Bachelor Project: Arkandh

Description

  • Engine: Unreal Engine 4
  • Development Time: 3.5 Months
  • Singleplayer 3rd-Person Action Game

    • Arkandh is inspired by the boss fights featured in the Souls games and mostly focuses on the creation process of said boss fights. This project is mostly a learning project - I wanted to dabble in developing gameplay features similar to one of my favourite franchises and see how far I can get as a solo dev.

    The focus of this game projects covers

  • MVP Features for Player Controller in ActionGame genre
  • Boss & Combat Design
  • Implementation Boss AI through Behavior Trees

    • The first image is a rough gameplay mockup that I created - The second image is a screenshot from our game.

    Player Mechanics
    Priority for the player controller were general input responsivesness and satisfying combat feeling.

  • To prevent a floaty feeling player controller some actions are handled by root locomotion movement, giving them a more grounded feeling
  • To provide satisfying visual feedback to combat, each successful hit will trigger a slight screenshake, a slash VFX and a UI animation on the enemies healthbar (see below)
  • A Basic combo move adds some variety to the combat

    • Design and implementation of ingame HUD were also part of my responsibility

  • Both player and enemy healthbar played UI animation on stat changes
  • Currently active item and available use count are part of the player HUD elements
  • Action Mapping is visible at all times to help newer players in learning the controls
  • Stage progression and currency are displayed on the top right corner

    • Additional UI Elements

  • Debug Menu for playtesting
  • We had prototypes for shops and dialogue interactiosn with NPCs.

    • Animation examples for our two playable boss characters.

  • Ardashir - Large slow-moving fire giant who uses a greatsword and fire attacks
  • Hester - Nimble duelist who dualwields two thing longswords.