TEAM PROJECT
UNREAL ENGINE 5.6.1
BLUEPRINTS
WINDOWS
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
You find yourself in a simulation with various puzzles to complete, you must use different robots with different abilities to complete them!
This was the last of the 3 experimental games our group did, this time it was centred around a core mechanic. We decided on a possession system where you switch between different robots and inherit their capabilities whether that be moving, jumping or picking things up.
MY CONTRIBUTIONS
Robot possession system
Robot abilities
UI systems
Death & respawn system
Pressure pad puzzle system
Timer & death counter
Basic movement
SUMMARY OF DEVELOPMENT
CREATING THE CORE MECHANIC
The core mechanic being possession based made it simple to create, I made it so the player must look at and fire a line trace to the robot they wanted to possess, this would also add a layer of challenge and complexity to puzzles as you have a line of sight of the robot to possess.
For implementing the system of inheriting the robots abilities I made each have a structure with all the different abilities contained inside. When the player possesses the robot it takes that structure to identify what abilities the robot has and also means that the system is expandable to as many abilities as I decide to add.
DIFFERENT ABILITIES
For the current prototype I created 3 different abilities that demo what is capable with this system, the first is picking objects up. During the game the player will encounter pressure pads that require a certain object placed on top to activate, the second is jumping. Having the ability to jump meant that we could add different heights and more complexity to each area and having it as a ability instead of a core movement mechanic meant that we could control what each robot can reach and finally crouching. The reasoning is more of less the same as jumping, it's mainly to gate the robots in certain areas to add complexity.
This system was designed in mind for expansion therefore in practice we could add as many different and more creative abilities as we liked without running into issues. Another thing I added was a pad that held the different abilities on so the player could know what they could do as their current robot.
CREATING THE PRESSURE PADS
The puzzles in the game are mainly focused around a core system, the pressure pad. This is what the player uses to activate different things in the puzzles (Moving platforms, Doors, etc.). These can be activated by 2 different ways:
1. The player possess a robot and sets them onto the pressure pad, (Mainly used for doors).
2. The player uses the pickup ability and places a cube onto the pressure pad, (Mainly used for moving platforms).
This meant that we could come up with creative ways to make the puzzles complex. A problem I ran into with this is that sometimes the cube falls into the death zones and get deleted causing the player to be unable to complete to puzzles. My solution was found in inspiration from similar games, a tube that spits out a new cube when the player requests one from a button. This required some fine tuning so that there's a maximum of 1 cube at all times.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I really enjoyed working on this project, Definitely happy with what we created in 3 weeks and most systems are expandable so it could be something we revisit and flesh out and finish, I do think I could've been more creative with the time we had when it comes to abilities, maybe a robot that could climb walls or act as a platform the player can move around, etc. Maybe could've communicated better with the level designer to better design and create more complex and interesting puzzles but communication was something that we were learning to improve on overtime and during this project ran into a lot of schedule conflicts which also limited our communications.