Project Type |
Personal Project In Free Time |
Engine Used |
Unreal Engine 5 |
Languages Used |
C++ and Blueprints |
Primary Roles |
Technical Lead |
Main Skills Developed |
Self Motivation, Gameplay Design and Implementation, Persistence, Gameplay Ability System, Networking, Rapid Prototyping and Iteration |
After doing the Sumo Nottingham game jam I was invited to work on a side project with some of my co-workers from the studio, and we decided to create a roguelike third person shooter game, where you play as a bounty hunter travelling from island to island fighting bosses, looting chests and fighting against swarms of enemies!
I am the main programmer on this project, and have created many different systems including the main project setup, player controllers and characters, AI, UI, VFX and SFX implementation, various networking aspects and have done some networked physics too.
We decided that this would be a good opportunity to improve our skills with the gameplay ability system, as well as how networking works inside of Unreal, and as such this game is based around both. It also uses Steam integration for hosting games and connecting, and once we have created more content, we plan to release on Steam.
We have created this in our spare time which has been challenging but we now have all of the base systems we want and are in the process of creating content for the game.
Please keep in mind that all gameplay footage shown below is very work in progress and we are constantly refining and adding new content.
I am the main programmer on this project, and have created many different systems including the main project setup, player controllers and characters, AI, UI, VFX and SFX implementation, various networking aspects and have done some networked physics too.
We decided that this would be a good opportunity to improve our skills with the gameplay ability system, as well as how networking works inside of Unreal, and as such this game is based around both. It also uses Steam integration for hosting games and connecting, and once we have created more content, we plan to release on Steam.
We have created this in our spare time which has been challenging but we now have all of the base systems we want and are in the process of creating content for the game.
Please keep in mind that all gameplay footage shown below is very work in progress and we are constantly refining and adding new content.
Gameplay Showcase
We have developed fast paced, action packed gameplay featuring multiple different enemy types, item pickups, vaults and vault breakers, two different weapons and more! Spending time polishing animations, VFX, SFX and other mechanics such as stagger and knockback systems has helped contribute to this hectic roguelike adventure!
Hoverboard showcase
We decided that we wanted to make map traversal more exciting, and so decided to add a hoverboard to the game! For this I developed custom hoverboard physics alongside my own physics replication code (using prediction and reconciliation), which has resulted in the hoverboard being responsive to player input while staying in sync and server authoritative (tested up to 200ms latency with packet drop added in for good measure).
Passive and active abilities
We have also developed various passive and active abilities for progression, and to make each run different. In the above examples you can see the bolt strike passive ability, then meteor strike, mines and finally rage mode. We are currently thinking about how to extend these by adding different functionality at different levels of each ability to make it more interesting to use!
Boss Fight (WIP)
Our current task is creating a boss fight for the end of this grass plains level. Currently we have him jump slamming into the player, utilising the motion warping plugin to ensure he always lands somewhere close to the player. I am currently creating a 'bullet hell' spawning system, so that we can spawn loads of rock projectiles to throw at the player!
Future Plans
We plan to continue development on this project and aim to get to the point of releasing it. Even if we don't get that far, I'm still incredibly proud of the work we have put in so far and am excited to see where it goes! I've learned so much from doing this outside of work, which has boosted my career development and technical skills - from things such as how to set up and manage a perforce server using DigitalOcean (alongside using the command line to manage the file system) to how to integrate steam, and how to create engaging boss fights. Overall it has really helped me understand various stages of a product's development, and allowed me to dig more into the design side of what actually makes something fun!