Prototyping:

Core Mechanics:

Initial prototypes tested how zero-gravity movement would interact with shooting mechanics. This phase emphasized fluid controls and ensuring movement felt responsive despite the lack of gravity.

Iterative Testing:

Early builds featured placeholder art and a focus on player physics, allowing quick adjustments to controls and weapon feedback without visual distractions.

Tool Utilization:

Unreal Engine 5’s physics system was leveraged to simulate realistic yet fun zero-gravity movement, and Blueprints were used for rapid iteration.

Playtesting and Feedback:

Internal Testing:

Conducted frequent playtesting with a small group to refine core mechanics. The focus was on player movement precision, weapon balancing, and enemy behavior.

Feedback Loops:

Players highlighted areas where movement felt too chaotic or sluggish.

Weapon recoil was fine-tuned to add strategic depth without overwhelming players.

Adjustments:

Testing highlighted the need for more precise player movement controls, clearer and more intuitive enemy behaviors, and an additional mechanic: melee punching. This feature was introduced to enhance close-combat scenarios, provide a strategic option during low-ammo situations, and increase interactivity with both enemies and environmental objects, such as fuel barrels, adding depth to gameplay.

Balancing:

Weapons:

Each weapon's recoil and damage were carefully balanced for variety and fairness. An auto-reloading system was implemented, where unused weapons reload automatically with varying reload times. This design prevents gameplay interruptions while encouraging precision and resource management.

Enemies:

Designed enemy types with distinct behaviors and adjusted their spawn patterns to maintain a steady difficulty curve.

Pacing:

Level progression was fine-tuned to gradually increase enemy encounters difficulty, ensuring players skills match the challenge.

Implementation:

Movement: Created a hybrid control system combining precise inputs with zero-gravity momentum, ensuring responsive and immersive gameplay.

Enemy AI: Developed adaptive AI using behavior trees with visual state indicators and advanced pathfinding to prevent obstruction and improve navigation.

Combat: Built modular weapon systems with balanced mechanics, including recoil effects and auto reloading ammo system.

Melee Mechanic: Added a punching feature for close combat, low-ammo scenarios, and environmental interactions like triggering explosions.

Art and UI: Finalized pixel art and a minimal HUD, introduced late in development to focus on core gameplay.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge: The initial player movement system relied heavily on physics-based mechanics, resulting in viscous, unresponsive, and unpredictable controls that hindered the gameplay experience.

Solution: Developed a hybrid movement system that combined direct input responsiveness with a controlled momentum model. This approach allowed precise player control while preserving the sense of zero-gravity drift, ensuring a balance between realism and playability. 

Challenge: The initial enemy AI was overly simplistic, lacking distinct behaviors and clear intent. Additionally, basic movement calculations often caused enemies to get stuck in walls, diminishing gameplay quality. 

Solution: Implemented behavior trees to enable adaptive and dynamic enemy responses while maintaining player engagement. Added visual state indicators, such as an exclamation icon above enemies, to convey intent. Enhanced movement calculations by incorporating a trace-based grid system to dynamically identify valid paths, ensuring smooth and obstacle-free navigation. 

Learning Outcomes

Physics Integration: Gained a deeper understanding of implementing and tweaking physics systems in Unreal Engine. Not relying on them too much, because fair gameplay is predictable one.

Iterative Design: Learned the value of starting with minimal viable prototypes to test core mechanics before adding complexity.

Balancing: Improved skills in balancing player mechanics, enemy behavior, and level pacing to maintain player engagement.