As mainly an assistant programmer, my roles consisted of:

Programmer:

• Player movement features suited for a horror game (i.e., no backwards sprint, etc), including stamina, sprinting, crouching, and jumping

• Lantern mechanics suited for a horror survival, including oil & matches as "ammo", different light modes affecting visibility & oil drain, and a deprecated light dimming based on oil left

• Oil & Matches pickups for the player to refill their "ammo"

• Player HUD pertaining to stamina level, oil level, matches left, tutorial objectives, and a deprecated "Moon Mechanic Cycle" visual

• Deprecated "Moon Mechanic Cycle) which determined the player's environment & enemy difficulty

• Cinematic triggers

• Quick prototypes of features that had art/3D models yet to be implemented

• General bug fixing, game optimisation, and rigorous playtesting

• Adding debug toggles and print statements to assist with playtesting

Tech Support:

• On-call assistance (Discord screen sharing) with version control (Github, Github Desktop, Gitbash), including correctly pushing/pulling changes, creating branches, and resolving merge conflicts

• Providing help with basic Unreal Engine 5.4.4 features & general manoeuvring  around the engine

Technical Artist:

• Implementation of 3D assets, models, materials

• Applying virtual textures to created materials for models

• Correcting the positioning of certain world objects to prevent clipping, wrong orientation, etc

• Deciding whether a model, texture, or animation was necessary for scope/important to indicate mechanics

• Theorising tunnel from tutorial cave to altar using 2 separate landscapes, hardwiring player goal 

Animation:

• "Quick" cutscene flashes that hinted towards player objective

• Zoom-out shot showing eye-shaped  map

Workflow:

• Deciding the optimal programmer workflow to ensure smooth collaboration

• Attempted use of Flow Shotgun/Shotgrid Production Software to organise team workflow

• Organising files, assets, and blueprints where they make sense

• Deciding our version control workflow

• Exporting weekly builds + solving build issues

Programming Standards

• Work in components and attach (e.g., stamina component attached to player character)

• Create parent blueprints to create children from (e.g., pickup parent, then creating oil, matches, rune pickup from that)

• Use Custom Events to sort organise events into a more readable format (nicknamed "Event Bus")

• Categorise Variables

• No "Magic Numbers" (0 is ok to keep)

• Name blueprints BP_EtcEtc, WBP_Etcetc, 

• Name variables with spaces between (e.g., "Stamina Cost" instead of "StaminaCost")

• Colour blueprints red for needing urgent attention, deprecation, or copyright issue

• "Get Actor Of Class" and "Event Dispatch" to communicate between blueprints (only Blueprint Interface for certain mechanics)

Player Movement

Fair & Sensible Movement Restrictions

Despite building off UE5's First-Person Template, we had to make sure the movement felt suited to a first-person, horror survival game. While still providing fairness to the player, this would mean barring "advanced movement tech", including:

• Backwards/Strafe/Crouch Sprint

• Sprinting in Air ( to prevent stamina loss for zero benefit)

• Crouch Jumping

So the only "permitted movement" would be to sprint diagonally/forwards.

• The NoCrouchInAir Custom Event prevents the player from crouching when they are falling (preventing crouch jumping) and sets their state accordingly.

• The Sprint & Restrictions prevents sprinting while in certain states, also triggering a hacky way to allow sprinting after it goes through all branches

HUD Management

HUD class blueprint which organised how the HUD was shown, collapsed, and initialised upon game start. Also displays some of my programming standards, where all processes run on Custom Events to make the code readable/cleaner. Also demonstrates Event Dispatches. 

1. Event Bus - Runs code inside the blueprint

2. Comms - Area containing communication to other BPs

3. Initialise HUD - Makes sure HUD is properly added

4. Visible HUD on Input  (Deprecated) - Sets the visibility on certain HUDs for a progressive tutorial instead of showing every element which may overwhelm players. Deprecated due to issues with cutscene HUD code constantly setting visibility

5. Hide HUD in Cutscene - Depending on player state, show or collapse HUD (unfortunately contradicted with showing a progressive HUD for tutorial reasons)

Moon Cycle Mechanic (Deprecated)

8-part cycle which would've decided world events such as fog, enemy speed, and lighting. Deprecated due to focus needing to be in other areas like smoothing out the core gameplay loop.

1. Runs on a timer that ticks every 1 second

2. Every minute, change moon phase

3. On cycles that are "emptier", make the enemy slower, the fog less heavy, and the light more bright. Vice versa on fuller cycles

4. Display suitable cycle, name & timer depending on current state

5. Cycle back to initial phase after the last (8th) cycle

Quick Cutscenes

Flash of images to hint towards player objective as per player feedback & player direction.