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Have you Herd?
Floppy and the Sleepy Planet
Floppy and the Sleepy Planet
Top Down Team Couch co-op
Floppy and the Sleepy Planet
Floppy and the Sleepy Planet
Floppy and the Sleepy Planet
3rd Person Over the Shoulder
Have You herd?
Steam Teaser Video
Click image to view teaser trailer in the Steam Store
Game Details
1-4 Player party game, Have you Herd delivers bubbly fun for kids and adults of all ages. Take control of one of our 6 herding dogs to complete short animal herding scenarios with your friends. Players can choose to follow a multiplayer story path or engage in head to head herding challenges in our multiplayer vs mode.
My Contributions
Phase 1- Prototyping
In this project I served primarily as a Technical and Level designer but wore many hats such as UI design and integration, UX based on testing feedback, and worked to optimize visual scripting code banks . I also worked directly with art and programming teams to ensure fidelity of created assets to design goals and objectives. Below are my contributions for each phase of the project.
Phase 1- Prototyping
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
Phase 1- Prototyping
In this phase I assisted with the engineering and prototyping of basic gameplay systems and level design goals to better refine the game ideas. I blocked out levels while testing and modifying gameplay assets. I built our pressure pad assets and animated the pressure pad and our gates used to stop players and their animals from moving around. I helped bring ideas from our game design document to a testable prototype phase.
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
I tested and iterated assets while communicating with the tech design and art team to create exactly what was needed for the best gameplay potential. The highlight for me was taking our conveyor belt and making a modified version that launched our players and animals into the air like a cannonball shot out of a cannon. This asset became our "animal launcher" which shoots our animals through the air to objectives or other locations and ended up being one of our main gameplay features later on. This also added a level of humor to our game which was sought after for our audience and game direction. It is hilarious to see the animals getting flung through the air as they sail across the level to different objectives.
Phase 3- Gameplay Refinement
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
(Multiplayer Conveyor Map)
I worked on developing gameplay levels that would end up being our main demo levels for the first live demo. I took block-out levels and built them with our final assets. I used our 3D Asset tool kit to setup 4 levels in our demo, 2 campaign maps and 2 multiplayer maps. Each level had a different game mode I had a hand in programming. My favorite of the levels I made was the "conveyor belt" multiplayer map. In this map I built tunnels around our conveyors that acted like a production line cranking out animals which would drop on a large conveyor over our water trap. The players had to scoop up their animals while avoiding dangerous obstacles and not getting pushed down into the water. Two animal launchers at the tops of each side allowed for players to launch to the middle of the conveyor making for a fun experience launching themselves onto the conveyor full of animals scattering other players herds.
Phase 4- The Revamp
Phase 5- Optimization
A re-design and re-structure of the team was required before we could move on. At this time many assets were taken back to the drawing board and new features introduced to the design for more interactive and interesting gameplay. I introduced new core gameplay design for the main player mechanic and for one of our main antagonistic animals " The Bull". The bull acts as a disruptor to the players efforts by bouncing around the map at high speed while knocking the player and animals back if they ran into the bull and causing the player to respawn if hit directly in front of the bulls horns. I also redesigned our scoring pens using blueprint to communicate gameplay events to our game mode and our VFX and SX features on the pen. I helped design the art to be used for the asset and then animated the pen to respond when the player scored or fully filled a pen causing it to raise out of the ground and close.
Phase 5- Optimization
Phase 5- Optimization
I took on the task of cleaning up, labeling and optimizing core gameplay Blueprints and architecture implemented by previous developers on the project. This was a challenging phase where I organized, restructured, and correctly architected core systems using Object oriented programming philosophies for game modes and key gameplay assets. I created our level building that communicates with our game mode and also give our designers a more robust and streamlined way to setup levels. This asset could be dropped into any map and used to set the game mode type and control level events such as timed events, level length, spawning rates and spawning quantity.
Phase 6- Final Implementation
We ditched Multiplayer in favor of better single player maps. Three levels were created to showcase our new gameplay campaign mode direction. I helped iterate and design for all three levels. Level 1 I helped to iterate and provide feedback to one of our level designers. Level 2 was my design and I assisted in its setup and balancing phase. Level 3 I designed in blueprints the mechanism that brought in the " flood" and alert and update the player to the current flood status. The system also moved the giant level blocks around that changed the level after every flood event to transition between 4 different setups. I worked directly with game artists and another level designer to polish and create our gameplay levels for the final project. I also had a hand in the design and implementation of player portraits, scoring meters, and determined sizes for all of our gameplay assets. I switched us from using 10 to 12 as our base scale. This allowed us to use 1m 2m 3m 4meter metrics for our asset design where previously we were limited to 1m 2m and 5m. This solved some spacing issues we were having with our assets allowing us to make better use of 3m 6m and 12m long objects.
Soul hammer
Summary
Soul Hammer Is a top down hero tower defense with RPG elements. This game is a solo development project I have been working on for about 18 months and is nearing a Steam demo release. Thanks to new AI technology I have been able to streamline getting custom art into my game. I have not used AI to assist me in my coding as I have felt I have better resources and my own expertise in blueprinting. The goal of this project is to create re-playable zones with several unique player classes. The full game will feature 6 unique re-playable levels, 5 main stages that unlock 1 finale stage and an arcade mode (currently in development) for testing hero's and gaining bragging rights in a mode that is endless with infinitely scaling difficulty.
AI Tool Integration
(Concept Art Left, In game Asset Right)
I have been using AI to build custom art templates and models and then using those concepts with an AI 3d Art Asset Generator to generate polished assets. The assets created this way are not always perfect and require extra time to fix models and textures before they are ready to place in game. This process has allowed me to capture the essence of the mood of the game and help define concepts for future art.
Design
The design of this game is heavily influenced by a custom game featured in the RTS game Warcraft 3 called "Hero Siege". The root of the game play is derived from an experience where the player must defeat hoards of enemies while leveling up their character, fortifying their base, building towers on the map. The difficulty of the game follows a pattern similar to the game "Risk of rain" where the game becomes more challenging over time and based on character progress in a level. The player will be able to construct buildings that assist them in their rounds such as the Armory which unlocks unique ability perks , Item vendors which give access to interesting one time use abilities and saves, and barracks which give the player the option to create units that will automatically fight back against demon hordes.
UI
UI Design, as with all my systems, has seen many iterations. While the first iterations were based completely around readability and getting people playing with my systems, later versions are more complex and refined to showcase as much information as possible while trying to take up as little play space as possible.
In Game Ai
Left: Fire Lieutenant | Right: Summoner
AI is being built using the blackboard behavior tree system built into unreal. The game has 5 AI types plus 2 unique boss type characters. Each of the AI characters has a few abilities they use to challenge the player in different ways. Showcased below is the Lieutenant and the Summoner.
Summoner- Summons units and buffs enemy units
- Summon Imps- Small demon unit that follows the summoner and casts fireballs at the player when in range
- Summon Engineer- A demon who's sole purpose is to build enemy towers onto the map reinforcing enemy positions
- Summon Kamakazi- A suicide damage unit that explodes on player assets and units dealing damage to everything
Lieutenant- A melee unit with two different attacks and one buff
- Fortify Demons- Demons in range gain 50% more hp
- Charge- The Lieutenant charges at the player
- Slam- The Lieutenant hits the player into the air
Hero Characters
Hero Characters are the in game characters that players use to play the game. I have developed a unique system called " fueled by souls" (see systems design) which all Hero characters use to power their attacks. I have created a robust character template base class that can be used to create more character classes that do unique abilities based on the characters "fueled by souls" status.
Player character Template- Each character is built with the following guidelines and also has access to building options from the players main base allowing them to build turrets on the level map
- 5 Abilities
- 1 Soul Fury Activation
- Recall to Base
- 1 Unique building
Systems Design
This game is systems heavy requiring a management system for leveling up the AI as they spawn, how and when the AI spawn, player driven tower management, to name a few.
- Fueled by Souls- The system involves collecting soul fragments which are generated through using abilities or defeating enemies. As the character gains soul power they unlock new abilities and their current abilities become more powerful.
- Wave System-The wave based progression of this game needed a robust tool for spawning in actors to the battle. Since the player will be dispatching large groups of enemies at all times the system needed to implement object pooling for characters and tower bullets. I created a design tool allowing for designers to easily control spawn settings for level creation such as how many spawn at a time, time between spawns, amount to spawn in initial game setup ( for object pooling) what their starting difficulty is. The tool also allows designers to set how many AI of each class should be pre-loaded into the game for seamless generation and destruction of enemy units.
- Tower Management- This system is responsible for controlling individual towers and works with the player character leveling system which provides upgrades to the towers. The system also allows designers to set damage values for player characters
User Experience
Over the course of the last year this project has gone through several QA phases. During my QA phases I pause production on code and development and focus solely on how the game is being perceived and played by my testers. Each QA phase has a specific goal in mind. As an example, my character has seen many iterations and each iteration has required a QA phase to see if the changes implemented are having an impact on the way the player feels and how they use the player character. Based on this data and feedback changes were made and implemented when needed to better communicate to the player the intent of certain abilities.
This process has been repeated for my major systems including, UI, Enemy Spawners, Ai Characters.
Current Development Status
The precursor to building out levels has been to get core gameplay loops ironed out while also testing all core systems required for the game. All main systems required for level building have been completed and are now in a refinement stage. The list below are all currently active systems.
- Full Player character
- 7 Unique AI enemy Characters
- 1 Unique Mini Boss
- 1 Unique Final Boss
- 3 world building tools used for setting up and controlling level events, unit spawning, player progression
- 8 Unique " towers" the player can place on the map
Supporting systems are now coming online ( such as the item shop, armory, and barracks buildings) that will support the main gameplay loops and add depth to the levels.
Floppy and the Sleepy Planet
Teaser Trailer
Click Sleepy Planet Game picture to be taken to the Sleepy Planet Game Steam Page.
QA
This character could travel a long distance using our character abilities in the correct combination and provided a challenge for level design to make sure levels were setup in such a way that the player could not access areas they should not be in by chaining movement combos and required heavy testing.
Level Design
Lava Caves Blockout
From Documentation, to whiteboard and then into the Editor for level building iteration.
Lava Caves Blockout
Lava Caves Blockout
Blocking out the Lava Caves was one of the most fun things I have done on a level design front. There's no real blueprint for what an environment like this is supposed to look like. It was a real challenge to work in this space not only because of creative freedom but also because of how much space our player character can travel. Pathing was heavily tested to make sure the character could not get to far off the main path and could not access paths out of sequence for the level goals.
Training Grounds Blockout
The Training grounds were a level that could be reached through the Lava Caves. This labyrinth of windy chasms and lava flows served as an environment to test the players long distance platforming skills at speed.
Star Champion
<--- Watch My Highlight reel of Star Champions
Checkout this gameplay video reel of Star Champions.
What Is the Game?
Star Champions at its core is a top down sci-fi single player battle arena based around controlling ships as the players character. As the idea holder of this project I wanted to create a hybrid between Starcraft's hero functionality and League of Legends game modes to create this s ingle player naval ship based version.
My Contributions
Modular Components
I was responsible for designing, programming and refining main gameplay systems for the following
- Player Ships
- Auto cannon targeting /combat systems
- UI Design
- Enemy AI
- Level Design Tools
- Modular Components
Modular Components
Modular Components
Each combat ship type including player ships used 3-4 key modular components.
- A component for ship stats such as shields, armor, health etc.
- A component for keeping track of player experience points used for improving the player character during gameplay rounds.
- A combat component controlling the ships autocannon / turret combat systems
- A component for controlling mining operations ( used in our non combat and player characters) this allowed for mining ships to gather resources from our mining nodes and gave players the same functionality they could turn on and off when in range of resources
Player Ships
I built player characters to use the modular combat tools being created for the project. Each Player ship utilized all 4 of the modular components and also had their own unique properties.
- Battleship- I built the Battleship to have a player controlled skill shot turret, deployable seeker mines, a speed boost, and an " overload" cannons ability that would increase the autocannons base damage for a temporary amount of time
- Carrier- I built the Carrier to be a support class that built player controlled reinforcements. The carrier could build and deploy the same ships being launched by AI bases but were player controlled and launched from the player ship. These ships obeyed global AI behaviors set on the Carrier and could "seek" enemies, "follow" the player character or "hold" position.
Auto Cannon Targeting Systems
Each ship in the game used the Auto Cannon targeting system as this was what allowed ship to ship combat. Player ships had additional functionality allowing them to toggle between several autocannon turret states, "auto fire" always choose the first target in range, "close range", "long range", and "off". Non player ships were set to one of the default behaviors depending on the class of the ship. Ex. our frigate had short range cannons and long range cannons.
Enemy AI
Level Design Tools
Ai were programmed to follow a specific path that could be adjust by designers within a level. The base behavior of the AI was built to follow players once seen and return to their path if the player moved to far away or was destroyed. The AI auto cannon turret system was automatic and only required the ships to be in range of enemy ships. Once the AI got to their intended destinations, they would begin to target the nearest player base objects until the player stopped them or lost all of their structures. AI were built to engage with each other, ex. Allied AI would fight Enemy AI unless a character was in range first or dealt damage to an enemy.
Level Design Tools
Level Design Tools
I created two level design tools for this game, the level manager and the spawning manager.
- Level Manager- I built this tool to setup gameplay map situations such as frequency of spawned units, amount of units spawned and tracked the win conditions to communicate to the game mode.
- Spawning Manager- I built this tool so that level design could easily set the types of ships they wanted spawning into a level and have control over spawn in locations of the ships.