Game Design Document

Escape to RNG Terrain

All work Copyright ©2024 by James Vongphasouk and Justin Hoang

Written by James Vongphasouk and Justin Hoang

Version 1

Sunday, April 26, 2024

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Authors
• 1. Executive Summary
  • 1.1 Game Concept
  • 1.2 Genre
  • 1.3 Target Audience
• 2. Gameplay
  • 2.1 Objectives
  • 2.2 In-game GUI
• 3. Mechanics
  • 3.1 Controls
  • 3.2 Physics
  • 3.3 Level Design
• 4. Assets
  • 4.1 Music
  • 4.2 Sound effects and 3D Models
  • 4.3 Terrain Generation
• 5. Art
• 6. Product Backlog

Authors

• Justin Hoang
• James Vongphasouk

1. Executive Summary

1.1 Game Concept

Player will glide through the mountains and land successfully in daredevil style! Paralander was strongly influenced by the paragliders around Lookout Mountain. We hope to capture not only the sense of elation and adrenaline from gliding through the mountain tops, but also the beauty of the surrounding nature.

The main attraction for Paralander is its quick arcade style and realistic and interactive physics and flight. We are planning on developing the game in 3D using the Unity game engine.

The player will take-off from a zone outside the procedurally generated terrain and soar through the mountains. The player will have to maneuver a plane using pitch, roll, and yaw steering and pick up food near the ground. The player will also have to be careful not to hit the ground or its game over!

1.2 Genre

Arcade style flight simulator

1.3 Target Audience

The target audience used to be people who enjoyed realistic mountain scenery and daring adventures. Now, I would say it is people who want a relaxing flight simulator to escape the real world and occasionally pick up 3D bakery foods near the ground for points.

2. Gameplay

2.1 Objectives

Paralander is an arcade styled game, so there isn’t a story (at least right now) that needs to be explored. The player will load in, read some instructions about how to play, then immediately begin free-falling.

The player will eventually land in two ways: safely or not safely. The win condition depends on the game-mode that was selected. In the classic game, the goal is to land as gently and elegantly as possible; in a reversed game-mode, to goal is to land but to cause as much damage as possible to the player model. Players will be awarded points accordingly and given a rating. There will be multiple goals that the player can land at. Riskier locations will award the player more points.

A stretch goal for the project is to give the player freedom to change the material composition and shape of the wing. Different materials and constructions would have different prices. This crafting feature would give the player the freedom and flexibility to test out different builds.

There is only one character, the plane, and 3 kinds of 3D food models: donut, cake, waffle. The plane is the controllable character and the plane picks up the food by running into it.

2.2 In-game GUI

The player will be able to see 6 things on their screen at all times listed here from top left corner to bottom right corner. These are the frames per second (FPS), score (increases by 50 every time a food target is collected), throttle (stored as a percentage between 0 and 100), airspeed in km/h, altitude, and a minimap which shows the player’s location as a neon green square and food objects as stars.

3. Mechanics

3.1 Controls

In Paralander, the player will control an interactive third-person camera using their mouse. The player will be able to pan around to see the whole environment, as well as the player model and the paraglider itself.

Paralander will use the classic wasd scheme to control movements such as dipping forward and back and leaning left and right. The whole time, the player will be affected by gravity and be gliding along the air. It is the player’s responsibility to move in such a way to land at the goals. Remember, the landing should delicate enough that the player does not break their legs (or anything else) on impact.

At this stage (sprint 1, 2-14-24), we still have more research to do in order to simulate realistic movement. As important as realism is to this game, we still want to balance the fun-factor and interactivity for the player.

SPACE => ACCELERATE

L-SHIFT => DECELERATE

A/D: YAW

W/S: PITCH

_optional_ mouse: YAW AND PITCH

Q/E: ROLL

PRESS ESCAPE TO SEE THE CONTROLS AGAIN

3.2 Physics

The plane operates realistically (to an extent) relying on initial lift force to get off the ground, throttle force from when the player presses space/L-shift to speed up/slow down the plane, etc. We planned on including realistic wind forces too, but it was scrapped due to time constraints.

3.3 Level Design

Each level is procedurally generated by the MeshGenerator script. The logic is credited in the Terrain Generation section of Assets

4. Assets

4.1 Music

None in this final version, but we planned on having the user be able to cycle through a radio station during gameplay. It would include flying themed songs like Airplanes - B.o.B, Big Jet Plane - Angus and Julia Stone, Space Oddity - David Bowie, etc.

4.2 Sound effects and 3D Models

We used one sound effect, DM-CGS-45, for when the airplane crashes into terrain from Dustyroom Casual Game Sound - One Shot SFX Pack located here.

We also used plane model from Aztec Games located here and some of bakery models from Layer Lab located here.

4.3 Terrain Generation

We borrowed the code from this GitHub page, and watched the accompanying tutorials from Pang Dev.

5. Art

6. Product Backlog

Product Backlog