District Run
Prototype
Summary
District Run started as an art showcase and quickly developed into a prototype for a heavily stylized first-person parkour game.
Details
Role:
Team Size:
Duration:
Engine:
lead Designer/Developer
3
ongoing
Unreal Engine 5
First-Person
Parkour
Exploration
Development Progress
Concept & Prototype
Demo &
Pre-alpha
Core Development
Public Beta Testing
Full
Release
Main Contributions
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Concept, Design & Development
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Movement & Camera System
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Art Direction & Concept Art
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Lighting, Materials & Shaders/Post Process
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Sound Design & Music
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Environment & Level Design
Concept & Development
the original idea was to create a walking simulator that showcased a small, explorable environment using some shaders I'd made and a collection of assets I had from a cancelled project...
after creating a player controller with a true first-person perspective and some basic movement, I decided to experiment with some additional movement mechanics and it quickly developed into a basic climbing/parkour system. A great starting point for a future BigHog Arcade project.
Movement System
The movement has the basic elements you would expect in a first person game. Walk, Jump, Sprint & crouch.
The true first person camera causes a natural inertia, combined with some additional camera tilt to the left/right movement gives the gameplay a more immersive feel.
To Make it more versatile, I added a basic mantling system for ledges that allows players to step up or Grapple a Ledge, depending on the ledge height.
The addition of fall damage and a landing roll gives the vertically more purpose. The roll can also be used as a faster alternative to crouching.
As well as the roll, I added a slide move that can be used when sprinting, it's faster than the roll and allows the player to stay facing forward.
To increase the accessibility of the environment, I added a vertical Wall run that allows the player to push up and grab higher ledges.
For some extra flair, I added a backflip and jump-roll to the move set that can be used to traverse the environment in more creative ways.
The final addition was an air jump that gives a small boost momentum when clearing gaps. It is subtle and paired with a suitable animation so it still feels grounded and believable.
Focus mode
To give some additional choice in the moment to moment gameplay, I created another feature called 'focus mode'.
The focus mode slows down time, it can be used to evaluate the environment without losing momentum or give additional precision to a hard obstacle.
But it also tightens the cameras Field of View, creating a sort of tunnel vision that restricts what the player can see. This creates a nice balanced trade off as the mechanic feels useful but also restrictive at the same time.
Art Direction
The art style is one of the things I am most proud of from this project, it was a collaborative effort between me and two other artists. I handled the majority of the concept and direction, creating sketches and references boards to communicate the idea whilst the other two artists handled the modelling work.
the style of the assets contributes heavily to the look. We used a specific combination of architectural influences that were carefully chosen to work well in low poly and created the models using specific guidelines to ensure they had a consistent style to build the desired aesthetic.
Lighting & Shaders
I created the final look using edge-detection and cell-shading post-processes combined with a custom material set and lighting setup.
the greyscale palette is a result of the materials, the post-process works just as well with coloured assets.
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