Kenechukwu Umelo
Technical Gameplay Designer
Dive deep into the depth of an ancient temple known as Sanctuary Of Faith as a goblin adventurer whilst fighting vast amounts of "Ancient Beings Of The Past" that guard the relics you seek to collect.
Engine/Tools:
Unity
Language:
C#
Platform:
PC and WebGL
Role:
Gameplay Programmer
(Systems/Enemy Designer)
Time of Development:
1 Week
Team Size:
6
Core Ownerships
Spawn Manager System
Implemented a spawning system to handle enemy spawning and property values for difficulty scaling. I opened up several variables for designers to tweak throughout the development cycle. These open variables included:
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A spawnable enemy class to place enemy prefabs.
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Max number of enemies that can be spawned at once.
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Decreasing probability for key to drop on enemy death each floor.
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Scale increase values for enemy health, movement speed, and damage per floor.
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Floor settings to tweak boundaries for enemy distance, key placement and spawn location.
Enemies Spawning and Bullet Types
Level Generation System
The core mechanic of the game is the player being able to smash through multiple floors as they like, essentially entering a new level. I implemented a noncomplex procedural generator where a new floor appears when the player destroys a level.
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For fun and content, I created a custom class within the system to allow for smaller assets (such as crates) that can potentially be added to a generated level to fill the play spaces.
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A major issue with this included the Nav Mesh Surface needing to be rebaked constantly at run time for enemies to spawn properly.
Level Breaking and Generating
Enemy NPCs and Weapon Bullet Types
I contributed towards the enemy AI scripting by implementing all the movement behaviors and several weapon bullet types for them to wield.
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Three different variations of movement included:
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Defense (slow, moving towards player, lower rate of fire)
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Offense (fast, moving towards player, quick rate of fire)
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Evade (fast, runs from player, bullet spread damage)
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Several bullet types included:
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Semi-Auto
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Full-Auto
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Burst
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Cone Blast
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Tutorial Event
Close to submission entry, I quickly designed and implemented a dynamic text-based tutorial on the first floor to guide the player on how to play the game. I envisioned the tutorial to be an effective start to the game.
Tutorial
Post Mortem
This was my first time working in a team of six in a game jam, it was a huge relief being able to focus on specific requirements rather than a whole game. I was able to strictly focus on developing core systems for the game along with the AI and its abilities. However, communications and design iteration were huge factors I learned. I had to reiterate the spawn manager several times to allow others to tweak propriety values for game balancing and I opened up the level generation script to allow designers to add any potential new assets like the crates.