Project Foundations

If you've been following my LinkedIn, you've probably seen a lot of posts recently about 'Project Foundations'. Well, what is it?

The Lead-up

After applying to jobs and getting rejected again and again without any real reasoning, I turned to looking at work done by mid-level and senior roles to compare to mine. While this is setting a higher expectation than what is expected of someone in my position, which I would describe as junior, it showed me the elements of game development I am missing. This was also reinforced by my time with Infinity27. During their bootcamp, I had various opportunities to talk to internal and external developers, this helped study their work so I could find skills that would be beneficial to level up with the target of becoming a game developer.

The Goal

Working with and for professionals enabled me to highlight areas where I either lacked knowledge or lacked practice. With this, I identified areas I would like to work on and created a list of skills I would work on one month at a time. The list goes as follows:

Planning

NPC Behaviour

Level Design

Environment Design

Character Design

Animations

Niagara

Multiplayer

Gameplay

Player and NPC Dialogue

Quest Design

Starting from March 2025, I have focused on each topic, taking the entire month to do so with various success. Outside factors have been causes on limitation on work done, however I am consistently learning new techniques, tools and workflows which are actively being utilised within the project. Of course, not every topic of game design is covered in this list, these are what I believe are major skills that encase a large variety of other skills. For instance, as I write this, I am currently on Level Design. With Level Design, I am also learning about landscaping tools, Procedural Content Generation (PCG) and real world history research techniques.

This is not intended to be a AAA title, or even a 50p steam dump posting. The overarching purpose is to show off my talent, employability and increase my social profile exposure. Job hunting in the games industry is near impossible, this will hopefully be one of the many steps in this ladder of visibility I am making for myself.

The Vision

'Project Foundation' is ultimately planned to be a simulation of a fantasy-type medieval town. Each NPC will have a personality, jobs, and quirks. Though limited by the fact that an NPC will never truly have free-will, I would like to end up with a behaviour tree model that allows an NPC to make it's own decisions, priorities, and maybe even ambition. I know my current limits, I'm not expecting something as advanced as 'The Sims', or even the more recently released 'InZoi', but I would like to have a strong enough skill in Unreal Engine to create a realistic simulation of daily life.

Though 'Gameplay', 'Player and NPC Dialogue' and 'Quest Design' are topics that I wish to cover, this is not intended to turn this into a 'game'. At most, I would like the player to be able to assist in a villager's daily life. This could easily spiral into complexity, however this is ultimately just a simulation.

Current Progression

Enough with walls of text, here's the good bit. Videos and pictures!

During March, I built a foundation for NPC behaviour. This is nowhere near as much as I wanted to get done, unfortunately I was quite unwell for over half of the month. I intend to come back to NPC behaviour later on in the project if and when I find some spare time. For now, these two videos below a stockpile restock system iteration managed by behaviour trees and time of day.

Version 1: Basic Restock

Version 2: Working Hours

Currently, it is April, this means it's the month of Level Design! This is one skill that I have wanted to dedicate a lot of time to for a long time but I never knew where to start. Now that I had a project in mind, it made it so much less overwhelming for research topics and YouTube tutorial search terms! Following a live lesson from Ryan Laley, I picked up new skills and principles when it come to designing a town. I ulitised that wide array of tools he displayed to build the blockout shown below. Some buildings are mid-greybox as that is where I currently am as i'm writing this!

Village Layout

Iteration 1 - Duke's Grounds Greybox

Iteration 1 - Tavern Greybox

Iteration 0 - Start of Water Mill Greybox

This is what I have so far! I know what you're thinking; this is not a lot for 3 months worth of work. Absolutely, you are correct, however something to keep in mind is I work up to three jobs at any one time. Two contract and one self-employed roles, all related to some element game design, so burnout is easy! Everything I do is towards my dream of being a game developer. I just want to make something that someone can enjoy. Some things are worth it, and the time I spend doing everything I do is absolutely worth it.

If you got this far, thank you so much for following along. Please keep an eye on my LinkedIn for more frequent updates! From now, I plan to make a blog post here at the end of every month, outlining progression and final versions. You can also find me less frequently on X, plus occasionally on TikTok (I didn't realised short-form content would be so difficult!).