Team Squeak Squad
Role: UI Designer, Coder, Character Implamentation in UE5 and Music/SFX person
The challenges I faced was implementing sounds that are playing on loop for too long like 4 seconds instead of needing to be less than second. Our team had issues of implementing textures in UE5, movement for Ratboi, slam collisions. The hardest thing I did in my group was making a settings menu that would change the texture and shadow quality in that when I was making it would save the texture quality, but not the shadow quality. I was able to fix the problem, but the colors that show up when selecting what settings you want to change would not show correctly, but will show up correctly after you go back to the pervious menu and go back into the settings and it would show you the correct highlighter settings that you wanted to be in. The settings also save even when you close out the game, see image 1. I also had issues with the lighting not correctly illuminating when you change the settings with the textures and shadows, so we had to bake in the lighting each time we add new textures and objects to fix the problem. We also face challenges on the movement of where ratboi should face.
My big solo achievement for game:
For the Settings Menu, I stored the shadow and texture quality settings that unreal has up to epic that get stored into arrays to get called for each button.
This code, below, is for when you click on the high quality button for the shadows. This is also the default settings that are applied automatically from the beginning and when you reset the settings. The texture quality dose the exact same, but it is for textures on screen.
Below is the code that will make sure when you hit save what buttons you pressed are applied to the game and saved even after you reopen the game from the desktop.
By doing this, I made sure that the game we made could be more scalable to run more smoothly on less powerful hardware. Since this game is made in UE5, You may still need dedicated GPUs in order to run the game. There I a lot more code snippets I could show for this, but that would take a lot of pages for the settings menu. I am just giving you the highlights.
Architectural Diagrams:
What I helped worked on detailed diagram: This diagram provides a detailed overview of the game's core mechanics, player integrations, UI designer, music/SFX implementer, and character model integrator. It begins with the player controller setup, mapping keyboard and controller inputs for Ratboi's movement, such as jumping, slamming, and crouching, which I helped implement together with the team using Unreal's Enhanced Input System and Custom blueprint logic for smooth 3D platforming. The diagram captures animations states made by Xander and implemented by the coding team like the Ratboi's run and crouch animation via Unreal's animation Blueprints and model rigging in Maya. The Audio triggers I made get used when a certain action happens like sprinting will give you a whoosh sound. The UI like the pause menu and main menu which I worked on my own. Finally the interactions with enemies section illustrates combat mechanics, like slamming enemies or respawning after death, ensure engaging gameplay, tying together a cohesive player experience.
Simplified Diagram Version
More Challenges and What I learned
Movement Challenges: I faced challenges in fixing the movement for the character where I tried code in a with the controls a what to face the direction to make the directional keys like D is the character facing right. However, I was able to get the character to move the direction I want, but looking janky. I did not put into consideration that the ever changing camera our group has in the game.
I learned later that there was a setting in unreal that can help make the character move 360 degrees.
Later in the development I implemented a cheese model from Zander that is a collectable for our game.
Another challenge that came up was making sure that all the sounds are playing in the level because you can only have up to 32 sounds player at the same time. An issue I had was that my footsteps were playing too much, so I had to shorten the SFX from 4 seconds to half a second. From that, I was able to keep sounds to keep playing throughout the level.
Takeaways
If someone was doing this assignment I would make sure that 90% of the textures where in before the last week. I would make sure that you make your scope scalable like we did in that during the last two weeks we were able to add anther enemy and a collectable. would make sure you focus on the core mechanic on the game and make that as polished as possible, then work on the supplementary ideas that would not ruin the game if you do not get to finish the game since this is a seven week course.
Thoughts on my teams version control:
I thought Perforce (P4V) is way easier to use than Git because there is less chances of getting your code or project changed or corrupted since each person can lock what there doing till they are done and unchecks out and submits what they are working on. However, on the flip side, it gets annoying when someone is working on the file in Unreal that I wanted to work on for a different function because that means that it is check out and anything a write on that fie will get lost if the person submits. I would then have to wait till the persons is done or do something else in the meantime. I would gladly recommend using Perforce over Github for Unreal since Unreal has a feature that seamless integrates the version control into the game editor itself in that when you are working on a blueprint file, perforce and Unreal will tell you to check out the file and then when you save to check out if you did not and submit the file to save your changes for everyone to use forever, unless the owner reverts the changes. Github just has a higher chance of files becoming corrupt.
Team
Max Allen
Email: mallen@wpi.edu
Role: Producer, Tech Lead, Systems, Mechanics
Portfolio: https://maxallen.games
Colin Gallagher
Email: cjgallagher@wpi.edu
Role: Tech, Music/SFX, UI
I created the level and main menu music in GarageBand
William Smith
Email: wmsmith@wpi.edu
Role: Tech, Design
Portfolio: https://smithwm210.github.io/portfolio/
Xander Valencia
Email: divalencia@wpi.edu
Role: Art Lead, 3D Animation, Graphic Design
Yuna Song
Email: ysong7@wpi.edu
Role: Art, 3D Environment Modeling
Zander Barker
Email: jbarker@wpi.edu
Role: Art, 3D Character Modeling