NIALL DUNLOP
Platform: Windows PC
Tools used: Unreal Engine 5, Ink, Atlassian Suite, Google Suite, Miro
Project type: Narrative-driven detective game
Role: Quality Assurance, Narrative Design
Trailer
Narrative Design
PROTOCOL's narrative saw a period of rapid iteration and several rewrites early on in development. In the first three months of development I brought the plot overview from a high-level single page document to an 18-page scene-by-scene walkthrough of the game's story.
I developed and implemented three separate pipelines for the narrative: at first these pipelines were just one, but diverged later when our narrative design needs became more fleshed out.
I took my content from confluence to Ink: a middleware programming language designed for implementing dialogue, flavour text and miscallaneous written content into games. Ink is an extremely versatile and useful tool and is quickly becoming the industry standard tool for game writing.
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Ink is a robust and versatile tool: variables can be taken from Unreal to ink and vice versa, opening up the door to all kinds of gameplay and story integration. In PROTOCOL, we used "Tags" to identify the character speaking. These tags determined the colour of the text displayed, the voice clip used and the speed and rhythm of the text. This system formed the backbone of a rich and immersive dialogue system and made each character stand out more.
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PROTOCOL's story was told between "BIOS" scenes- dream sequences formatted in the style of PC startups, and a stream-of-consciousness monologue from the perspective of the main character.
I worked closely with the environment team to​ write about a range of props and set pieces to
bring the world of PROTOCOL to life.
Quality Assurance
PROTOCOL's Quality Assurance needs, while simple, were integral to the project's success.
My approach to QA was focused on the end user, and relied quite hea​vily on user feedback.
I was able to arrange and conduct three in-person play tests over the course of PROTOCOL's development.
Google Forms was the ideal tool for this, allowing to compile the collected feedback easily in the form of spreadsheets.
