Private Eye Pluto - Launch Notes

Thank you to millions of people who downloaded this triple-A quality project. Private Eye Pluto was a game I made in a Purdue Level Scripting class using a basic RPG template provided, and turned it into the fleshed-out award-winning game that it is today. But how did it all start? 

The World

About a year ago I started a Starfinder campaign set in a Sci-Fi world of my creation. The year is 2356, and Humanity has explored and colonized much of the Solar System. The Earth-based great powers of the Floridian Empire, Ethiopian Cybertocracy, Polish Security Compact, and Vietnamese Manufactorium all vie with each other for dominance, fighting great fleet actions in their Petrollium-Drive warships. Meanwhile, numerous megacorps and moon- and planet-states squirm and maneuver for greater autonomy. And on the solar system's outskirts, various enclaves, religious groups, and cults get up to shenanigans! Also, Mech-Dolphins.

Sadly, that campaign petered out after a few sessions due to schedule conflicts and my inability to find more players, and I stuck this world into my back pocket. Then, the very next semester, I had the opportunity to create a game using that world, or at least the outskirts of it.  

Development

The Purdue RPG Template, as it is called, featured a couple of basic functions. Beyond Unreal Engine's basic movement and landscape systems, the template had a handy-dandy mission system that allowed for very basic combat, waypoints, and dialogue. Throughout the game's development, I tacked on various extra functions, ie. extra options in combat, an inventory system, and environmental hazards to name a few. I also spent some time adding in audio and VFX.  

To make all my new systems and locations look good, I bought a lot of asset packs. Humble Bundle kept doing crazy 25-dollar deals for a smorgasbord full of environments, and I kept buying them even though it was unwise of someone of my means. If a pack had any sci-fi pieces in it, I bought it. But I know they'll come in handy for future projects I make. Let's be real, I couldn't make any art like this given a billion years and a Marvel movie's budget. 

I ran into a lot of challenges making this game, namely my lack of experience with a lot of the systems I made. I was quite baffled by Unreal's encouragement of using object references instead of class references for creating inventory systems. At one point, one of the missions was not working because it hallucinated tags that it did not have. I spent hours troubleshooting and hopping on calls with people until I finally gave up and remade the whole mission. It worked, and I realized that the problem mission was initially made by duplicating another mission and then editing its stats, and for some reason, the tags of the mission it was originally made with were overriding the new ones.

Closing Thoughts

Private Eye Pluto was a lot of fun to make, and I am proud of it as my first fully shipped game. It may not generate 30 hours of playtime, but I'm glad that it is done (and that it got me a pretty good grade). There's not much I would have done differently with its development, except simply devoting more time to it, and adding more additional encounters. But there are new game ideas that must be made!