Wellness Town
Social Simulator RPG
Build relationships with and help members of your community
Wellness town is a Social Simulator RPG game, in which the player interacts with members of their community and helps them if they need it, with the goal of promoting empathy and the importance of good wellbeing to the player. The player is a new resident in town, and is quickly tasked (by a mysterious tree) with helping residents through the problems they are facing.
Platform
Windows
Language
C++
Software
Unreal Engine 5
Visual Studio 2022
Contributions
Me - AI and Gameplay Programmer
Ben King - Project Leader and Level Designer
Lucian Matan - Lead Programmer
Ben Stott - Technical Designer
Courtney Barnard - Lead Artist
Alex Zlotea - Environment Artist
Matthew Cowley - Props Artist
Tom Martin - Props and UI Artist
About the Project
Wellness Town was created, over a 6 week period, for our client Dr Paul Watson after they came to us with a pitch for their game and a prototype for us to look at.
The aim of the game is to promote the importance of wellbeing, specifically being aware and taking notice of the people around the player.
Before development started, the team sat down with Dr Paul Watson to discuss their intention with the game and any ideas that the team had (to make sure that they fit within the client's image for the game).
The aim for our team was to create a prototype that could be handed over to another development team (or further developed by us) to easily add to the game.
Throughout, I was tasked with working on the AI (NPCs and bugs currently) and most gameplay elements (including Player classes, various objects in the game, some UI elements, and any data management for the NPCs).
Images
Videos
Relevant Documents
A report on the development of Wellness Town, including: Information on the client, the development process, and a brief overview of some of my personal contributions.
What I learned
- Working with C++ in Unreal. Although I have worked within Unreal Engine before and already had a basic understanding of programming within Unreal, this was a project that I could really focus on expanding my knowledge in Unreal as I could start development from the 'ground up'. I took time to get a deeper understanding of Unreal's implementation of smart pointers, I utilised a lot of data types that I was familiar with outside of Unreal Engine, and I also implemented design patterns (such as the Builder pattern) that I had used in contexts, in Unreal Engine.
- Working with Unreal's UI systems. Working on this project expanded my knowledge on UI in Unreal Engine, particularly when working on the Minimap and Journal.
- Implementing Mantling. Mantling was something that I had seen in many games and wanted to implement into one of my own projects, and this project allowed me to do that.
Current Goal
Currently not working on Wellness Town