PHOTOCHRONOGRAMMETRY (Epic MegaJam 2023)

ABOUT:
minimalistic temporal puzzle game
made within 4-5 days for the 2023 Epic MegaJam
using 11 home-made RealityScan assets

THEME:
Antiquated Future

MODIFIERS:
Edge of Reality (RealityScan)
Army of One (Solo Development)

GOALS:
make a game in UE5
learn and explore RealityScan
practice puzzle game design
have fun

PROCESS:
I decided on three main design pillars at the start of the jam.
Time (theme) + RealityScan (modifier) + Puzzle (genre)

Managing scope was going to be extra challenging since my time was limited to about 4 days during the jam. This steered me towards minimalism in terms of gameplay, visuals and puzzle mechanics. I aimed to incorporate the theme and the essence of the RealityScan modifier in the mechanics by keeping things simple. Scanning, observing and capturing an object in time is at the core of the RealityScan photogrammetry tool. That's how I knew I wanted the scanned objects to take center stage, capturing them in different states to create a simple temporal puzzle game. I've experimented with small scale environmental story-telling by physically adding clues into my home-made models.



I really enjoyed the DIY aspects of designing the game in the real world instead of on a screen. Using my bathroom door (yes, my bathroom was door-less for 4 days) and a tripod I was able to cook up a simple white box recording studio.

Making acceptable scans proved to be a learning curve. There's a lot of things to consider and plan out before grabbing the phone to take photos. Lighting conditions, being able to move around the object, not bumping into the object, covering the entire object from multiple angles and elevations, keeping sufficient overlap between pictures to help the photogrammetry tool with alignment, the list goes on. This proved to be the main bottleneck in my content pipeline. Creating proper assets was rewarding, but it took hours of planning and processing.  It was well worth the effort though, I'm really happy with the few puzzles I was able to create with 11 hand-made Reality Scanned models.

Ironically, time was quickly running short. I decided to spend my last day polishing the content I had. In addition to using the scanning tool to create models, I've cooked up some simple models in Blender to create the remaining assets. For the textures I made some simple materials and added in a single Megascan texture to seal the deal. As a solo developer I've never found the time to become a professional composer or audio engineer, so I've leaned on a library for the audio assets listed below. Coding was done entirely with Blueprints.

SOURCED ASSETS:
Texture (Quixel Megascans)

Music (Zapsplat Library)
Sound Effects* (Zapsplat Library)

*some custom modifications to sound effect files were made in Audacity

TEAM INFO:
Team name: Frycandle
E-mail: frycandle@gmail.com
Team size: 1

SUBMISSION INFO:
Game name: PHOTOCHRONOGRAMMETRY
Submission file: Frycandle_PHOTOCHRONOGRAMMETRY.zip

CONTROLS:
WASD = Move
Left-click = Interact
F11 = Fullscreen
Esc = Quit