Overview / Usage

Light of Alariya was developed from May to December 2022, by a team of 27 master's students from SMU Guildhall, along with 26 musicians and voice talent from SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts over a 6-month production. Light of Alariya marks several ambitious “firsts.” It is SMU Guildhall’s first open-world game as well as our first game built in Unreal Engine 5.

All the team members made significant contributions to puzzle design, open-world design, art design, or system structures. This is the most important and beneficial team experience for us to know all the development pipeline and how to cooperate with different disciplines.

Light of Alariya will be released on Steam in March, 2023. If you are interested in playing the game prior to launch, please contact Steve Stringer at gamelab@smu.edu.

Methodology / Approach

Teamwork is a fundamental part of the educational experience at SMU Guildhall and is integral to our curriculum, as it allows students to work together in a creative atmosphere where they make design decisions and realize them in a meaningful way.

Students form interdisciplinary teams to produce three games based on the skills taught in their specializations Art Creation, Level Design, Production, and Software Development. Each team is organized with student leads and has a life cycle from concept greenlight to publication. The final outcome of each project is a tangible artifact that students can share with friends, family, and game industry professionals.

Capstone games are the final team projects created by each graduating class C31's Capstone projects, recognized on the following pages of this catalog, were developed over the last two academic semesters during the course of the graduates' studies. The projects included the largest team size and grandest design scope, resulting in a total conversion over approximately 18 weeks using commercial development tools and best practices.

We are very proud of our students' accomplishments and hope they bring you as much enjoyment as they bring us at SMU Guildhall.

Technologies Used

We used Unreal Engine 5 and a standard set of game development tools such as Adobe CC, 3DS Max, Maya, Substance Designer, Mudbox, ZBrush, and a wide range of audio authoring and runtime tools. Intel technologies included a variety of hardware CPUs for QA, compatibility testing, and production support kindly provided by Intel's Academic Program.

We made sure the game runs well on a wide range of Intel CPUs in addition to discrete graphics cards such as the ARC 7xx series GPUs. Primary development was conducted on custom Lenovo Thinkpads featuring Intel i7 CPUs and augmented by a wide range of desktop systems, most of which were based on Intel hardware.

Hybridized production environment was facilitated in part by Intel NUCs attached to Zoom room systems which allowed remote team members to be integrated into the in-person dev studio seamlessly via telepresence.