"Initializing Systems. Unit ID: FyED-OR. Electromagnets: Active..."    -FyED-OR

Привет everyone! Welcome to Moscow, the Soviet Union, in the futuristic year of 1998! The world is different, but seemingly similar. There’s something off about this cyberpunk world– perhaps it’s that the Soviets are in full control of their world, and their future.

Immerse yourself into this strange world as magnetic limbed robot, FyED-OR, awoken in some sort of enigmatic facility’s trash compactor. Can you solve the various puzzles to escape and find your purpose? Or will you be the many similar magnetic robots who were compacted with the trash you awoke within? The future is yours.

This game takes place in a very specific aesthetic, that I’ve noticed isn’t really explored much. It’s cyberpunk– however, the assumption of this specific world is that it’s within the Soviet Union. So ask yourself, what if the cyberpunk aesthetic existed within the USSR? And that’s what we have here– Soviet Punk. Based off of 1970s and 1980s Soviet architecture and literature, Soviet Punk is a mixed of retro-futurism and the near-(not-so-near)-future. That means flying cars, lots of neon lights, and whatever sci-fi nonsense you can think of!

You control the robot named FyED-OR, a magnetically limbed robot who awakes in some sort of trash compactor in a mysterious facility. It’s your job to get out of it, and figure out your purpose. This facility is essentially made up of three main areas: a trash compactor room, a vertical storage section, and a hangar bay. It’s up to you, the player, to get out of this facility, and continue with your quest to find who you really are!

See, FyED-OR is equipped with some special equipment built in their arms and their legs– magnets! You can attract yourself to specially magnetized surfaces with your legs, and pull and push objects with your arms’ magnets’ polarity. It’s up to you to go through and solve puzzles in order to get out!

So how did this project come along?

To be honest, it was very, very, challenging. Despite the fact that I was working on my MQP for this, I had to essentially double the amount of work done on this project myself. Not only did I have to do all the artistic assets, but I also had to do them two-fold in order to reach the quality I was aiming for.

One of the largest iterations was actually the level design. It took quite a few different versions until I was happy with it. Moreover, the largest problem wasn’t the iterative way I built the level, but rather the way the level was constructed. Originally I had built it not very modular, which caused it to be essentially fixed to the original design–

…not very good if you want to build off/iterate on your level.

Another challenge was the player itself. FyED-OR is a fun little robot, but figuring out the camera controller was really hard. The facility harbors somewhat tight and cramped interiors, scattered with large and open rooms. This made it challenging to see if a first person camera, or a third person camera would be the best. Despite the efforts, it just seemed like first person was the way to go.

Another issue I came across was my inefficient use of UV-texture spaces. This is something I realized a bit too late into my endeavors with this level. Essentially, each modular part was just too big, and thus the UV-texture would be too overscaled. You can notice the difference in texture resolution if you look at the walls versus things like the boxes or props around the map. In the future, I now learned that I have to really break up the modular parts.

Smaller = higher resolution!

Another thing that was challenging is really showing orientation. In a game that’s all about walking on walls and ceilings– it’s quite important to show how the player is orientated. Having certain props, but also contrasting colors, to show which way is up or down, really helps the player. I’ll admit, I’m still not quite happy with this current set up, but I think it still shows what I was trying to aim for. I think if I were to go back and edit it, I would definitely add more props that obviously show the direction of gravity. Things like swinging overhead lamps, smaller props like cans or little computer monitors– really anything that shows some sort of directionality.

I was quite happy with the lighting done on this level. I put a lot of work specifically adding emissive textures to a lot of the level. I chose the two main colors of orange and blue as they’re both complimentary colors and work really well together– but also contrast sublimely with each other. It’s a good way of breaking up large (or small) spaces, and really showing off certain areas. What really made everything look great was the long time spent baking all the lights. I’ll admit, it probably took around forty-five minutes, and if I made any changes to the lights (i.e. add some new ones, remove them, move them around, etc.) I would have to re-bake them for another forty-five minutes.

Here’s the video I made for the final. Unfortunately, Unity decided to throw a fit trying to build the whole scene. Despite my best efforts looking online to figure out why, I just couldn’t seem to figure it out. So here’s the game played within the Unity Build!

That’s the reasoning as to why there isn’t any worthwhile sound, and the abysmal FPS. I hope that’s understandable.

And here’s a previous video done for Alphafest showing off some of the sound effects that I wish could be present in the first video!

It’s been a fun project, and I plan on continuing it! I hope one day you’ll be able to try it out (if I can figure out this stupid ICCRR error I keep getting trying to build it).

Thank you everyone, and Спасибо to all. Have a great upcoming holiday!