Devlog #1 - Character Design and Story

I was in charge of designing the characters for the game. This included animating them, building the models and giving them backstories. 

The main character of the game is Solomon M. Arthur (because it can also be seen as S. M. ARThur). He is a former scientist for the Corporation who has gone rogue in order to stop a project in which they created a black hole. This is catastrophic for the human race and will soon completely wipe them out. His goal is to get to Delta Station, a decommissioned Corporation project. Its purpose? Travelling through time. Solomon aims to correct the mistakes of the past and save the world, no matter what.

The game’s enemies are all robots. They are a decommissioned line of security robots that have broken down after years of neglect. There are 3 variants. Blue, yellow and red. Blue and yellow robots have more health than the red ones (50 vs 40). Yellow robots do more damage than blue robots and reds do more than yellows. All of the robots attack via punching the player. Their hostility can be easily read from their red glowing faces.

There is also a friendly robot who helps the player on the station. This robot does not attack the player and gives them helpful advice on how to progress through that particular level.

The player character wields a gun and must fight their way through the robots in order to reach their goals. 

The design philosophy behind the robot enemies was to make them look and move in a way that shows they are not exactly functioning properly. While idle, they lean towards their left, occasionally trying to right themselves before losing their balance once again. One of their elbows has rusted into a bent position and thus, moves with great difficulty. While attacking, the robot reveals its sharp combat abilities, quickly winding back for a heavy punch, before unleashing it at a very fast speed. It then resets back to a neutral position, ready to try again if necessary. Their animations are all quite rigid and stiff, to reflect their robotic nature.

The player character also has animations. He has separate animations for idling, walking, jumping, falling and landing. These animations are more organic looking than the ones for the robots, as the player character is merely a human in a space suit.

There are also animations for the friendly robot. Like the enemies, its animations are quite stiff and rigid. It points at the player while speaking with them.

Pieces of information such as character backstories and events that have occured aboard the station are scattered throughout the levels. They aim to explain exactly why the station is completely empty and why the robots attack the player.

-Eoghan