BRIG




Brig, a third person shooter, set aboard a prison in space, offers intense science fiction moments with the Prisoner Maintenance System (PMS).  The player, Prisoner 8896, must navigate the ship with a PMS collar attached to his neck.  If the player steps outside the herder zones, the PMS activates, causing to the player to asphyxiate and die.  Along the way the player acquires a Prisoner Control Unit (or PCU) which allows 8896 to directly interact with other prisoners’ collars and the herder system aboard the ship.  Brig provides intense action sequences, challenging navigational puzzles that use the PMS, and a grand boss finale.

My responsibilities for BRIG included:

  • Design/Scripting the encounters in the Vertical Slice
  • Design/Scripting of the final level of the game
  • Member of the design team for the boss fight
  • Scripting reusable vignettes in Kismet
  • Created the Kismet for the health station
  • Created the fire particle
  • Designing the last puzzle room in the game

What I learned from this experience:

  • Working on a larger team and interacting with different focuses (ie Artists and Programmers)
  • How to work with other scripters in the same level
  • More accurately predict how long a task takes
  • Better prediction and management of Scope

Environmental storytelling scene that I put together for BRIG.  A fellow inmate has been impaled on the exposed pipes on the wall.  Blood covers the word “Barracks”.  Scene is meant to foreshadow what is to come.

Inspiration for this hallway came from games like Dead Space 2 and Mass Effect series.

Introduction cinematic to the second boss encounter.  The large room gives the player enough room to learn the mechanics.

Another environmental storytelling bit, the dead man’s shadow cast against the wall really sells the moment.

Scripted fright moment.  When the player heals themselves at the healing station, a presumed dead inmate surges to life and reaches for the player, only to fall lifeless again when the player is done healing.

Custom health station I scripted for our Team Game, Brig, using kismet.  When the player interacts with the switch, the kismet checks the players current health, subtracts that from 100 and then adds the difference back to the player, providing a full heal.

This section of kismet is a proof of tech for a “lights out” mini game for Brig.  The mini game has three lights lined up in a row; the goal is to turn off all the lights.  Every time you toggle a light, the adjacent lights toggle also.  Although the tech is only for a 1 x 3 grid, this tech can be used further to create a 3 x 3 grid, like the original “Lights Out”.  Each time the player toggles a switch, a boolean also is toggled keep track of the status of the light.

The image below shows the final check to see if the lights are indeed out.