Department of Computer Science
GameDev-Team
The GameDev team at the H-BRS was founded in July 2022 as a project of the Institute for Visual Computing. The team currently consists of 13 game developers from the areas of game design & story, graphics, programming and sound design. In addition to the development of an in-house game with the codename "Project Honu" in Unreal Engine 5, the team is responsible for the planning and implementation of internal university events - such as game jams.
The Game Studio (C058) of the IVC (Youtube video) serves as headquarters, which is equipped with powerful computers, a 3D printer, a sound station and modern game consoles, among other things.
The team meets every Thursday in the Game Studio.
Application phases are announced via email distribution list and Discord. Interested outsiders can find out about the current status in Discord (https://discord.gg/7kvXMtTBGK).
Contact: GameDev@h-brs.de
Jannik.brockerhoff@h-brs.de
Project Honu
Project Honu is a 3D adventure game set on a mystical island haunted by an ancient evil. The hub is an old village in a clearing deep in the forest. From here, the player will explore the island, solve puzzles, advance the village's progress and make new friends. The adventure and social aspects are at the forefront of the gameplay. Interact with the villagers, celebrate parties or help them with their tasks, they will certainly not forget it!
What is the game about?
The working title of our first game endeavour is called Honu. Project Honu is a story-driven adventure game with a strong focus non-player character interactions and relationships. The main player objectives are progressing through a captivating story by solving puzzles, interacting with villagers and exploring the vast areas of Honu.
The player is hurled onto the island Honu, which is infested by a dark fog. They join a small settlement inhabited by various kinds of people to discover ways of healing Honu. Each villager has their own personality and background story about how and why they got onto Honu.
The player is invited to discover the stories of all villagers through compelling conversations and quests. Any NPC interactions affect the characters' reputation towards the player, thus enabling the development of deep relationships. Through befriending villagers, the player gains additional knowledge about Honu, the dark fog and remains of an old civilisation that once dwelled on the island.
Graphics
The graphics team already created concepts for the town, the first biome and two characters. Those concepts are now being translated as 3D Assets into the game. While one part is working on the characters and their animations, the other part is creating the environment assets. A significant workload also falls into working out strategies to make the assets performance efficient.
Game Design
The outset of development is the most intensive for the game design team. A focus is put on the content of the MVP. As of this status update, a fishing mechanic, a lantern tool, behaviour of 3 characters, 1 puzzle and overall gameplay mechanic concepts are already created. Additional work on the first level, the town and more puzzle designs have already begun.
Story
Having an interesting and engaging story is particularly important in a story-driven game. Due to this, the story team has already developed an overall story and background lore for the universe in which the game will play. Additionally 3 characters were created with deep characteristics, personality and background. Furthermore, templates for the remaining characters are already prepared.
Programming
The main task of the programming team is the development of core systems upon which the game will be build. With the goal of having a dynamic world to explore, the programming team implemented a simple daytime scheduling system for NPCs using behaviour trees. Additionally, they have created an extensible system for player-object interactions which can be customized by our game designers for individual object interactions. Since solving puzzles is a core gameplay element of our game we developed a flexible system to connect arbitrary puzzle pieces together to form puzzles of various complexities. Lastly, we are dealing with general game related features such as managing game flow, basic character movement and saving/loading game states.
