Consisting of a boss battle, a unique camera system that a seasoned Unreal Engine developer said his company would buy, quick time events, and plenty of cutscenes/animations, this project was a complicated step forward for my Unreal Engine experience.

For detailed information for each of these elements download this powerpoint.
Or view it at the bottom of this page as an embedded PDF

A full run through of the game:

FX

A range of FX utilising the Niagra engine

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Camera Work

Dynamic drag and drop camera system (Commended as plugin worthy)

• Dynamic camera system which consists of drag and drop locations for the camera with other drag and drop triggers that the player activates to switch to that location. Marker who had 6 years in games development industry, with deep understanding of Unreal Engine, suggested I package this as a plugin and that their company would have bought this.
• It also has editable values on each trigger dictating the speed of transition and amount the camera moves towards the player from a set location. This adjustable offset allows a smooth following of the player even when on the edge of one trigger.

Seamless controls change on camera rotation

• As the camera changes rotation, when the character goes round a corner, the controls automatically switch for a seamless transition of movement so A and D always control your left and right movement no matter the rotation of camera.

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Animations

Animation Blueprints

Cutscenes

The below screenshot relates to the second cutscene once you fall off the conveyor belt

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Gameplay Mechanics

Adaptive widgets

• Adaptive widgets that change according to player input

Drag and drop quick time event

• Drag and drop quick time event where you have to press a button repeatedly to escape death
• Each event has editable values changing the difficulty and amount of presses required

Dynamic drag and drop checkpoint/death system

• Dynamic drag and drop checkpoint system which saves the players most recent checkpoint's location
• Drag and drop death points that upon player overlap triggers player death sequence

Drag and drop machine arms

• Drag and drop machine arms that have editable values to change their speed of turning, direction, and starting rotation

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Boss fight

Avoid line of sight

• A boss fight in which you hide behind pipes to avoid the line of sight as you cross from one side to another. With light as an indicator and animations as you fail or succeed

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Featuring an entirely self made environment, using Blender, and use of Vicon MoCap tech, 2 minigames and NPC behaviour were created to simulate an arcade environment.

For even more explanation than below, and my full process from planning to implementing with lessons learned and images/code extracts, see this project report.

This document, as well as the project as a whole, is by far one of my proudest achievements to date.

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Created Models + Animations

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Whack A Mole Minigame

Moles
The moles pop in and out, using states
The time each mole hides for, as well as shows for, is editable: an upper range and lower range is provided per mole and a delay is randomly chosen between the two. As the game gets closer to finishing, the delay becomes progressively less.
Only hittable in certain states to avoid misfires
Hammer
The hammer follows the mouse around the playable area on its own axis
The hammer target, which shows where the hammer will hit, projects directly on the machine in the playable area. When the cursor gets outside of the playable area, the target stops moving and the pointer cursor appears again so you can hit buttons in the GUI
Animation of the hand ringing its fingers while holding the hammer
There's a delay between the swinging animation to prevent misfires
Countdown + Scoreboard
A countdown before game starts which is editable
A 'press for help' option that provides a pop up with instructions which only shows during this game start countdown
A scoreboard showing the current score is updated on successful mole hit
An animation plays to emphasise when you get a new high score at the end of the game
GUI
A back button sends you back to the isometric view of the arcade where you can choose a new game
A redo button can be pressed at any point to restart the minigame

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Dance Dance Revolution Minigame

Arrows mechanics
Arrows are spawned and simply drop to the bottom of the screen
They're created using a range of custom events in the sequence editor, purposefully made this way to make it simple to create new songs and match the timings
Scoring mechanics
When the appropiate arrow is clicked on the keyboard, it compares how close it is to the line found at the bottom and gives one of 8 different scores where missing is the worst score
This score you recieved is shown as a popup behind the machine, where text has an animation to show and hide itself smoothly
The most recent 5 scores are compared to the max it could have been, and this acts as your health - this means you can slowly increase your health if you start doing well after mucking up
As your health decreases, the player starts dancing worse - blending from the motion captured good dancing to nicknamed 'drunk dancing'
If your health falls below 0 you fail, and the character stops dancing as the screen animates to say you failed
Upon completion, the screen animates to show your score and updates the high score on the side if your score is higher than the previous
GUI
A back button sends you back to the isometric view of the arcade where you can choose a new game
A redo button can be pressed at any point to restart the minigame

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Home and NPC Machines

Home
Hovering over a minigame/clickable element causes it to highlight with an orange glow
All high scores are visible on the machines
NPC behaviour
NPC's stand waiting for an unoccupied machine (that's signified by a video of a green screen) in an idle state
When they find one available, they change states and move to it
When at the machine the state changes again, whilst the screen changes to red to show it's occupied, and they play a different animation
All colours etc on the screen are videos, so easily replaceable with future made arcade idle videos.
Player Interaction
The player can click these machines to break it, playing an animation involving smoke coming out of the machine and a video of a bluescreen, so the NPC goes back and waits for a machine to become available again

Having moved into a new house for uni, I wanted to plan some placements of posters and furniture. Instead of just doing a isometric view, although that was created first, I decided to do the entire room and preview some different camera angles and lighting in Blender.

Using the same style as the previous creation but making use of water and some other details I wanted to include but didn't as it didn't fit in.

A bigger project to delve more in low poly designs. The idea of nature and the fact its based on a real location meant this was quite a challenge to try and show in this style. It was also my first attempt at including people and a more advanced environment than just a flat area.

A level project - A toy for children in which you spin the top spinner to make a sum and then turn the discs to move the marble along to the corresponding disc that equals the answer. Eg 1+2 so you roll the marble to the 3rd disc along. This allows the user to learn how gravity works, a little bit of mazes and some addition or subtraction depending on what's spun at the start. It has an abacus placed on the top to help.
This was created in multiple stages, taking feedback from an interview with a childs nursery, and direct feedback from my supervisor throughout the designing process.

It made use of a CNC lathe for the spinner made from aluminium and a laser cutter to produce the MDF with precision friction joints and kerf cutting. A vinyl sticker machine was also used to print a few stickers to place on the spinner made from aluminium.

This is my third project on blender. Learning about cloth physics allowed the bed sheet to cover the bed correctly, and made the curtains look much more realistic. I also spent a lot of time using beziers curves to create the complex shape of a unicorn lamp I was gifted, and gave the materials a glow effect like the LED does.

A level project - An app I coded in Java using Android Studios. The app uses database integration from Firebase to keep data across 5 pages, each designed and created using Photoshop and the tools within Android Studios.

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HUB Page

A gateway to all the pages with large buttons and easy navigation. The colour scheme matches what my client wanted and the text is large enough to read on the phone. This is the one thing I'd change, the header and footer text isn't quite as obvious and I would've like them to be.

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Tasks + Past Tasks Page

You create tasks to be done for an amount of money and someone can claim they've done the task through a drop down. This is then saved on a linked page called 'Past Tasks' that just holds all entries in the past displaying the amount, the task and the person who claimed they did it.

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You Owe Me Page

For any debts between family members. Two drop downs to choose who owes who, with a value in the middle to enter a amount. Underneath it shows all debts owed, with each person colour coded eg here 'Louis' is orange. The date is also shown with an x to its left, which can be clicked to remove the debt. Below that once more is a menu that can be hidden or shown, that almost acts like a scoreboard to see how much a person owes or is owed.

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Shopping List Page

Simple readable shopping list that has items that can be removed. It also has an option to push a notification which would go out to all phones with the app installed, who would likely be at the store forgetting where they left the shopping list.

This is my second project on blender but made use of duplicate elements to almost make a city out of Lego.

I always wanted to learn blender and this was set as my first proper project. It has multiple little models like a cupboard with its contents, a desk with all the peripherals, a bookcase and extra objects scattered about. My very first small model was the desk and then the keyboard. The mouse makes use of the sculpting side of blender and it taught me how to use images as a reference. The most complex of all of the objects would be the chair, which taught me to use subdivision surface modifier, or the controller, which taught me to better use reference images and create the shape from a 4 vertices plane.

My family were building a new kitchen, and I was asked to give a basic design of what it would look like so my mum could see how different wall colours would work, whilst also acting as a reference for the builder. I spent a lot of hours of measuring what we originally had and talking to my dad working out sizes of new units. This was then used by the builder to understand the layout. The use of VR was great in this, it allowed my mum to change heights of units and locations of different things without having to build anything first.

Another idea of my teachers, we were given a long piece of wood found in his garden and told to cut it up, plain it and then create a box using 4 joints. We were left to our own devices to create one as solid and aesthetically pleasing as possible. Choosing a dovetail, butt, mitre and comb joint, I also routed the bottom so that we could slide a tiny bit of plywood into the box to act as a floor without any visible seams. Adding a bit of filler for the few gaps to keep it strong and look better, and the roof was edited to allow a suction fit that works really well on this. We also used a laser cutter, masking tape and paint to do the lid design. Unfortunately it was a little lob sided on mine but due to COVID I wasn't able to redo this.

This was my attempt to get used to Sketchup and to scale modelling. I had previously created really simple shapes, but I wanted to make something a little more complex and this had lots of lines and areas that required quite a lot more detail than a normal square room.

GCSE product - designed to fit a pop art style, with adaptated sections designed to aid with the arthritis of the client. Created using a laser cutter for the main frame and a shelf in the middle and a 3D printer for the grip on the back. The stand on the lid can be used to open it, and can be placed at any angle for convenient mirror use on the inside.

My first use of SketchUp to model a redesign of my office room. This was the first time I found working VR options, allowing me to decide where to put furniture in a 3D space with as accurate proportions as possible. This was a large part of my learning of SketchUp and my love for making 3D models.

I wanted a redesign of my room, and to test out wallpapers and placements of the different bits of furniture I created it virtually. This is the layout I ended up with but I wanted to have a go at some harder modelling so I went into a bit more detail about the wardrobe I found and bought on Ebay.