Mix Maze

This is a game i created as part of a game jam in my 2nd year of university with the theme "losing is progress". I played the roll of technical lead and assisted in the game's design. The game features a mad scientist in a dungeon who crafts potions and throws them at goblins. After they progress through they find different recipes for potions that they can drink to kill themselves and gain immunity to it. The goal is to find a recipe that the scientist cannot survive from and escape the never ending dungeon... through death. The game was designed as a spiritual successor to my previous project 'Magecraft'.

My main achievements were:

- A procedural dungeon system equipped with a placeable system

The system would generate the entire upcoming dungeon, cell by cell. Some rooms would branch off into multiple rooms ahead of itself. This was an integral part of the games design as it hammered in the point that the player was trapped in a never ending maze. Despite being grid based, I created a procedural placement system that would take the size of an incoming asset, and use that data to offset  the set dressing by a specified amount so it would not overlap with the wall or other tiles. This was made to ensure all set dressing felt natural.

- The enemy AI 

The enemy has a simple run and shoot design as they are only generated when the player enters a room. They use behaviour trees and custom tasks with logic handled within the enemy character class. An issue i had with the enemy was that they would try to chase after the player into previous rooms in the dungeon. They could end up being trapped in there as the system deletes previous cells as the player moves on. This became an issue as the player needed to fight them for health and other benefits. I decided to put an invisible barrier on the doors which the enemy could not see through. After walking through the enemies would lose sight of the player and not follow.

- The potion effects 

there were multiple effects in the game, each with the option to throw the potion, or drink it. Once gaining the immunity by drinking the potion, the player would unlock certain affects by drinking them again. For example, drinking the bomb potion again would cause an explosion around the player, though they themselves would not be harmed. If the player failed to craft a correct potion, then they would create a 'dud' with a random affect. They could slightly damage or create a small smoke cloud, with more possible occurances aswell.

I also offered help with both the potion crafting, giving guidance and recommending approaches. I ensured I myself was not involved on this process however, as the game was based on my previous work 'magecraft' and wanted to see another's work on solving the issues I encountered.

 My team consisted of fellow students

Max Senior

Robin Crews

Adam Clark

Ewan Burkinshaw

Henry Bunn 

Tyler Thain

Sean Hindle

We used some animations from Mixamo