Project Overview:
In this game, you play as a skillful thief who has been captured and locked away in a deep, dark prison. Your objective is to sneak your way out, solve challenging puzzles, and avoid detection by the guards.
Welcome to the largest project I've worked on to date: my Senior Capstone, which will be completed in the spring of 2025 before graduation. Over the course of this year-long endeavor, I’ve had the opportunity to showcase my leadership abilities and organizational skills while managing a team of nine programmers and ten artists.
This project has allowed me to significantly develop my programming expertise, particularly in Unreal Engine Blueprint editing. Additionally, I've honed my organizational skills, which have been crucial for coordinating teamwork and ensuring a smooth collaborative process.
My Contributions
Character Camera
Gameplay Mechanic: A core gameplay feature is the ability to aim and throw a rock to distract nearby guards. My task was to design and implement the aiming mechanic, specifically focusing on smoothly moving the player's camera to a shoulder view, enhancing the overall experience.
Implementation: To achieve this, I created a clean and reusable function that smoothly transitions the camera position. This function not only ensures a seamless aiming experience but is also flexible enough to be reused if we need to implement similar smooth camera movements for other gameplay features in the future.
Animation Blueprints
Challenge and Learning: This task took me the longest to complete, but it was one of the most rewarding learning experiences. I started by discarding the default animation blueprint provided by Unreal Engine 5 and instead created a custom blueprint from the ground up, tailored specifically for our game. This allowed me to integrate all of the amazing custom animations created by our talented art team.
Process and Key Takeaways: Throughout this process, I learned how to effectively blend animations together to ensure smooth transitions between movements. I also discovered how to set up animation signals within specific frames, which significantly improved our workflow. By doing this, I was able to save the team considerable time and effort, making the overall development process more efficient.
Character Movement
Objective: To enhance the player's experience as a fast, sneaky, and agile thief, we aimed to offer a wider variety of movement options beyond the typical walking, running, and crouching. The goal was to make the character’s movement feel more fluid and dynamic, in line with the stealthy nature of the character.
Implementation: Our team decided to introduce vaulting and climbing over lower surfaces, providing players with an elegant and efficient way to evade guards. I volunteered to take on this task because, for me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of any video game is a smooth and intuitive movement system that feels natural and responsive.
Technical Approach: To make this a reality, I utilized ray tracing to detect surfaces that were low and wide enough for the player to vault or climb over. By using this method, I ensured that the system accurately identified interactable surfaces, allowing players to fluidly navigate the environment without breaking immersion.
Leading a Team
My Role
For this project, I interviewed for and was selected as the Producer. In this role, I was responsible for creating and managing smaller milestones for our team, while our other team lead focused on larger, overarching goals. I utilized Jira to organize tasks and set deadlines, ensuring the whole team had access and was regularly updating their progress. Additionally, I frequently prepared presentations for the team and represented us as a speaker and panelist at both GDEX and the Shawnee Game Conference.
