able to get help and input from outside our core group of members that ultimately made our product the best it could be with the given time and resources available.

Name of Game All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Vault of Heaven was chosen to be the name of our game for multiple reasons. First it has a powerful message that delivers a quick message to the players. This will hopefully get them interested from go, and make them want to play the rest of the game. Through the demo, the actual “Vault of Heaven” is never actually seen or mentioned until the very end of the demo, this again plays into wanting the player to play the rest of the game to see what is so important and exciting about this item.

Design History All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Overview To bring in potential buyers and attract the attention of gamers, we wanted to create a game that was both interesting to look at and play. The overall look and feel of the game is relatively realistic but with a sense of something is different here. That is what we as a team wanted to convey through textures and meshes. Although the game is linear, we made it possible for the player to go off into different paths and possible side missions.

These objectives were the main priorities when designing the story and game play for Vault of Heaven.

Game Overview Goals All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Theme The overall theme for this project was minimal yet epic. What we mean is, the project took 6 months to create and through those 6 months, 2 months were used to concept, 3 months were used to design, and a month was designated for play testing and release. Minimal was the amount of meshes, effects and population of the overall experience. This decision was made to make it possible for an ultimate release in time for the date given to us week 1 of the project. Epic is used to describe the feel of the game world. We wanted the game to feel as if there could be a massive story that could be told and explored for many iterations.

Atmosphere As far as the atmosphere is concerned, this game takes place in a war. So to represent a war like atmosphere there were a lot of particle effects and atmospheric effects present in the game. This not only helped from a visual perspective, it helped from a game play perspective as well.

Sound The sounds present in the game were very chaotic and expressed the visceral combat that we hoped to convey to the players. Although no voice acting was used in the making of Vault of Heaven, we used numerous sound effects such as, thunder, lightning, explosions, battle cries, screams, and other sounds that bring you into the experience of a very chaotic environment.

Marketability We created Vault of Heaven to be marketed for the mature audience. We felt that a game with as much grit and chaos should only be for the mature audience.

Common Questions All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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What is the game? Vault of Heaven is a Third Person Shooter for the PC and XBOX 360.

Where does the game take place? Vault of Heaven takes place on 3 distinctly different locations. Colonial Town Floating Pirate Town Aerial Ship Battle

Who do I control? You control a sky pirate who is on a routine mission to raid a village and take whatever he can find. This mission is somewhat interrupted and you crash land thanks to the dreaded Colonial Soldiers.

What is the main focus of the game? The main focus of the game is to bring in players from all backgrounds and types, and to deliver a fun, interactive experience, while introducing immersive game play that digs deep for a new take on pirates.

What separates this game from others? Pirates, Colonials, and Zombie Soldiers, enough said. This game will not only bring players into an immersive story, it will catapult the old adage of colonials being boring and meticulous out the window. With outrageous enemy AI, and the ability to take multiple routes to find the answer as to what is so important about the Vault of Heaven, this game has something for everybody.

Features General Features All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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3D graphics using the unmatched Unreal Engine 3 Realistic textures including Normal Maps On the go cover

Game play Advanced enemy AI Ability to take multiple routes Run, Jump, Cover, Shoot Mechanic Destructible Environments Friendly AI, when at a challenging part in the game, ask a partner for directions Ability to hold back and be stealthy, or just shoot your way through

Camera View Overview All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Like most Third Person Shooters we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel when it came to some aspects of the game so we chose to stick with your traditional camera. Why fix something this isn’t broken. The cam is setup to be above the players model. This gives the player the ability to see what is around them at all times. In war time it is important to see what chaos is going on around you at all times.

Third Person Shooter This game is after all a shooter. When the player takes aim at an opposition, the camera slowly zooms in to highlight that particular enemy. Once the player pulls back and exits aim mode, the camera falls back with it.

Concept Art Characters Below is some concept art for the main characters in Vault of Heaven. All work is property of Breakneck Interactive. All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Weapons Below is some concept art for the weapons in Vault of Heaven. All work is property of Breakneck Interactive.

All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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3D Models All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Below are final renders in Vault of Heaven. All work is property of Breakneck Interactive.

All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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Level Design Below are final layouts for the levels in Vault of Heaven. All work is property of Breakneck Interactive.

The first level places the character right in the heart of a fierce battle on the enemies’ soil. The player will start out on the dock section of the town and will have to work their way all the way through a war torn colonial village and take out the governor/fleet commander before he unleashes a horde of the undead.

All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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In level two the player has escaped the colonial town, believing that he has finally won the battle for his brethren, when suddenly he is now being attacked at the one place he never would have thought, the hidden city of the pirates. Now the player must battle threw his own streets to get away from the retaliatory horde of the colonial army. Not All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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only will they have to fight threw their home they must also battle the Kraken that has been stored in their keep.

The player has now narrowly escaped the onslaught on his own streets to have been attacked yet again by the colonial menace. This time however, the player has been caught in the air; within one of his own pirate ships on an escape route to another secure area. Crashing into your ship the colonial force storms your ship with a fury and bullets and the undead. Battling your way threw the horror, you finally reach the colonial ship and find out that the fleet commander, thought to have been killed at the colonial town is the man that has been hunting you this whole time. Can the player finally defeat this undead master of two worlds?!

All work copyright ©2009 Breakneck Interactive – All rights reserved

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