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Annwn

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Description

You are Emrys, the last survivor of your village. Arawn, Lord of the Hunt, has taken everything from you and seeks to conquer the world. Armed with revenge, you set out to find the mythical Sword of Annwn and bring an end to Arawn.

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Annwn is a Celtic themed third-person hack'n'slash vertical-slice developed for a senior game project class. I worked in a team with three others to design an expansive game design doc and create a level to demonstrate our mechanics and ideas.

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This vertical slice showcases my ability to design combat, work . This page breaks down what I did on the game, my team's design process, and features a short walkthrough of the level.

Description

My Roles

My roles on this project include the following:

Combat Designer

I designed the combat systems and created a multiple attack and blocking system for the player. Enemies will attack the player when in range, and one enemy circles around the player and fires at them. I also placed enemies and powerups around the level.

Systems Designer

I implemented multiple game systems such as health and damage (for the player and enemies), player buffs, destructible objects, player and enemy attacks, and scripted the level.

AI Programmer

I worked with the other programmer on my team to design and create multiple enemy AIs that patrol areas and attack the player. There are 3 main enemy types, each of which have a different manner of attack.

Game Designer

My team and I worked together to design the mechanics of the game and what kinds of enemies and powerups the player will find.

Narrative Designer

I worked with the project manager to design the world and craft the story of the overall game and the level. I wrote the in-game text for walls that would offer backstory of the level and character, but they weren't implemented in time.

UI Designer/Scripter

I worked with the artists to design, implement, script and animate menus and the in-game UI.

Animator

All assets of this project had to be created from scratch, including animations. I used a Perception Neuron Motion Capture system to record movements and turned them into animations. I modified those animations in Autodesk Maya and implemented them in Unreal Engine 4.

My Roles

Design Processes and Documents

Game Design Document

From the start, my team wanted to create an challenging hack 'n' slash game with destructible environments, tough and varied enemies, different player buffs, and an explorable, semi-linear level. Everything had to be created from scratch, from the models to animations to textures and code.

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Once we designed and wrote down our core mechanics, we focused on the setting, theme, and feel of the game. We decided to set the game in an ancient culture, and narrowed it down to a Celtic and Arthurian theme.

Story Design

Though we only had to make a single level for the game, we were challenged to also design and write the entire storyline of the game. Aside from story outlines for each level, we had to include details on how narrative would be delivered to the player, be it cutscenes, interactive sequences, or scripted gameplay events.

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I wrote a general story outline first, and after receiving feedback from the team I went ahead and fleshed out each level outline. I considered each beat of the level and how best it should be delivered to the player; some sections worked better as an interactive sequence, while others would need to be delivered as a cutscene or scripted event.

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You can read the Game Story section of the design doc by following the link.

Animation Process

Making a third-person game is challenging when all animations have to be made in-house and can't be pulled from online or an animation pack. Because of this, and the lack of animators on the team, we turned to using a motion capture suit for our animations.

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We used a Perception Neuron Motion Capture System to record a team member and used their motions for animations in the game.

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One issue I quickly ran into with the animations was how the Perception Neuron suit lacked root motion data, which meant the player wouldn't move with the animations properly. To solve this, I wrote a script in Autodesk Maya that would import an animation, add in a root joint, and allow the user to re-orient the animation so it was facing the right direction when imported into Unreal.

Designs

Level Walkthrough

Level Walkthrough
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