Bus Driver Simulator 2020
Gameplay Video
My Responsibilities
I led a small team to create and prototype an original game concept on a short schedule. Following my pitch, volunteers joined my team to develop an amusing third-person driving game where players search for the goal while balancing time and resources. In addition to leading the team, I also filled the roles of Level Designer, Technical Designer, and 3D Artist.
My responsibilities included:
Project lead - Pitched game concept and acted as producer; created and managed project timeline; organized and delegated tasks.
Level Designer - Created the game level from concept through completion; prototyped and Implemented all major gameplay elements
Technical Designer - Engineered character and gameplay systems; Developed the game loop; Created menus
3D Artist - Modeled and textured many major game assets.
Development Breakdown:
Project Lead
As the project lead, I managed a team totaling 5 to create my original game concept. Important responsibilities of mine included:
Ensuring all work remained within scope to complete the project
Creating and maintaining all game documentation
Organizing and delegating tasks
Ensuring all tasks were completed on time
Resolving blockers related to tasks and timelines
Level Design
The game map is comprised of a grid of road intersections, with the larger shapes being 2 concentric rings connected with a large road through the middle, as well as smaller streets cutting across the sides. Some key design goals included:
Facilitate quick and player-friendly navigation around the level.
Creating a balanced size scale to facilitate engaging gameplay.
Provide areas of open space to differentiate the repetitive sections.
Create environmental variation between street and building types.
The distribution of buildings is arranged so that those around the perimeter obscure the world beyond by using tall office buildings. This also eliminated the need to create more assets and dedicate time to building a city beyond what the player would see. Using the outside of the map for taller buildings, the center sections utilize narrower roads lined with houses and apartment buildings.
I crafted the level layout and placed all props and buildings, regularly playtesting to balance prop distribution and type. The school locations, when not occupied by the objective, show large, open parks with destructible props dotted in.
Gameplay
Designing and prrototyping the gameplay systems was primarily handled by me. My development contributions included:
Creating the character controller.
Developing the game loop.
Building a prop destruction system.
Creating score and resource systems.
Setting up menus and UI.
The bus controller was prototyped using the road blockout of the level, after which I began working on a game loop. The level runs on a designer-set timer and tracks the player’s score during play. A reputation resource bar on the side of the UI drains during play, but may be replenished in small increments by hitting various props around the level. Hitting an NPC walking around causes the reputation to take a hit.
Part of the core gameplay loop is smashing into props as the school bus. To help make this fun, I designed a prop destruction system that allows the bus to shatter props dynamically based on the force of the impact. Every prop was modeled specially for this system, so that each part may be properly structured for the physics to take over. Additionally, I configured every prop’s physics strength, as well as reputation and score values.
Art
As the project lead and vision holder for the game, I established the art style and modeled many assets including the school bus and all destructible props. I directed 2 other artists on the creation of buildings and other assets. The overall flat art style served to allow for more development time. I modeled assets in Maya and used Substance Painter and Photoshop for textures. Interactable props are given more model and texture detail to stand out to players.
