GABRIEL FUENTES

Month 2: Game Systems Integration

This video shows a quick weekly demonstration of what is being achieved during the milestones.

Key Things I Worked On This Month:

Project Details:

This month was broken into two separate 14-day milestones. Each milestone, at its core, was intended to quickly prototype different levels that introduced a variety of different gameplay scenarios in order to test how our mechanics held up in multiple situations. We managed to do 2 action blocks per person, for a total of 12 levels to test our mechanics. Here we were able to see what mechanics were still resulting in fun or interesting choices and which were falling short in delivering a meaningful or interesting gameplay experience.

Implemented the main functionalities of the Wall Climbing mechanic
Designed multiple graybox environments to test key gameplay features of the
games
Took the initiative to implement a new enemy type
Helped perform playtests to gather critical game bugs, levels feedback and
gameplay balancing

Below you can find more information related to the month!

Feedback & Iterations

During this month, we wanted to see what mechanics were still resulting in fun or interesting choices and which were falling short in delivering a meaningful or interesting gameplay experience. After receiving feedback, we decided to cut the slow-down ability, since it was frustrating instead of fun. After taking this risk, we needed to add something that could replace this mechanic by making the player have interactions throughout the game.

We decided to make a Wall Climb system to provide verticality to the player so that they can use it together with the warp-strike mechanic. This new implementation requires a drastic change in the level design as well since now the player will need walls where they can climb and at the same time, it needs to make sense with the level in general. In order for it to make sense to the player, I decided to make every climbable ledge yellow, as the main color for this affordance. I took references and inspiration for this from games like Uncharted and The Last of Us.

Designing Action Blocks

When designing my two action blocks, I had the wall climb and wall-running mechanics in mind, so I had to make it fun and as clear to the player as possible. These levels mostly focus on player mobility and verticality, while using clear affordances such as red for the wall-running mechanic and yellow for the wall-climbing mechanic.

To show the players these mechanics throughout the action blocks, I implemented a UI in World Space, so that the player can recognize them immediately as soon as they see this UI in front of the mechanics. The UI indicates the key that needs to be pressed and when to do it in order to do it correctly.

Iterating Combat System

During this month, we also iterated the Combat System, and it became more complex and overall more fun and easy to manage. To this iteration, we added a Combo System which featured light and heavy attacks. We also added a Dodge Mechanic with a player snapping which puts the player closer to the enemies every time the player attacks. To make this, we took inspiration from the game Shadow of War which has many things similar to our game, especially its combat.

The Dodge Mechanic was something that took us some iterations for it to work as intended. To this, we also added color-coded UI so the player can distinguish the right timing a lot easier. The color gray means that the player should wait longer to press the E key, while the color blue means that the player should press the E key to get a perfect dodge. If the player achieves a perfect dodge, the key UI changes to green, otherwise it changes to red instead.

New Enemy Design Implementation

We also wanted more enemy variations so that the combat could feel more fun. To solve this, I decided to implement two new enemies with different abilities/weapons. I worked together with the combat programmer and designed the new enemies based on his specifications and the values that already existed for combat since I did not want to affect the system we already had working. The result of this was a long-distance enemy who shoots projectiles at the player from time to time, and a shield enemy that attacks the player if they stay in front of him for a long time.