Fury Maximus

Page start

The project won the Game Jam organized by Lasalle College in Dec 2023. The game was developed in a period of 6 weeks.

The team consisted of 3 developers, including me. My roles were game designer and programmer. The level design role was distributed between members; the first level was designed by me, and the second level was designed by the other members of the team.

Intro

The game starts with a 15-year-old Max playing his favorite video game, Fury Maximus. He has been speedrunning the game and has beaten it many times. He reaches the final boss, Xurya, and as he is about to beat him, something unusual happens to the screen. Max gets pulled into the screen by Xurya, and the real game begins

Game Jam: https://itch.io/jam/lasalle-game-jam-december-2023

Fury Maximus: https://saryatkhan.itch.io/fury-maximus

In the initial prototype, I planned the game to be a fast-paced third-person hack-and-slash with shooter elements to make the gameplay style unique. However, due to the time constraints on the GameJam, we had to cut some corners, and we only went for melee combat.

The gun mechanics were still kept in the design to introduce further into the game, which would give the player time to learn the gun alongside the sword, which he already has mastered.

This was my first attempt at an action-adventure hack-and-slash game, which gave me quite an insight into designing this genre of games. It has also taught me how and when to scale down the project for the scope at hand.

My responsibilities were:

Designing the gameplay to make it fun and documenting/maintaining the GDD.

Game Design Document -

Technical designer and programmer for the project.

The project had many elements to program, from player character mechanics to different enemy AIs. Some of the scripts are listed below.

Player Movement

Walking Basic unreal engine third-person walk mechanic. Player States are used to manage player movements and restrictions to other mechanics
Jumping
Dash (1) There is a reduction in stamina bar as you dash and then the logic after
Dash (2) More emphasis on the Air Dash mechanic and cooldown system for dashbar

Actor Blueprints

Lift Lift in the dockyard level for moving up and down
Spawn Enemies Function spawns enemies in waves and further starts a timer to check if the wave is almost defeated
Enemy waves - Check enemies spawns more enemies when wave is almost defeated
Platforming BP Objects that appear and disappear on begin play

Player Combat

Light attack combo Attack combo is a montage sequence for combo and anim-notifies provide a key to do melee damage or AOE damage from the Attack actor component
Motion Warping Uses unreal engine motion warp plugin to warp close to the target when slashing
Melee Slash Function Gives a Multi Sphere trace to hit enemies and checks their team and damages them
Can Be Damaged Macro Macro that checks multiple booleans and gives us if the player is damaged or blocked or not damaged at all
Take Damage Function Function calculates the damage inflicted and reflects on the pawns. Part of Actor component is to be used for players, ally pawns and enemies
Damage Non team Members Checks Team numbers and damages pawns not on your team
Damage Response Gives responses to the attacks when given from the attackers side

Enemy AI [Behaviour tree]

Main States All the states on the enemy AI
Wield weapon Wield weapon when you notice the enemy
Block Block the attacks from the opponent
Base melee attack Attack the target with the melee attack in the attack actor component
Strafe Go in range of the opponent and strafe around
Passive Subtree Subtree inside the main states for passive behaviour
Frozen The state which is called when the AI is hit or similar behaveour
Investigate Go to the location where you sensed something and play an investigation anim- montage

Insight

Wave Spawn Function

I had a plan to use an actor blueprint to spawn a wave of enemies, check if they were defeated, and then spawn more.
The plan was simple at first; I could have gone for a get-actor of class and see how many of them remain, but I do not like BP nodes that say expensive on performance. Hence, I went on a different route.

Firstly, I require a collision to trigger the waves in the level.
So a collision, spawns Portal BP's(which is a spawner BP with an effect that enemies drop out of).

BP uses the same collision to add the spawned enemies in an array and check it in the Spawn Enemies and Remove Portals Macro.

Secondary thought was to check the spawned enemies and limit them to a number of wave.
So, I created a macro Spawn Enemies and Remove Portals and used it again to re-spawn the next wave.

Fury maximus enemy spwan actor check if enemies are dead

Later this macro uses a reference of spawn portals from the level and each enemy is spawned with a for loop and delay macro, delay is used to show the portal opening effect and then spawn them successively rather than instantly.
This gives us the first wave with the specified number of enemies.
We proceed to check on spawned enemies with a timer by event, every 0.1 seconds, and if they are dead remove them from the array Wave Of Enemies created for the spawned enemies.

The First Issue arrived where the spawned enemies, if dead were destroyed from the world. Hence, we have to check if they are valid in the same loop and remove them, if we are late to get the isdead boolean and the actor gets destroyed.
Further for completion, we check the length to be how many enemies you desire to remain and spawn another wave with the Macro we have.
Last branch to check if we are at the 0 length of our Wave Of Enemies array, if true, invalidate and clear the timer.
An event is dispatched for other level BP's to proceed when the wave is cleared.

Another blocking issue within the Macro Spawn Enemies and Remove Portals arrived.
I tried a lot of solutions, but this is the best one in my understanding that makes a mishap a feature of the code.
The Spawn portal ref array was an instance editable reference provided from within the level.
These portals have the functionality to appear spawn an enemy from it and get destroyed. This destroy actor again creates none references in this array on some indexes.
This time we check it in the is valid macro and use it to our benefit by checking from the is not valid node that the current index is the last index of the array.
The logic behind this was, that the portals spawning from the first index to the last, every index is converted to none value as they are destroyed and if the last index is none, it means all portals have spawned.

After we set a boolean and break the for loop. From completed we check if that boolean is true and clear array which has all values as none.

The game starts with Max getting trapped in a game; the player has to find a way out of there.

This level corresponds to the game being loaded as Max enters the game, the textures aren't loaded, and the meshes are glitching.

Greybox to Final iteration of the level

This level goes through teaching all the basic mechanics to the player and setting a tone for the combat coming further into the game.

The Loading Bar in the bottom left corner symbolizes that the character has been pulled into the game and the assets are still loading, hence the greybox theme and glitchy assets.

Level Begins with a layout wide enough for players to move around whilst still having a longer segment, giving them the direction they are supposed to be headed.

Further, at the end of the long ramp is a double jump and dash tutorial, which is set to be a platforming loop that does not kill you but instead lands you on a platform if you fall, so you return to the loop again until you complete the platforming and move forward from this section.

The lighting here is used to direct the player's line of sight toward the entrance of the rooms. The player has to clear 3 rooms where we teach him the combat mechanics of the game.

Once the player approaches the last stretch, a massive portal will appear in their field of vision. The goal of the game is for the player to get through the oncoming fight and reach the portal.

The player is provided with unlimited Super energy and is incentivized to use it throughout the section to become familiar with the super ability.

Full Gameplay of the Level

< Back to Projects