Chroma

Chroma | Unreal Development Kit

About Chroma

A player jumps into the fray on the level "Hill Country"

Chroma is an easy to learn, fast paced, innovative third-person multiplayer deathmatch game. Players fight on levels inspired by Avant-garde art and retro games. Players can also contribute directly to the artistic inspiration behind Chroma. Every shot and footstep in the game leaves behind a decal, allowing players to paint the level and add their own personal touch.

Chroma's primary gameplay twist is the ability for players to walk on any surface at any time. This creates a unique play experience where combat happens all around the player, and opens up numerous new possibilities for strategy, tactics, and visual wow moments within the deathmatch framework.

Chroma features simple and intuitive controls that ensure players can hit the ground running. The game has only four weapons: the pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, and rocket launcher. Players can only carry one weapon at a time, and all weapons have infinite ammo, eliminating the need to worry about switching between weapons or reloading. Players also have permanent access to an alternate fire mode, which is a melee punch attack.

Chroma's pickups spawn upon a player’s death. These pickups, called Death Blossoms, grant a special ability based on the dead player’s rank in the match. The special abilities include invisibility, armor, rapid fire, and poison trails. The first-place player drops the most powerful Death Blossom, with the Blossoms declining in strength going down the rankings. The last place player's Death Blossom does not actually provide an ability at all, but is instead a bomb that chases the killer!

Lockdown, by Mitch Crossley

Hill Country, by Gabe Valdes

Mezzo Dreams, by Jamie Giannini

Responsibilities: Game Designer

Leading and maintaining the design of the core game mechanics
- Meetings
- Documentation (Game Design Document)
- Oversight of team task prioritization
Developing and balancing game metrics in Microsoft Excel and UnrealScript
Providing feedback on game assets (art, code, and levels) with respect to their fit into the overall game design/vision

Game Metrics

Team: Team Robot Legs
Role: Game Designer
Engine: Unreal Development Kit
Genre: Multiplayer Deathmatch
Number of levels: 6
Development Time: 18 weeks (including documentation and prototyping)
Team size: 10

3 Artists
5 Level Designers
2 Programmers

Responsibilities: Programmer

Implementing weapon mechanics (e.g. shotgun damage falloff, rocket area of effect)
Implementing Death Blossom mechanics (e.g. poison trail, invisibility, life steal)

Implementing feedback elements of game HUD (e.g. names & scores, damage splash, Death Blossom icons)

Adding sounds

What I Learned

I can make significant contributions on the programming side of a project if the need arises
How to balance the need for team feedback and buy-in on one side, and the need for a consistent design on the other side
Player feedback is beyond essential in creating a fun game
Successfully balancing a game requires many iterations of testing and tweaking, and must be started early in the development cycle
How to help an under-performing team member

Mobius, by Jamie Giannini

Chromatic Jungle Gym, by Mark Williams

Cubed, by Gabe Valdes

Game Designer

My primary responsibility during the development of Chroma was as Game Designer. Chroma's features evolved significantly during development, but the core concept remained consistent throughout. I was ultimately responsible for ensuring that all of the changes we made to the design adhered to that core concept, and I am extremely proud of the game that resulted. While Chroma is not perfect, it is a fun game that plays and feels dramatically different from other shooters, and is a fresh and memorable experience for players, which is what our team set out to achieve.

Below are some examples of design changes to Chroma that illustrate the thought process that went into designing Chroma.

The level "Mezzo Dreams" explores the possibilities that wall walking enables

Design Changes: Wall Walking

Chroma's initial design included levels without wall walking. The team decided that wall walking was a core mechanic that was critical to the game's surreal atmosphere and unusual gameplay. Levels without wall walking felt underwhelming and dull by comparison to levels with it. Thus, the team agreed to make wall walking a universal feature.

A poison trail left behind by a player with the Poison Blossom on the level "Hill Country"

Design Changes: Death Blossoms

Changes to the design of Death Blossoms included:

Removing "Combo" Death Blossoms. Players would acquire these by picking up multiple Death Blossoms. The team decided that combos could not be communicated to players in a way that was consistent with Chroma's simple style.

Adding a small health boost. This encourages aggressive gameplay, because players need to kill each other to spawn Death Blossoms.

Replacing Super Speed Blossom with the Vampire Blossom. The Super Speed Blossom was not fun for players, because it created navigational challenges when combined with wall walking. The Vampire Blossom allows players to regain health by damaging other players, again contributing to Chroma's aggressive gameplay.

Replacing the Invincibility Blossom with the Poison Trail Blossom. Having Invincibility forced other players to retreat, which did not fit our desire for aggressive, fast-paced gameplay. The replacement Poison Trail Blossom has several positive characteristics. Leaving a trail of poison particles contributes to the aesthetic sense of painting the level, and also encourages high activity/movement in order to take advantage of the trail by spreading it as fast as possible.

Adding homing functionality. Originally, Death Blossoms stayed where they dropped. This penalized players using the Pistol to fight from long range. Having Death Blossoms travel towards the killer increases their chances of picking up the Death Blossom. It also creates the opportunity to intercept a moving Blossom, a fun and skillful new tactic. Finally, this change allowed us to add the Bomb Blossom for the last place player. A Bomb Blossom that sat still would be no threat, but a Bomb Blossom that tracks the killer makes players think twice about attacking a struggling player.

A player with several Death Blossoms on the level "Lockdown"

Design Changes: HUD Icons

Chroma's initial design used particle effects on players to communicate the Death Blossoms they were carrying. While players could tell they were carrying something, they often didn't know what ability their Death Blossom granted. The HUD icons communicate the function of the Blossoms in a simple, graphical manner consistent with Chroma's aesthetics.

This screenshot shows a player with the Fire Rate (orange, 2x rate of fire with all weapons), Berserk (green, 3x melee damage), and Super Jump (violet, 2x jump height & distance) Death Blossoms.

An illustration of the advantages of relative gravity on the level "Mobius"

Design Changes: Relative Gravity

Relative gravity was something the team wanted, but was initially wish listed due to technical concerns. The team decided to increase its priority once testing showed that it was vital to navigation.

With normal gravity, a player who misses a jump from a ceiling to a nearby platform would fall all the way down to the floor. This player would now be much further away from his intended destination, without the ability to easily try again. In order to mitigate this, players must keep track of their orientation at all times, an undesirable distraction from Chroma's simple gameplay.

With relative gravity, the same player would simply land close to his starting point, and could easily try again.

This screenshot illustrates the advantages of relative gravity.

Without relative gravity, this player could only jump to the mobius strip on the right if the world's positive Z-axis is close to the normal of the strip he's currently standing on (i.e. if he's on a floor). If the world's Z-axis is pointing the opposite direction (i.e. if he's on a ceiling), once he jumps, gravity would pull him "upward", away from his intended destination and toward the world's floor.

With relative gravity, he knows he'll be pulled downward relative to his current orientation once he jumps, so he knows he can reach the strip on the right.

Thus, relative gravity eliminates the need for players to track their absolute orientation, making navigation painless and intuitive.