This game was my final university project, and it taught me how to work in a big team as we were 35 people working on the project. Everybody had their own role and tasks. For me, it was programming/integration and a lot of bug testing/fixing throughout the development. The project started with only 5 of us, we had to compete against other teams with our documentation and pitch to win the teachers over. We ended up winning, which is why we released the game on Steam at the end. The project took us 4 to 5 months to complete, including preproduction, it allowed me learn a lot of things about Unreal and discover some new passions in the process.
Unreal Engine 4 | December 2021 to March 1st 2023
3C programming
Since I was in charge of the 3C at the start of the project, I worked on the character a lot. At first, we didn't want to have a big HUD and we also wanted it to be environmental, so no UI or anything. We didn't find anything that worked for the stamina bar, so we opted for a style that worked in other games such as Breath of The Wild or Tears of The Kingdom. We also wanted a natural transition between the shadow and Jean, the main character when she was in the shadows, so we implemented an automatic transition without having to press any button. I also worked on many other things that were scrapped during the development, such as a roll and a jump mechanic.
Since I was in charge of the 3C at the start of the project, I worked on the character a lot. At first, we didn't want to have a big HUD and we also wanted it to be environmental, so no UI or anything. We didn't find anything that worked for the stamina bar, so we opted for a style that worked in other games such as Breath of The Wild or Tears of The Kingdom. We also wanted a natural transition between the shadow and Jean, the main character when she was in the shadows, so we implemented an automatic transition without having to press any button. I also worked on many other things that were scrapped during the development, such as a roll and a jump mechanic.
Spline system programming
To get across the level, we needed a fast traversal mechanic, so went for a vent system that you could crawl through in shadow form. For this system, I used splines that were modular and that you could customize as much as you wanted to make every path fully customizable, including the traversal speed. The way it works in game is that once the player presses the button, the camera will switch to first person and the character will automatically follow the spline path until the end of it. Then, the camera switches back to third person and the player has full mobility again.
UI
Since we had a lot of cinematics in the game, we needed an option to skip them if we had already seen them to help with the game's replayability. I programmed the function which allowed you to skip them if you held the ENTER key for 3 seconds. I also added a gauge that would show you how long to hold the button. If the player pressed another key, there's a prompt that would pop up telling the player the right key to press in order to skip it.
