Based
ROLE
AI, Gameplay and GUI Programmer
DESCRIPTION
Based is a third person ragdoll comedy shooter.
During this project I worked on the AI for the enemies and some gameplay elements
YEAR
2022
GENRE
Ragdoll shooter
PLATFORM
PC
What I worked on...
This was a project that I developed for AIE (The academy of interactive entertainment). During this project I developed the AI that the enemy characters use, which had a modular design so behaviors can be added or removed on the fly, enemy AI characters can chase and attack the player and patrol a series of waypoints, take damage and die.
the AI system also features path finding, sight detection and predictive aiming.
The AI system smoothly integrated with the ragdoll system that another programmer created so all the logic and behavior is acted out through funny ragdoll movement.
Another area that I worked on was the general gameplay of Based setting up triggers and events for when the player entered a certain area triggering guards to activate doors and such. and miscellaneous game logic.
Throughout the project I gave support to other team members and helped with technical issues and solved countless bugs, there was one programmer in particular that was struggling with GUI and I helped debug the code to get it in working order.
I also was responsible for creating a build and putting the game up on itch.io.
In this project I communicated with the team as best as I could and feel that went a long way and
it is clear that without my contribution to this project it would have fallen apart into a mess, a lot of our programmer and designer members didn't have a lot of time to work on it or had other commitment's and I was the only one gluing the gameplay elements together to create a project that I am proud of.
Obstacles overcome...
In this project there where a lot of bugs that I had to solve in order for it to be successful. When I encountered a problem I would first try to see if I could solve it on my own,
sometimes that worked and other times it didn't, in that case I would research my problem online to find a solution or ask a teacher for help.
On one occasion I was getting help from one of the teachers for one of my problems, I don't think he fully understood how my system worked but he gave me wrong information about one of unities events, I further investigated and found the real cause of my issue, I have had other times when this type of predicament occurred, throughout my time coding games, and in those times had only myself to rely on and I would usually eventually find the solution even though I was on the brink of giving up,
during this project one of the teachers noticed my contribution and support I was giving to the team and made me the lead programmer to take charge of keeping the other programmers on point, it didn't come to me as a surprise since that is what I was doing all along.
A large difficulty we had with this project was version control, and in this case perforce was the one we were using, event though I was not an expert with this software I just had to learn it.