Gameplay Loop

I took inspiration from Clash Royale and Teamfight Tactics. On a 14x20 grid, two opponents spawn units on opposite ends. The units march forward and battle. Each player has a Blood Forger that they must keep alive, or they will lose. Blood Forgers march forward periodically until they meet in the middle and fight until only one is left alive.

Setting & Story

The sophisticated crafts of magic have been forgotten by most. What little knowledge left is practiced by Blood Forgers who fuel the war of Tepra by conjuring relentless armies. Anadeln, a nation bordering the Abyssal Rift, must unite the thrones of Tepra to fight back against the invading forces of Venelit.

Godot Over Unreal

I chose Godot Engine over my usual choice (Unreal Engine) for this project. I needed quick iteration cycles, fast compilation, and proper Git workflow. So far, I am very happy with my choice!

Godot Is Weird

In Unreal, an Actor has its logic directly attached to it. In Unity, game objects can have multiple scripts attached to them. In Godot, however, you must composition nodes with a script attached to each.

C# in Godot

Over the years, I’ve become familiar with C++ and C#. I decided to use C# as my main language for Conjurants, as it is easy to write, type-safe, and quick to compile.

Rust Bindings

Expensive calculations benefit from high performance languages. For performance and compile-time safety, I used GDExtension to bind my Rust library.

Gameplay Framework

Godot gives you freedom to shape your game how you want to. There is no “gameplay framework” (like Unreal’s) that provides a base to your game. So I decided to create a plugin very similar to Unreal’s Gameplay Framework - this plugin handles player controllers, switching between levels, game modes, posessing avatars, etc.

Flowfield Pathfinding

The 14x20 grid has no obstacles. This means in most cases I will not need any kind of pathfinding, as the units will need to walk in a straight line to reach their target. I use a flowfield to direct the units towards the enemy Blood Forger. And because the Blood Forger is a 2x2 unit, sometimes pathfinding is needed to go around it to reach a target.

Preface

I started joining game jams around March 2024. This project is one of my game jam entries - the theme was Travel - All In A Box. I assembled a team of 5 from people I met in the Discord server and started developing!

Player Movement

I enjoy games that have responsive feedback. I wrote the logic and polished character movement for a snappy and cat-like feeling. I used the ACharacter class that comes built-in to Unreal Engine. I tweaked the speed, air damping, gravity, and acceleration parameters to get the cat-like movement I wanted.

Platforming

I imported the models made by our 3D artist into Unreal Engine and optimized the collisions so that the cat could fit under the chairs and table. The wardrobes, tables, cupboards, and frames in the level created a variety of platforms. I also added physics to some objects so the cat can bump into them and cause chaos!

NPC Pathfinding

The human tries to catch the cat. I utilized a navigation mesh and A* algorithm to find the path from the human to the cat. The human movement logic reads the path and follows it until it reaches the cat. Once the cat is in it’s range, the cat is caught and the run ends.

FMod Audio

I worked with our audio designer to import FMod tracks into Unreal Engine and trigger them during gameplay. The properties of audio tracks are dynamically adjusted to fit the current environment of the game. For example, when the human detects the cat and starts chasing it, the music gets intense!

Home Customization

The cat can bring back items it finds while platforming around the house to its cardboard home. I programmed the item detection & item spawning system. I also created a system to save the items that the cat collected so they don’t get lost when the game is quit.

Main Menu

I wrote logic for the main menu - quitting the game, loading the gameplay level, and showing the tutorial screen.

Preface

I traded my Nintendo Switch for a Meta Quest and experienced VR for the first time, I was blown away. I emailed my professor on January 11 2021 to work with him on the Magnolia House - and got the job.

User Locomotion

Your body might react to motion being shown through the headset. To reduce this reaction, I opted to teleport the user instead of moving them. I modeled a mesh that sits on the floor and spans the entire house. The user can point to this mesh in order to teleport around the house.

Laggy to Butter Smooth

I increased the frames per second (FPS) from 30 to 90. After adding all models and visuals to the scene, I realized the FPS was unacceptable. I used the Unity performance profiler and noticed the number of triangles being rendered was astronomical. I removed unnecessary vertices from the models using Blender, and implemented occlusion & frustum culling. The FPS was at a fixed 90 after my optimizations, which is the Meta Quest 2’s refresh rate.

Spatial Audio

To really immerse the user, I added music playing in the second floor. The music gets clearer as the user gets closer to it. This works by checking line of sight and distance from user to the music source. The added audio made a big impact on the experience and the users loved it.

Floating Menu

I programmed a floating menu window that follows the user when activated. The menu detects detects geometry and moves to keep a clear line of sight to the user. The user can quit the tour from this menu.

Preface

I decided to join a 2-day game jam. The theme was Fishing & No Water. I met new people and formed a team of 12 people all around the world! We worked together on a Discord call to make it all happen.

Flying The Kite

We designed a game where you fish birds out of the sky using a kite. You control the kite to chase birds and catch them. I wrote logic that takes player input and flies the kite. I also wrote logic that detects the fish-birds, when the kite hovers over a fish-bird for a second, the fish-bird gets caught.

Movement & Avoidance

I made it so the fish-birds moved in random directions. To add some challenge, I wrote logic that detects if the kite is close to them. When the kite gets close to the fish-birds, they start swim-flying faster to escape.

Adapting Music

Our composers provided music for each level of the atmosphere. As the kite goes past the mountains into space, the music changes to signal the player that the difficulty is increasing. As the kite goes higher, harder fish-bird types start spawning in.

Reeling Back

Once the player is done bird-fishing, they can press spacebar to reel the kite back to Flamou (the dragon). Doing so rewards the player with coin corresponding to how much fish-birds they caught, and resets the levels.