Believer
An coop-first, open world, hero collective powered by machine learning. As the technical designer, I work closely with combat design, content design, and gameplay engineering to create a pitch-demo of the experience, build workflows, design gameplay systems, and event implement entire character kits.
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All images, information, and videos below is from early stages in development and is still very much a work in progress.
As Staff Technical Designer
• Implement a hero kit and enemies from spec to GAS setup to temporary FX
• Create flexible collaborative abilities between various heroes
• Mentored other designers in Unreal/GAS scripting and best practices
• Setup of a component-based Actionables system
• Provide the team with feedback at all stages of development
Notable Systems
Actionables
Iteration on previous experiences to make better and better versions of workflows. Actionables represent non-pawn gameplay-related actors, such as pressure plates, openable doors, exploding barrels, and more. Built BP components off C++ class for easy nativization with rapid set up with clear variables for designers, and necessary hooks represented for engineering.
Signal Sending
System for sending messages between Actionables without the need for level blueprint, while supporting a broad variety of potential signals. Activate, reset, deactivate, complete, and fail were the most common. Allowed for Actionables to communicate both ways with ease.
Encounter System
Lead the efforts for an encounter system that supported the needs of combat/content/level designers.
Jagan
I created the initial prototype for the hero known as Jagan.
Combat Role: big, heavy bruiser with an emphasis on shoving enemies around
Theme: gravity-magic infused dragon-kin
From a rough one-pager the hero team already had, I joined up to implement what I could as quickly as possible while the team was focused on validating the core combat of the game. Which meant a heavy focus on how Jagan could interact with other heroes' kits. Some examples include shoving an allies summoned meteor into enemies for heavy damage, knocking enemies in the air for someone else to fly in and kick them back down to earth, interrupting enemy abilities, and create "Floaty Rocks" that everyone can hit to send flying towards enemies. All of this involed...
• Ability implementation
• New system implementation - "Floaty Rocks", Aim Previews, Camera Additives
• Tons and tons of great collaboration with animation
• Kitbashed VFX
• Stubbed in audio
• Created 3 alternate abilities that did not make it into the kit
Reclaimers
After working on Jagan, we realized our enemies were not worthy of the heroes we had created, so I jumped over to the other side of the fight to continue validating the combat systems.
A palette of 7 enemies was created over ~6 weeks, with 2 designers (including myself), an animator, and an engineer.
Each enemy was set up to challenge or enhance the heroes we had already created. Giving each combat role time to shine and time to be on the back foot. I am particular proud of "MissileHead" and the "Ogre". Missile Head was set up to give a strong "barrage of missiles" feel from far back in the fight that forces players to be on the defensive through overwhelming force. Those missiles were set up to be affected by hero's time manipulation abilities, or ability to reflect projectiles. Giving those heroes a chance to protect their allies in spectacular fassion. The missiles can also chain react explode to make it a little more forgiving to shoot them down. Missile Head was entirely my fever dream of a creation, from his mesh, missile FX, explosions, attack cue, and even his AI behavior, I had a blast setting him up (sorry about the pun).
Ogre was designed to engage 3-4 players for around a minute. He had to have both ranged and melee options, but it was quickly found that the binary between the two let ranged characters relax more than we wanted. Fortunately, I could borrow mechanics from MissileHead. So the Ogre would fire a tiny fusilade of missiles at distance enemies. The melee heroes had enough to watch out for. His kit included a melee basic attack sequence, a focused laser blast, a conical flamethrower that was blocked by geo, a whirlwind ability (animator crushed that one), and a "get off me" style reset blast.
Additional Enemies Work
Throughout the work, I would try to support future efforts with easy to reuse systems. For instance, getting ranged enemies to intelligently lead their shots, having enemies that can drop their weapons for the heroes' to then throw around as they need, or shield bubbles that cause projectiles to bounce off them. There was a lot of iteration and experimentation along the way and many features were cut or evolved so far from what I had created that I can no longer take any amount of credit.
Activities, Actionables, and Level Design
As you saw in the carousel at the top of this page, I also supported the open world efforts. Through the creation of gameplay mechanics (shown above), activity creation systems, and even level design!
Throughout all of it I took care to think about what the collaborative moment would feel like. And lots of small choices lead to a pretty great result. For instance, having large chests take 10 seconds to open allowed your allies to reach it before the loot spilled out, and if they were all there, they could speed it up. It was always a challenge to balance between players wanting instant gratification while avoiding FOMO by being distracted or just far away.
Part of the work was setting up initial systems, such as state controllers, interacts, overlaps (supporting multiplayer!) via blueprint components for easy mix-and-matching and future nativization by our engineering team. I also took the power sending system I created at Wonderstorm and brough it forward into "Signal Sending", which allowed for arbitrary sending of gameplay tags, and translation from one to another. This made activation and completion separate events that could easily be reused. I even made an editor widget to visualize the connections. I also place a high value on representing gameplay states for player feedback as authentically as I could. A power generator could be reprsented by a cube that changes color, but that could be anything. So I would always take a little time to put together something that looked like a power generator with silhouete, color, value, and motion contrast between the various states. If the mechanic only works with text on it, it likely needs some adjustments.
Some of my favorite actionables that I put together:
• Giant fans that would blow away toxic clouds that the players could jump into for a big movement boost
• Power cell carryables that players could pick up and throw around but would lose charge over time, encouraging collaboration and planning
• Fishing
• Power lines that hit players over the head with how things are connected and have some nice draping
• Toxic water that dealt damage over time that would be cleansed during the activity. Particularly because I invert gravity while players are in it to fake a feeling bouyancy that worked really well until questions around swimming could be answered.
