Project Navigation
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 Contribution
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.
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.
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
As systems came online I tested and iterated assets while keeping communication with the tech design team to create exactly what was needed for the best gameplay potential. The highlight for me being the sheep launcher which shoots our animals through the air to objectives or other locations.
Phase 3- Gameplay Refinement
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
Phase 2- QA & Rapid Iteration
Once final gameplay assets and tools became online, I worked on developing gameplay levels that would end up being our main demo levels for the first live demo.
Phase 4- The Revamp
Phase 6- Final Implementation
Phase 5- Optimization
A re-design and re-structure of the team was needed to move to the next level of investor interest. I introduced new core gameplay design for the main player mechanic and for one of our main antagonistic animals " The Bull".
Phase 5- Optimization
Phase 6- Final Implementation
Phase 5- Optimization
I was tasked with cleaning up and optimizing Core game mode Blueprints and architecture implemented by previous devs 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.
Phase 6- Final Implementation
Phase 6- Final Implementation
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 key UI gameplay feedback systems used for scoring animals, progression trackers, and incitive ba player rewards
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.
Soul hammer
Summary
Components
Components
Soul Hammer Is a top down hero tower defense heavily influenced by League of Legends & Startcraft 2 custom games where the player uses a hero character to defeat waves of enemies to eventually become powerful enough to push out in the map and destroy the enemy spawning facilities and main base where they will defeat a stage specific Boss.
Components
Components
Components
In an effort to make modular assets I created several core components that can be used on any actor.
- Health component that controls health and armor related stats, combat timers for health related regen effects, and triggers animations when taking damage or dying.
- Resource Component that stores and controls building points and resources the player requires for building towers
- XP Component that controls the players xp system allowing them to gain and spend xp while leveling up their character
UI
Components
UI
User Experience is everything. I have been modeling my gameplay UI design around inspiration from games such as League Of Legends & Starcraft II
AI
Systems Design
UI
AI was built using the blackboard behavior tree system built into unreal. The game has 5 AI types plus 2 unique boss type characters.
- Charger Class runs a behavior task that charges at the player
- Exploder Class Runs a behavior task triggering a self destruct feature similar to Halo flood exploding units
- Ranged Class that runs a long ranged attack behavior with chances to miss
- Support Class Runs a task that buffs nearby units causing them to attack faster, heal wounded units, and fire a physical spell at the character
- Lieutenant Class is a slower moving unit that provides additional health to nearby units and cycles between two heavy melee attacks
- Bosses have 3-5 unique abilities and trigger unique events when reaching 60% and 25% health
Character
Systems Design
Systems Design
The character I made from an asset pack of animations and required its own animation blueprint to be created. Once implemented I used the animation state machine to control player abilities and UX. The player character gains soul points while engaging in combat and destroying foes that they can use to fuel powerful abilities or spend on improving character traits and towers.
Systems Design
Systems Design
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.
- AI Management- This system works in conjunction with the wave system to monitor and set AI difficulties based on round duration.
- Wave System-The wave based progression of this game needed a robust tool for spawning in actors to the battle. I created a design tool allowing for designers to easily control spawn settings for level creation.
- Tower Management- This system is responsible for controlling individual towers and works with the player character Leveling system which provides upgrades to the towers.
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.