Week 1 Practical on Thursday, 23rd of September: 2 Concepts for the Unknown Belligerent Entities (CUBE) Game (Assignment)

Here comes my first ever blog post!!! :]


I had been teamed up with Rohan Mathews after the lecture earlier in the week but we had not discussed much about the game concept before the practical.

So, in the practical we had to come up with 2 different concepts for the Container of Unknown Belligerent Enitities (CUBE) -- the game we have to develop for our assignment. More appropriate of them was to be approved by Steven Harris.

Here's what we managed to mastermind:

• The player needs to get through the maze and open the door in the end using using a cube, which is found somewhere in the maze and guarded by angry monsters -- by Rohan
• The player needs to get through the angry maze on time or dies. Cubes are stopping the player -- are in his way, so he (1) needs to find an alternative way OR (2) use special powers/weapons to break the cubes. Weapons are found in the maze -- by Lauri

Steve approved the first one of those concepts but suggested some changes, so the game concept was something (sth from hereafter) like that in the end:

• The player needs to get through the maze, which contains number of rooms, and open the door in the end using a cube, which is found somewhere in the maze. However, to get through the maze the player has to solve number of puzzles related to cube-shaped boxes. Examples of the puzzles we provided during the practical:

1. Boxes are blocking the door in a room and the player has to move them around to clear the way and reach the door;
2. The door of the room is locked and the player has to press 2 buttons (on the floor) at the same time to open the door, which can be done by placing 2 boxes on those buttons. There is a short period of time while the door remains open.
3. There is a big hole in the floor or a river between 2 rooms, which cannot be crossed without using number of boxes and 1 longer log or plank on top. The plank can be found in one of the previous rooms.
4. General puzzle: the player has to find and collect a special cube to open the door at the end of the maze. This cube is located somewhere in the maze and is in a different colour/shape/size compared to other boxes/cubes. The player has to carry it to the end of the maze.

We also had to discuss creating the technical demonstrators (tech demos) -- like short game demos showing a particular game element in action -- in Unreal Editor for Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3) for next week's practical (on 30th of September).

Here's what we have to do:

1. Lifting a box (object) -- Rohan
2. Pushing and pulling a box -- Lauri

Hopefully I covered most of the important aspects of the first practical and the first steps of our game development.