In Starlight Mechanic, you play as Hunter Gates, a mechanic aboard the Starlight Space Station. After waking up from a nap, he finds the station in disarray. Through the use of his multi-tool and other weapons found around the station, Hunter navigates through the station and combats a gaseous enemy with the power to control their hosts. In the First Contact Demo, players will be able to experience the first few encounters found in the full game.
This is the game that I created, alongside the collector’s edition package, for my thesis project at The College of New Jersey.
Project Description
When originally creating the game demo for my thesis project, I always wanted to make it a first-person shooter. I’ve personally played many of these types of games before, so I knew some of the main features to include, such as a first-person camera, ranged weapons for the player to use, a minimap to help the player navigate the space, and a weapon crosshair to help the player aim, to name a few. As for the visual aesthetics of the game, I wanted it to be set in a science fiction world. While I managed to create this demo all on my own, along with the other parts of my thesis project, I faced a couple of roadblocks along the way. While creating the demo, I had a rough time of setting up the enemy AI, but I solved the issues I was having by just making the enemies patrol around the environment. Another issue I had faced was trying to figure out the overall structure of the demo, such as where the player would navigate through and what objectives they would have to accomplish. I did figure out the flow of the demo with the player navigating through a few rooms, avoiding enemies, and then encountering a boss of sorts at the end.
In order to create the playable character and enemies featured in the demo, I used an application called Fuse to create the character models and an application called Mixamo to animate them. For the player controlled character, Hunter Gates, I wanted him to have the appearance of a mechanic, but with a more sci-fi look and feel. In order to accomplish this, I gave his white shirt a hexagonal pattern and his pants an orange and white color palette. By using white and orange, I was able to make Hunter look like he worked at the space station since it also was primarily white and orange. As for the alien enemies, I always imagined them as thin grey aliens with black and white eyes. Creating them was an amusing time, trying to get the proportions and animations to look the way that I wanted. When creating the final boss of the demo, Jared Burns, I wanted him to look similar to Hunter since they are both mechanics on the space station, but I wanted him to not be just a copy of Hunter. With Jared, I decided to give him a jacket to wear that was orange and white. My thinking was that when Jared became corrupted by the gaseous enemies, he was in the middle of his shift, so he was wearing his full uniform, hence the jacket. Overall, I feel I really hit the mark with the characters in the demo.
Mason Bohme Portfolio 