Shooter Game and Study

Have homework to do but rather play games? Put your homework in the game! 

Shooter Game and Study is a third person shooter game with custom content made for the I Love Science Game Jam 2022, Perth, Australia in 48 hours. 

https://itch.io/jam/i-love-science-game-jam

This project was a way to explore the Unreal Engine 5's Lyra Starter Game (Epic Games) template for beginners to game development and Unreal Engine, but also to bring what would normally be 2D text and images into a 3D environment. The game includes some educational content about infectious diseases, and music/audio engineering concepts scattered throughout the game. 

Initially, the idea was to make a far more interactive game with unique game mechanics that would align more with the game jam's theme of "Frequency". Unfortunately, the only developers in our team had to pull out of the jam halfway due to unforeseen circumstances, so I was forced to improvise having no prior experience with Unreal Engine nor game development. The game itself was already prebuilt by Epic Games, so the bulk of the work was level design, searching for and curating the content to be placed into the game, embedding images into meshes (like posters on walls at a scientific conference), positioning objects, and testing gameplay. In one section, I recreated the layout of an actual molecular microbiology laboratory with purchased 3D assets. I was unable to integrate the music, but it is available on Soundcloud (thanks for all your hard work, Martin!).

I have since found the template useful and fun to swap out the content for other topics. This could be used as an extension of the "mind palace" technique that some memory champions use for rote learning  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

Credits: 

• Game template: Epic Games 
  https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/lyra 
• Brainstorm: David Kong, @Zacaboy, @TqF.Production, @Demonheadge 
• Level Design, Asset Curation, Testing:  David Kong 
• Music:  @TqF.Production (unused) 
  https://soundcloud.com/tqf-production/sets/pcr-lab?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
• Additional content:  Wikipedia , @virus.vs.labcoat, GISAID, Izotope, laboratory asset pack purchased from Quang Hoang (Naked Singularity Studio)

Thank you to all who have tried this game!

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Update 2024: 
Epic Games has since released UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) in March 2023. https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/fortnite--uefn

I have explored using the VR template project by Epic Games for a more immersive experience. https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/vr-template-in-unrea...