Vision for the project:
My vision for this project was to create one of the most visually pleasing tycoon games on Fortnite. I wanted the game to tailor to all age ranges, so I thought the idea of fruit/smoothies and creating a game around that theme would work best. The intention for this game, was to make the gameplay unlimited, which I would achieve through the rebirth feature of the game, as well as adding in content other than the main mechanics of the tycoon game, which would be executed through minigames, and quests that the players could complete for rewards.
Achievements
During the development for the game I learnt many new skills, such as memory management, I also learnt about cinematic sequences within games.
Favourite part
My favourite part of this project was creating all the blenders. Once all of them were placed with their designated colour for their fruit, it created a really aesthetic array of colours. In general, the whole games design was so fun to make, and by far my favourite part of this project.
Challenges I faced
I realised that for this project, there were going to be a few issues, in terms of the memory limit of the game, the amount of content as well as the cinematic sequences, which shows the journey of when the player activates the blender, all the way through to the smoothie being sold for cash.
Inside of UEFN, there are no current physics mechanics, and in the initial plan for the game, I wanted this game to be as immersive as possible, and I thought that seeing the fruits actually drop into the blenders would be the best way to go around that. However, without any physics mechanics available, I had to find an alternative method, which I did, through VFX. I added collision to the mesh's inside of the VFX Simulation, and set the gravity, so that the fall was realistic, and looked like the fruit had physics applied. By doing this through VFX, it enabled me to add a certain level of randomness and therefore variety in the fruits dropping, in terms of rotation, size and position.
UEFN has a memory limit for the games that people can create. Most tycoon games at the time were capped at 4 players per game, however I really wanted to push this and double the usual player count for this type of game. I also wanted this game to be as immersive as possible, a lot of assets and details were going to be needed, which equally would increase the memory. To reduce the memory as much as possible, I discovered that using blueprints instead of static meshes drastically reduced the amount of memory that would be taken up. I also found out that UEFN loads the games in chunks, so I intentionally spread out the game to reduce the amount of memory, whilst also being considerate of not making the map uncomfortably big.
Results
By the end of this project, I had created a stunning game, tailored to all age groups, which broke the record for the player count for tycoon games. I had created interactive characters and minigames, all to support the main gameplay of the game. Sadly due to contracting issues, this game will never be able to be published, however it is still one of my favourite projects to have ever worked on.
