MegaKill-ULTRA (DEMO)

Flash Warning: The game contains intense flashing colors and distorted visuals.

Created by: Jackson Hitz, Niko Nissen, Allan Zeng, Kareem Wellington, Ulises Gonzales, and Scott Kuwahara.

This project was created in the span of a few weeks for our first capstone series game jam; Which took place at UCSC, during the Fall quarter of 2024. We each took part creating custom scripts, 3D Models, environments, audio, and visual effects.

DESIGN 

Originally, MegaKill-ULTRA was designed as a top-down 2d driving game, similar to games like GTA 2 and Smashy Road, but because our team had a couple of people that were experienced with 3d modeling we decided to go for a first-person shooter as it will fit the “psychedelic” aesthetic better. Initially we tried to keep the driving aspect but eventually transitioned to a full first-person shooter, in which the player is tasked with eliminating targets while avoiding/taking out police. 

LEVEL DESIGN (Niko)

We decided that we wanted the player to exist in a city inspired by San Francisco. Which was a nod to the city's link to the events of MK Ultra in real life. The geography of the level was meant to feel steep and busy. Sections of the levels are also inspired by real locations. Such as the steep windy road in the corner of the map, which was heavily inspired by Lombard Street. After gridding out the basic aspects of the level in 2D, I layed that out flat onto a 3D space and began building directly off of it. We also created original house models which we imported into unity to use. Many iterations of the map were created depending on how the feel and development of the game changed.

PROGRAMMING (Kareem/Jackson)

Programming was split between Jackson and Kareem. Kareem was focused on mainly NPC AI and pathing, while Jackson did pretty much everything else in terms of programming. Originally, the game was meant to have cars, but creating the AI for them turned out to be difficult to learn how to do and complete within the time constraints of this project, so they ended up being scrapped.

ART/MODELING (Ulises/Scott)

Initially Ulises was working to model the police and civilian NPCs as well as the house models for the map. Scott modeled the cop car and driveable vehicle variations. However, after the playtest, since our group decided to scrap the driving aspect of the game, both artists pivoted to modeling environmental assets like park benches, stop signs, and other things found in a city.

SOUND (Abner/Jackson) 

The music for the game was supplied by Abner, focusing on strange, psychedelic tracks during the game and a calm, otherworldly beat for the title sequence. The game currently has about 8 tracks in it, each with their own feel. Much of the SFX in the game, such as gunshots and screams of distressed citizens was taken from royalty free asset sites, and was compiled together. 

EFFECTS (Jackson) 

By far the most challenging part of the VFX was trying to create a way to simulate the effects of LSD inside Unity. We accomplished this by layering both a post-process layer inside unity and a shader over the camera. The post-processing layer included many effects set to PingPong such as chromatic aberration, channel mixer, and color adjustments. The shader over the camera includes a distortion filter using gradient sound compiled with the overall UV of the scene, creating an immensely disorienting effect. 

WRITING/NARRATIVE (Allan/Jackson)

The writing and narrative was mainly split between Jackson and Allan, with Jackson as the original creator coming up with the wider narrative, setting, and general concept of the game, while Allan generally handled the more specific dialogue and story beats, including the ending dialogue. While we had the concept and setting of our game marked down from the very start, the more specific story elements and dialogue were added relatively late, given we needed to complete the more technical aspects of the game first to even include them. In general, we were unable to add in as much story content as we would’ve liked, given the fact that we would need multiple levels and locations to elaborate, something that within the timeframe we were given would’ve been unfeasible. However, we still think the overall setting and narrative concept of the game is enough to have an interesting hook for players to jump in on, even if we weren’t able to have multiple targets/characters and locations as we had hoped for.