Ocularis

Ocularis is a 3rd person action RPG set in a medieval semi-open world having ca. 10h play time. In a team of nine developers I am responsible for

  • narrative design: worldbuilding, characters, story, writing, dialog implementation
  • design, scripting and refinement of a dialog system with several sub-features
  • managing our four voice actors and coordinating bigger design issues like new level districts
  • level design and –art
  • cinematic design
  • lots of smaller, mostly content related works: controls overview, tutorial, open world interactions, loot, lighting

We are developing since April 2021 using a Scrum-inspired production methodology.

Narrative Design

My main role is to deal with everything affecting the game’s narrative. This includes creating and implementing the whole story and its context:

Furthermore, I have developed my own character sheets based on many ressources; they are now my starting point whenever I want to make a character more complex.

Scripting

My scripting activities included first and foremost the dialog system. Inspired by Cyberpunk 2077, it features e.g.

  • regular features: text/speech, (timed) choices, nonlinear paths, a facts database, ..
  • dynamic management and interruption for concurrent scenes
  • scenes happening without leaving gameplay state

The system is designed according to standard principles of software engineering (loose coupling, simplicity, ..), which allowed me to migrate it to other games and enable colleagues to use it.

Open World & Level Design

My third important contribution is defining visions, designs & coordination plans with our level designers/artists and participating in the execution of those myself at various points in production.

The slideshow below shows the evolvement from

  1. the first ideation on the placement of locations, based on the flat map
  2. a developed sketch of the map with all major elements roughly placed (we later moved e.g. the entrance to the mountain pass further to the right to archieve more of a balance between the two flanks)
  3. a late form with connectivity in the existing map as focus of analysis
    (the player starts at the bottom)

Scriptwriting and Voice Actor Management

Next to the actual design work, I’ve been writing all the mono- and dialogs for the game, and working with our voice actors to produce them. This included

  • introducing them to the game and their character
  • sending out recording requests in regular intervals
  • keeping track of recording and implementation status
  • reviewing voicelines and preparing them for implementation
  • implementing voicelines

Below you see some writing samples and a custom Google Sheet for tracking progress.