Child of Lothian is a stealth adventure game in which you play as a young orphan trying to survive 18th century Edinburgh. From concept to Steam release, I developed core mechanics as a tools and technical designer.
Unreal Engine - 8 months (2022)
My Role
From my education we received a project brief. These were constraints for this game project. Listed were items such as "Edinburgh 1800s setting" and "Rich NPC interactions".
As a technical designer I chose to work on the interactive systems in the game. It was clear for me that this game will be content heavy and level designers will need the appropriate tools to make the world feel alive and interactive.
Interaction System
I created three interactive base objects and implemented a system in which level designers can easily drag and drop different Actions to these base objects.
Hittable In the game you can use a sling. Trigger an action when you hit it.
Interactable Walk up to an object and press a button.
Trigger Walk into it.
This system was created to put all interactive elements under the same umbrella so we can easily change certain properties and propagate it to all objects in the game.
UML of the early version of the system.
The Action components to put on the objects followed a similar structure with a base class as well. I created a library of actions that would serve as the bricks to lay most of the interaction events in the game. Within Unreal Engine I created a tools menu to display these.
Data driven Quest System
I designed and created the whole ecosystem for the missions of the game. I concepted that all quest related actors / gameobjects can be linked to steps of a quest. Logic and visibility of those objects can be changed using the quest system's event system.
The system is created using UE's Blueprints using Data Asset structures created in C++.
I set up these requirements and implemented them:
All quests are self-contained and can be loaded in and out of the game at any point.
The quests have multiple checkpoints and the designer can write custom logic on what happens when a checkpoint is reached, completed and respawned to.
Custom logic can be implemented to create a great variety of missions. There's no set structure on how a quest must be completed.
For debugging, the level designer can select any checkpoint in the quest editor. On play mode you'll be jumped to that checkpoint for quick testing.
Custom editor window to edit and create quest assets.
Quest Design pipeline document for the team.
Dialogue System
I extended my own dialogue plugin to work with additional features exclusive to Child of Lothian. To read about the dialogue system go to the Talky Project page.
The dialogue tree for a NPC in Child of Lothian's early access release.
Showing the dialogue system in editor and ingame at the same time.
Slides explaining to the team how to use the Dialogue System
