Alex Melenchón
Design
Project Overview
In this project I have been part of the Design team Thus, I have been able to participate and influence the vast majority of aspects of the Project in the Gameplay aspect. Mainly, I've had the responsibility to develop the Player Character and the Combat System around it; also taking the tasks of associated systems such as Bosses or Enemies In the last five months, I feel like I've learned a lot from a Design and a general development standpoint but, although I've been a Designer, I've also been a Scrum Master for the majority of the project, which has helped me grow soft skills that I was lacking before. Overall, even though we had glows and grows during this journey, it has been an amazing experience and I am so proud and grateful that I had the honor to enjoy it with the astonishing Team we had. Lots of things to take away from this project... And the vast majority powerful lessons, both in a professional and personal level.
Combat Design
Design & Implementation
These are the main Systems I've developed, having taken care of the Design & the Implementation aspect of them all:
Blaster & Heat System
The Blaster is the core of the gameplay and it works rather simply: just aim and shoot. Works alongside the Heat System, which makes the weapon more ineffective the more is used, giving players choices in the short-term combat.
Sniper Rifle
Works as a secondary weapon and serves a high risk - high reward situation, since it is a weapon that forces you to stay in place in a fast-paced game with a Charge Mechanic that does not guarantee your damage.
CrypPulse Device (CPD)
Works as an AoE attack that stays in the ground and slows enemies down: opens the player choices in combat and allows them to Crowd Control the enemies. By holding down the button a variable time, the player can choose how far it will go.
Movement & Feel
Composed by a directional movement and a Dash, the Movement works alongside all other systems to give the players the Fast Paced experience we aimed for.
Status System
Gives the player (and other entities) the option to have different states that heavily impact the gameplay; such as Hasted, which accelerates the whole entity.
Design
These are the main systems that I've designed and form a core part of the Combat System:
Aim-Assit System
A system that helps the player aim his blaster automatically and helps with the other Weapons & Skills slighty: since it is a Fast Paced game, the focus of the Player should not be aiming but rather the management of situations.
Combo System
Rewards skilled players for not losing it and performing high scores while also motivating Player to get higher Scores and serving as a quick visual feedback for damage.
Grogu's Skills
Secondary Skills that aid the player in battle. There are two of them: the Push, more aggressive, but hard to aim, useful for taking down enemies, and the Wall, an easy to use defensive skill for slowing down enemies and taking cover.
Other Aspects of Combat
These are the other aspects of the combat development I have been assigned to:
Prototyping & Iteration
From a Prototype in Unity from the final Iteration in our engine; I have been in charge of iterating and balancing the combat system from the main character perspective.
Wave System
Alongside Carlos Redolar, we re-designed and iterated the Wave System to make them fit in the design vision: their frequencies, the particles that would show up, the time between enemy spawns and more!
Boss Design
Moff Gideon Re-Design
From the Boss Design aspect, I have, alongside Carlos Redolar, the task to re-design the Moff Gideon (the final boss) for his final iteration; although it was a very cooperative process the main aspect I have taken care of are the following:
State Machine
I developed the designed behaviour of the Boss into a graph taking the code's state machine to ease the process for our fellow coders.
You can check it hereSwing Attack
This is one of the two main attacks of the Boss: being very powerful and having great range it is a skill check to see if the player has learntthe positioning and dodging times.
Spawn Attack
A special attack where Moff spawns his minion to help him take the player down. Creates a tension and an additional challenge to the fight that test player's skills.
Other Contributions
Core Design
Specially at the beginning of the project, I have participated in taking decisions to define the game and our vision of it: defining place, core mecanichs, how the loop would work, etc.
Scrum Management
In this project I have also been a Scrum Master for the majority of its duration; this helped me grow my soft skills and have me a wider perspective of the project.
Readme creation
I have been in charge of writing down the readme and the changelog for the game in all of its milestones.
Player State Machine Design
To ease the implementation and iteration process, I transcribed the intented design of the main character's behavior into a graph.
You can check it here