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KEIS Sprint 3

  This sprint, I worked on some improvements to the enemy wave and damage system, some status conditions for the enemies, as well as some exciting VFX! When I started working on the blood VFX, I knew I wanted to do something similar to ULTRAKILL’s rendition. I started with Unreal Engine 5’s directional burst niagara template, because it featured ribbon-like trails behind the particles that I knew I wanted. However, these ribbons were square on each end, and I wanted mine to taper off instead of just end abruptly. To this end, I duplicated the built in ribbon material so I could make some modifications. I found that by plugging a sphere mask into the opacity of the material, and then multiplying the radius by the particle’s relative age (a 0-1 value representing the percentage of the particle’s lifetime that has already passed). This worked pretty well, and gave my ribbons a more rounded, tapering look! The second major problem I had to solve was getting the particles to leave...
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Idle Witchcraft Sprint 2

  This sprint, I worked on implementing the scenario system, as well as creating some concept art for ingredients and potions in the GDD! Left to Right: Phoenix Feather, Nightshade, Giant’s Toe, Wyvern Scale To start off, the concept art I did was mostly just quick digital sketches based on the cards in my paper prototype, or a reference photo that I found online in the case of the nightshade. These aren’t meant to be high quality drawings, but more so an outline of ideas that I can hone in on when I’m creating the pixel art assets next sprint.  Left to Right: Cloaking, Gigantification, Hunter’s Sense, Immediate Combustion, Larger Mind, Radiance For the potions, I tried to decide on somewhat unique silhouette’s and color palettes for each one, so that they can be easily told apart at a glance. I also tried to convey the attributes of the potion through their shapes so that players will be rewarded for trying to intuit what they do (the exception here is immediate combust...
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KILL EVERYTHING IN SIGHT Sprint 2

  I began this sprint by working on implementing shooting behavior for our enemies. Currently my enemy AI was capable of navigating to the player and punching, but not firing projectiles from a distance. To this end, I needed a couple of new things: a projectile for the enemies to fire, a blackboard key containing the range at which the enemy will shoot the player, a BT task to call an enemy’s shoot function from within the BT, and then the shooting function itself within the enemy blueprint. Firstly, I created the BT task so that I could call the enemy’s shooting function, this was almost entirely the same as the original melee task, just with a different function to call within the base enemy class. Second, I created a decorator that checks if a target actor is within a range defined by a blackboard key. Within the AI controller, I assigned a FiringRange key inside the blackboard based on the enemy data table I created last sprint. Finally, the last thing I needed was to create...
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Mobile Game Development Sprint 1

  Deep in the woods neighboring a quiet village, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. The powerful witch who once had the skill and knowledge to brew any potion one could imagine… has erased her own memory! It’s up to you to help her rescue her animal familiars, rediscover her forgotten recipes, sell potions to the many heroes and villains throughout the land, and restore the lost memories of the lover she can’t remember in Idle WitchCraft! This is the description of the mobile game I’m developing in a team of three as the lead designer, and I’m super excited to bring it to life! Idle Witchcraft began as a simple idea: a potion selling simulator where you don’t know what you’re selling. A customer might come to your shop asking for a potion of strength to slay a dragon, so you hand him some bottle of red liquid with orange swirls that you think will do the job. However, you later found out that the potion caused the customer to explode instead! While a funny idea, it doesn’t enti...
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Video Game Production Sprint 1

  After a long time spent away from Unreal Engine, I’m getting my hands dirty once again as a programmer for the Kill Everything in Sight team! KEIS is an endless action FPS roguelite where you play as a killer robot tasked with exterminating the remains of the human race. Despite your incredible movement and combat abilities, you are severely limited by a timer ticking down during the entirety of your run. Killing enemies will add precious grains of sand to your cruel hourglass, so the player must focus on speed just as much as precision! I was brought on the team as a programmer, and I started off very nervous since it's been a while since I last programmed in Unreal. On top of that, my first task was to create the foundation of our enemy AI, probably the most critical gameplay element after the player and level design, and I haven’t touched AI in Unreal outside the absolute basics! However, I was determined to make my team proud and confident in my ability to learn quickly...
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