Last Walk Devlog

Devlog 04 – Last Walk

Hi again, here I’m going to be writing about and documenting the process of my 4th game, Last Walk. This game will be made in Unreal, and it’ll incorporate physics-related mechanics. I still want to incorporate some dialogue/story elements like I usually do, but it’ll definitely be a lot different from the kinds of games I usually make. Especially because it’s not horror. Hopefully, you enjoy it nonetheless. Thanks for reading! 😊

Initial Concept:

I went through a lot of different ideas when trying to make this game. Initially, I had some cool assets I wanted to make use of, and I wanted to try to build an idea around that, but nothing I came up with was really worth pursuing. I eventually had the idea to make sort of just a chill, introspective game where you walk through a forest and reflect on your past. This idea stuck, but I went through a lot of versions of it. The main topic of the dialogues had a lot of variation. One was about dreams and escapism, and another was about the cycle of abuse. I ended up deciding that it would be about loss and learning to let go. Since my dog passed away recently, I felt like the topic was maybe more fitting for me to write about.

Sound Design:

I had a slightly different plan for what the game would be, which is why I created extra tracks. Whatever.  I’m sure I’ll find use for them someday. In terms of the sounds/samples I used, I just kind of used my own judgment when it came to deciding whether it fit the mood of the game. A lot of the samples I gravitated toward featured piano and were kind of slow and melancholic. Many of the samples were reversed or slightly distorted.

I also wanted to make sure to include sound effects such as birds chirping to make the soundtrack more appropriate for the forest environment. I also layered other sounds/samples that I thought added to the mood I was going for, some of which were small things from my last game, such as a record player sound. A lot of sounds can be reused in different tracks and reworked slightly to add a totally different feel. That’s good because then I can spend less time looking for samples and focus on other things.

As for the UI/sound effects, I just wanted something that would again match the mood/setting and go with the existing music. The sound effects in the game were pretty minimal. I wanted the environment to have a kind of stuck-in-time, dreamy sense of stillness, so I only wanted to include specific sounds. One of them was the sound of big, heavy doors opening or closing whenever the player stepped on the switch. For those, I made sure to pick a sound that made the movement of the doors feel extra heavy, rusty, and ancient.

For the UI selection sounds, I was looking for samples that kind of reminded me of the UI sounds in Zelda: Wind Waker. I like those sounds—they’re pretty chill. What I found had the same sort of relaxed tone but a bit more retro-sounding, which works well for the game. Overall, I was happy with the sound design.

Environment Design:

I spent a lot of time on the environment design, but I spent even longer trying to figure out what to do with the giant empty map Unreal starts you with. When I was initially trying to recreate the forest I used to visit, I had a really hard time because I got really hung up on stupid details, and I felt like if it wasn’t exact or really similar, it wouldn’t be good. I ended up wasting a lot of time messing around with this. Probably only 2–3 days total, but that makes a big difference. During this time, my laptop decided to start crashing any time I tried to work on or even open the file. I’ve been having issues with that laptop for a while, so I caved and bought an actual decent PC. If I’m going to keep making 3D games in addition to 2D ones, I think it’s just a necessity.

After that, I just started over because I hadn’t done that much that I liked anyway. Plus, I didn’t really have a choice. I managed to redo everything in like a day. At this point, I decided to diverge from my original idea and create what was supposed to be a dream, and that was the version of the game that would’ve been more about escapism and stuff like that. Because I was going for a semi-surreal, dreamlike kind of atmosphere, I tried to reflect that in the way I designed the environment, the assets I chose, the scale of things, and just the layout of things in general. I then changed my mind to the final theme AGAIN, but I liked the environment I made, and I wanted to keep it. It’s not that crazy and surreal after all—just some big statues and weird architecture. Plus, those things were actually inspired by existing places/monuments, including the Didgori Battle Memorial and the Giant Golden Hands Bridge. I think those monuments are pretty cool

Here are a few examples of the game environment:

Mechanics Pt. 1:

I chose to make this game in Unreal because I think I would have an easier time figuring out the physics mechanics there rather than in an engine like Godot or Unity. I also thought there would be a lot of tutorials on what I wanted to do online. I was half right. A lot of the tutorials I found were either incomplete or had very flawed outcomes.

The first tutorial I looked at started by showing a character carrying a box. The end result was them awkwardly dragging it behind them. The real lesson I learned from that tutorial was that it’s important to skip to the end and see the end result before committing hours to a tutorial. The next tutorial looked like it had a great end result. It was for a box push, and that one, in fact, did not have a great end result. It was really awkward and janky, and the system had a number of collision and other issues. I only realized that when looking at the comments where I found other people complaining about the issues. The creator acknowledged that the system was flawed and said they would make a new video. That was three years ago.

I decided to move on and just go for a basic pressure plate switch puzzle that works by detecting the physics objects/actors in the overlap collision area of the pressure switch and signaling for the corresponding door to either open, close, or remain in either of those states. This worked well, which was nice. I then came across another video for a pickup system that had MUCH cleaner results, and I was able to customize it to my liking. So basically, the simplified version of how this works is: when the player is close enough to the object, they can click the left mouse to carry it with them, and it will essentially snap to them until they click again to drop it. If they drop it anywhere but the switch, nothing happens (obviously). If the player drops an object on the switch, the doors will begin to open and will remain open until the weight is removed from the pressure switch.

An earlier version of this system required the player to separately control the location of the object with WASD and not by looking around, but I modified things so that the player can control the location of the object when they move the mouse. I had my boyfriend test this game at various stages, and initially, when he picked up the object, he wasn’t sure if he had it or not because he was looking around with the mouse, and the mouse camera and player body were facing different directions. When he started moving forward (the camera and player body faced the same way), he eventually realized and figured it out. Clearly, the pickup mechanic wasn’t straightforward and smooth, so I adjusted things. I think the pickup/drop and pressure plate mechanics work pretty smoothly now.

The other mechanics in this game are pretty simple and don’t need much explanation, but I do plan on implementing a simple dialogue mechanic at some point.

Mechanics Pt. 2:

I implemented a simple little dialogue system that connects to a dialogue box widget I made and inserts the correct text through a string array. This works well, and implementing it went smoothly. I also knew that I didn’t want the player to have to interact with a specific object to make the dialogue commence, so I created a widget that shows up when the player is in the collision area. That way, when the player enters an area where they can comment on their surroundings or show the dialogue, the "E" widget is displayed on the screen, prompting the player to press to interact. When the player leaves the area or has already read that dialogue, the "E" widget is removed from the screen, and pressing will do nothing.

The whole thing with the "E" widget was a bit of a challenge because I didn’t have any tutorials or anything, so I just had to figure it out myself—and I actually did it. Unreal can be a bit of an intimidating engine, so even though it wasn’t a huge mechanic, I was sort of happy with myself for figuring it out because I guess that means I’m learning and improving or whatever. 

Attached below are photos of my final blueprints for each system:

Writing:

There were a lot of things that I drew inspiration from when making this game. Or rather, a lot of specific things I would think about to get myself in the headspace for writing this game. These were the following:

• The forest I used to play in with my friends: This part was real. Initially, I actually wanted to make a landscape to replicate the exact parts of the forest that I used to visit with friends. But honestly, I was spending way too much time and effort feeling like it needed to be exactly right, so I moved away from that idea. The forest itself was definitely the inspiration for the game setting, though. Or at least in my head, it is.
• Nostalgic video game locations: Something about me is that growing up, I played a lot of games, and I would often gravitate toward the same few. Because of how often I played these games, they now remind me of those moments in my life. One of the main ones is Outset Island in Zelda: Wind Waker. I don’t think it’s the best Zelda game, but it’s one of the first games I had, and it will always have a special place in my heart because of that. Why Outset Island specifically? Because when I first got that game, I was a stupid kid who couldn’t get further than Windfall Island, and I would usually just replay that beginning section of the game, spending a lot of time on that particular low-poly island. The way I feel when I turn on that game is kind of the feeling that the protagonist is meant to have with the forest.

• Clinging to youth: I often find myself gravitating toward things that remind me of the happy parts of childhood. I think it’s normal to still like the things you liked when you were young, but sometimes it can become a form of escapism. Playing those old games, watching a movie I used to love, and thinking about the past are ways of finding comfort in the past to avoid the discomfort of an uncertain future and a more complicated existence. I don’t actually feel like this is necessarily a bad thing, but it can be. It’s important not to become completely consumed by the past, or else you might become too far removed from the future. I just kind of wanted to explore this concept a bit in this game.
• Loss: One of the more prevalent themes of this game is loss and moving forward despite it. Loss is something everyone experiences, and it’s never easy. We don’t want to give up the things we love most in life, yet it is an inevitable part of living. The scenery will change, your loved ones will pass, and memories will fade. That’s just the reality of things, and it kind of sucks. But despite that, we always move forward. The house you grew up in may have been torn down, but you live in a much nicer place now. You may have lost many loved ones to age and time, but new life comes, and with it brings more love. Memories of youth may have begun to fade, but new bright experiences will fill their place. Loss is painful, and it’s easy to get consumed by the past you wish you could revisit.

I guess this game is supposed to kind of reflect all those themes. I hope I was able to express that properly. I’ve had a much harder time writing this game than any other. I guess that’s probably because the creation of this game involved more introspection than creativity. Also, I feel like it’s harder to tell a story built solely on emotion and reflection. In other games, most of my writing described the scenery, the events taking place, and other concrete things. This game was a lot different in that it’s almost just a train of thought. It’s clearly a lot different from my usual games/subject matter, but I hope it turns out well. I wanted to switch things up a bit and try something new. Even if it isn’t perfect, I won’t regret trying something different. I’ll go back to the typical weird little horror-ish games after this one.

UI/Cutscene:

I made a little title screen and a cutscene that plays at the end. I like it. It’s not amazing or anything, but I ran out of time for this game a while ago, so I don’t really think I need to worry about achieving perfection. Anyway, I think both are still cute and add to the game in general. The main start menu is just an image of the field with the crosses, and when you click start or quit, it makes a different UI sound. The cutscene is kind of just a few shots of the game panning, with the title shown at the end. I had my boyfriend test the game again, and I did a few final edits. Now I have to export it.

Packaging:

Packaging this game has been such an agonizing experience. At first, I was getting errors and kept having to fix things, but only after waiting like an hour for my game to try to package every time. Then, when it finally worked, it didn’t work. My start menu opens, I click start, and then the level loads, but with no assets—only the landscape heightmap, music, and character. I spent hours trying to fix this, but I realized that when I don’t start with my main menu, the game loads fine. I really don’t get it. I double-checked, and it does load the right level 100%; all the assets are cooked, full rebuild is checked, and everything, but it just won’t work.

For the time being, I think I have to just accept this and export my game without the title screen for now. I really don’t have more time to spend on this. Maybe this is an issue I can fix later, but for now, I need to worry about starting and finishing my last game. I may update this game in the future, but for now, at least it’s released. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the game! 😊