Today I bring you our group project for my Gameplay Programming university module,

To The Core is a 3rd person platformer where you've got to go deep into the earth to solve the case of the mysterious earthquakes that have begun to plague the land!

This group project involved 5 members, myself included, where I provided and created a range of mechanics and gameplay systems. I'd like to go through a few of them here and follow it up with a short review of how the team aspect of this proejct went.

As I was not only in charge of developing the player and how it felt withing my level, ensuring ground checks worked on the levels created by my fellow group members, but also in-charge of the player's combat system, it was only natural that I created the framework for enemies to be built upon. Zoe had mainly focused on the second scene and wanted to add spider enemies, and so after giving her the framework, she generalised the method of receiving incoming damage through a general 'Enemy' class. She went on to create the enemy AI and attack patterns themselves, but the stats fed straight but into the player stats script that I had setup. Later on, enemies were needed in level 3 and it seemed appropriate to also add my slime enemies, altering them to become 'magma slimes' given the lava setting. This was a simple copy paste job from my pre-made combat demo system, but I had to alter some things to work with the new lightweight renderer pipeline & the new generalised enemy framework, which wasn't too bad. Finally, I went on to balance the attack damage & health stats of all the enemies and the player to feel nice and balanced throughout the gameplay.

Other than all that, I mainly acted as a somewhat manager for the group, ensuring everyone was on track, had tasks to do. Zoe did a fantastic job creating all the lovely functionality of the second level's minecart system, as well as everything else within that scene. Cameron used his third-year knowledge to get in the know about advanced camera systems using Cinemachine, and provided all the cutscene for each level and did most of the work on the thrid level, albeit Dan's attempt to create it. Gabriel did a great job providing an NPC system, as well as the raw power-ups for each level. He also create most of the UI.

A full video of the game's playthrough can be found below!
The game features power-ups, coins, enemies, minecarts, moving platforms, cutscenes, combat, mazes, harmless sheep, and talkative farmers!

Back with another edition to my 3rd person platformer unity demo, this time I bring you 2.5D Splines!

My splines system has a whole lot of stuff it can do and is simply added by dragging in and unpacking a prefab. Once in the scene, the spline runs in the editor. Here you can play around with it's shape and length as you please using waypoints and waypoint toggles. You can even change settings such as how detailed the curve is.

When playing the game, players can walk up to the spline, then will enter a nice transition to go from free-walking to being locked on the spline in a 2D style. Once on the spline you can only move left and right. Once reaching either end of the spline again, you pop right off.

My spline uses a rather strange locking system, with a few bugs like being able to move out of bounds of the spline from the start position, as well as jumping not staying in-line with the spline when moving as well as jumping, but the base concept is there. If I had time, I'd like to make a more refined version in the future.

Continuing on with my 3rd person platformer unity demo game, this time I upgraded my camera system!

​​Checkout the video below for a much more detailed look into the system, what it can do, and the code behind it!

Last time I still had the issue of friction against wall when in mid-air, as featured in the 1st player avatar demo post. This time around, I fixed it! It was a quick and simple fix that just used the ground check function to check if I was in mid-air or not. If I, as in the player, was in mid-air, then its rigidbody would have its material set to have no friction. This meant I'd just rub against surfaces like no issue. When the player is grounded, it adds friction again so that it can walk around normally.

​Checkout the video below for a much more detailed look into the system, what it can do, and the code behind it!

Today I made a double power-up systems based on top of my last post, the player avatar system in Unity.

First, I fixed a couple bugs from last time, one which limited your jump distance due to having only 1 max air-glide velocity. It limited the distance you could travel no matter if you were running and jumping or regular jumping. Now, there are 2 independent max air-glide velocities, allowing 2 different jump distances based on if you were performing a regular or a running jump. The second bug was not falling down on a wall you were colliding with whilst trying to move. I solved this by applying a physics material with 0 friction.

Now for the new stuff! I created 2 power-ups, a speed boost and a double jump. ​They both work as you'd expect, with public variables to control the outputs, and prefabs to place them down infinitely.

I also added a whole bunch of particles, for general running, jumping and landing, as well as for each power-up.

The speed boost looks like a ball with lighting sparking out in all directions, and the double jump looks like a ball of gust spinning upwards. When consumed, there is a unique splash effect for each power-up.

Each power-up also has particle indications around the player to indicate if they are active or not, and particle effects for when the added abilities are used, when you double jump, and when you run.

Checkout the video below for a detailed look into the system, what it can do, the code behind it, and the changes to the animation system too!

You can even interact with the player with both keybaord/mouse and a controller!

Checkout the video below for a detailed look into the system, what it can do, the code behind it, and the animation system used!