- Team Size: 30 people
- Role: Technical Level Designer
- Platform: PC Windows
- Engine: Unreal Engine 4
- Genre: Action Platformer
- Status: Released (Steam)
- Steam – 50k Downloads
- BUAS – Best Y3 Game
Contribution
- Rapid Prototyping: Prototyped several traversal, combat, and environment mechanics. Based on both my ideas, and those of my fellow designers.
- Combat Design: Flesh out the design for the player combat mechanics. And the behaviours for some enemy types.
- Technical Level Design: Implement and polish several enviornmental mechanicals. Bridge the level design and programming department, to support the design of a procedural chunk-based level generation system
- Level Design: Design level chunks, from high level concept to low level scripting. Collaborating with environment art department to ensure gameplay is preserved throughout the art pass.
- Encounter Design: design some of the enemy encounters for the level chunks I worked on. Design the combat arena encounter that ends the game.
- Team Size: 8 people
- Role: Gameplay Designer
- Platform: PC Windows
- Engine: Unreal Engine 4
- Genre: Action Platformer
- Status: Released (Itch.io)
Contribution
- 3C Design: I tweaked the feel of walking and jump in the default Unreal engine 4 character actor. I set up the game camera and implemented its designer behaviours using visual scripting in Unreal engine. Finally, I designed how the player character would be controlled with either gamepad or mouse and keyboard, and set up the input logic in engine.
- Animation Programming: I sourced animations from Mixamo that matched our intended feel for the character. Used Blender to tweak the animations by adding a root bone, so that root motion would properly work in Unreal. Then, I imported the animations in Unreal, and implemented them through visual scripting in the animation blueprint, using a combination of state machines, blend spaces, and animation montages.
- Combat Design: I designed and implemented through visual scripting, the combat system where your health is your ammo. The player can pick up wooden cubes that will hover around you. The player can fire one cube at a time, to try and damage its enemy (a wooden train). If the player is hit by the boss enemy (wooden train), a cube will drop. If the player is hit when no cube is left, it will be game over. I designed and implemented all aforementioned behaviours.
- UX Design: Designed and implemented the game start screen, the game over screen, and the ending screen which plays when you beat the game.
- Team Size: 5 people
- Role: Technical Game Designer
- Platform: PC Windows
- Engine: Unreal Engine 4
- Genre: Arena Shooter
- Status: Released (Itch.io)
Contribution
- 3C Design: I set up the player movement by tweaking the default Unreal engine 4 character movement, and implementing a dash mechanic through visual scripting. I set up the first person game camera. And I designed the controls for both gamepad or mouse and keyboard, and implemented them through visual scripting.
- Combat Design: I designed and implemented the gun and melee attacks. I used the actor sequence tool in Unreal to animate the movement of the player’s gun and mechanical claw. Finally, I also designed and implemented the logic for the player health, and recharging energy shield.
- UX Design: I designed and implemented the main game loop for standard time-based death match with local multiplayer support.
Souls-like Weapon System
I wanted to improve my skills with data-driven programming, by trying to recreate the core logic behind the weapon system from FromSoftware’s RPG games. I wanted to create a system where a different attack would be performed depending on whether the player was in a neutral state, jumping, dodging sideway, dodging forward, or dodging backward. Where this moveset could be altered depending on which weapon is equipped. And where hitbox frames could be driven by the attack animation. To achieve this goal I had to learn about Data Structures, which allowed me to set up a moveset for my character. Then by also learning about data tables, I was able to iterate on my system, so that it could be scalable with the addition of more weapons.
Recreating FLOATING From Control (2019)
I wanted to improve my skills with control system and game feel, by recreating the levitation mechanic from Remedy Games’ Control (2019). I started by doing a thorough analysis of how floating/levitation works in Control. You can keep holding the jump button or start holding in mid air to start levitation. When entering the floating state, player character Jesse Faden gains a set amount of altitude. The camera and movement controls shift from independent to tank-like controls. The player gets a maximum amount of levitation time, but can start descending earlier at any time. During descent, the player can toggle back and forth between a slow descent without fall damage, and a faster drop with fall damage. Once I understood how levitation behaved in Control, I opened Unreal and started recreating the same behaviours with Visual Scripting, and then tweaked several parameters in my code until it felt good enough. I then implemented a basic shooting mechanic and some simple enemy drones to test the floating mechanic in a more dynamic enviornment. Finally, I realised a simple linear level to present my prototype to playtesters to receive feedback.
Weapon Inheritance
Inspired by playing Housemarque’s Returnal, I wanted to recreate some of its movement and combat mechanics, as part of my solo entry for the Epic MegaJam 2021. This includes recreating the grappling hook mechanic, which taught me more about using vector math and dot product specifically to determine the angle between the player character (and/or camera) and a given target point in the 3D space. And also using class inheritance in programming, to set up weapon classes which inherit behaviours from one another. Allowing me to set up many weapon with minor behaviour variations in a small time frame. Such as having some guns that fire continuously when fire input is held, and others that require holding the input for a certain period of time to charge a shot before they fire. Or having guns with similar firing behaviour, but vastly different firing rates. Finally, I also recreated Returnal’s cooldown system. Where weapons have a set amount of ammo, which will begin to refill at a certain rate after a small delay from the last shot. Unless the ammo is emptied completely. In which case a longer cooldown will begin. The player is however able to try tapping the fire button midway through the cooldown phase. If done at the right moment, this will result in an immediate cooldown. Otherwise, the player will have to wait for the rest of the cooldown time.
Steamboat Mike
After a specific version of a beloved character entered public domain, I was curious in trying to achieve the 1930s rubberhose look and feel in Unreal. Making thiss prototype taught me a lot about post processing in Unreal Engine. I also had the opportunty to figure out how to realise complementary UI assets using Affinity Designer.
Monument Valley in Unreal
I wanted to try and recreate the illusion from a specific level in Monument Valley, in Unreal engine. Since Unreal, unlike other engines such as Unity, does not allow to have different cameras render specific things, and then layer them on the player screen. I had to create my own systen, by using Unreak scene capture components. They act like cameras, but render to a flat texture, which I then had to manually render in the player’s viewport, using the UMG system for UI. As for the level geometry, I made a first blockout using BSPs in Unreal, in order to set the game camera and perspective accordingly. I later imported my blockout into Blender, to model the proper assets at scale, so they would resemble the original assets, and would better sell the illusion.
3D Platforming Traversal Mechanics Gym
I am currently working on a 3D platformer with a metroidvania structure. I was mainly inspired by Pseudoregalia and its fast development schedule. Like Pseudoregalia, I want to focus on smooth movement mechanics, and try to appeal to that same audience. So far I have mostly been focusing on prototyping movement mechanics. Another inspiration is going to be Ratchet and Clank. My goal is to create a system where eliminating targets enhances the player movement. While the weapons overheat and require performing movement feats to cooldown. My goal is to end up with a game easy to pick up like your average action platformer to a novice, while also allowing more experienced players to have more high level play.
Rubberhose 3D Platformer
I wanted to make a prototype for a 3D mascot platformer inspired to games like Sly Cooper and Jack and Daxter, but with a black and white rubberhose aesthetic. This experience mostly taught me about post processing in Unreal. I also learnt more about splines for my prototype of a train moving over tracks.
