DUNE STRIDER
DESCRIPTION
Dune Strider is a Sandbox-Trading Game in which you, the player, take command of a merchant controlling a Sand-Barge in a desert and use it to travel and explore the land around you.
The road to settlements to sell your goods is filled with dangers and opportunities. Find the mystery that haunts the settlers and come to their aid.
ROLES
System Design
Combat Design
UI Design
VFX
SKILLS LEARNED
- Gameplay Ability System (GAS) plugin
- UINav plugin
- Niagara particle effects
- Dealing with unexpected circumstances
- Being flexible
- UI Design and widget layout
- Real-time combat design
- Economy management
YEAR
2022
PLATFORM
PC
Team Size
17
GENRE
Trading Sandbox
Game Page
Combat Design Proposal
Gamepad Aiming Prototype
First Playable Combat loop
Gamepad Controls Rework
Gamepad Aiming Prototype 2
Aiming and Flamethrower
Flamethrower finalized
Surrounding Movement
Gamepad Aiming Prototype
Gamepad Aiming Prototype
Gamepad Aiming Prototype
Combat
During the 32 weeks of the project some of my main responsibilities and contributions have been to the combat of the game.
The images below show my contributions to combat throughout the project. Starting with concepting and prototyping and ending with finalized combat.
Working on combat has taught we how to work with the Gameplay Ability System as well as create engaging real-time combat.
Before actually working on combat me, Jelle and Okan had worked on the proposal for the combat design that we would use to create combat later. You can see it below. Inspired by our research into different games this is a visual representation of the combat, which was going to be real-time.
Next I created an early prototype of the gamepad aiming for our first playable. In this prototype directional aiming is represented by the arrow (and you use the right stick). Aiming on a location is indicated by the AOE sphere, and is done by holding a trigger to extend the sphere.
This was not completely intuitive so later I will be reworking it.
Now I created some abilities (being the grenade, shield and anchor). This was to showcase the flow of combat in our game by giving people something to play with early.
An important decision I made early was to have abilities arch instead of shoot in a straight line, as we were going to be sailing through a desert full of hills and therefore we needed to take elevation into account.
Next up I adressed the problems with the current gamepad aiming. Holding down a button to aim further felt awkward, therefore I went into a new direction inspired by other games with real-time top down combat. The intensity of the right stick would now decide how far the attack goes. Next up, another prototype!
Now I made the prototype that uses the right thumbstick's intensity to decide how far the ability goes. I tested this with team members and other people and it was a lot better. Still some problems with snapping to axis, which is later simply resolved by adjusting the deadzone's of the thumbstick in the settings.
Next I fully implemented the gamepad aiming into the game. I also went to make an ability that showcases the different possiblities for abilities. In this case, flamethrower, shows that abilities can be made that aim in every direction around you. In this GIF its still just a white box, but the VFX will be added shortly!
The finalized flamethrower, complete with VFX (that I created using Niagara) and SFX. During the duration of the flamethrower you are locked into this ability because it could otherwise cause problems design wise. (with players having to juggle multiple abilities). The ability also causes enemies to go on fire and burn for a little bit.
Other than the previous shown work on combat I have also worked hugely on bug fixes and improvements.
I have reworked the cannonball, tremor and barrel. I have also worked on balancing all abilities by tweaking the values and sizes of hitboxes.
UI Design
These 2 UI's are the main UI's that I 'owned' during the project. I have done a lot of supportive work, like creating the framework for the pause menu. Implementing almost all the art assets into the pause menu (and a couple other widgets). I have also done work in the main menu and created the credits.
VFX
Other than these visual effects I have also made the flamethrower effects (seen higher above) and most other effects in combat (except the shield). Also worked on particles for collectible chests, sand falls and more! A great experience to learn a new useful skill.
ECONOMY
For the economy I have done some minor implementations. Where I did a lot of work was balancing. I made a vital document that we constantly used and referenced for the balancing of the entire economy. From gathering and combat to trading. It was all referenced in this document. Best of all, if you change a value in the document (like the base price of cactus), all other values in the document will be updated to reflect the change in economy. This way we could predict the economy before even having it in engine!
This is the deathscreen fully functional and with implemented art assets. It is a clear indication that you have died (as it literally pauses the game). And gives you the option to exit the game or continue. Exiting will have a prompt to make sure you don't click it by accident.
This is the settings menu (a slightly earlier version before art assets were implemented). This was very exciting to work on and I learned a lot in it. It was cool to see how all the settings worked in Unreal Engine (and how easy it was to apply). Researching accessiblity settings was especially interesting and fun to work on!
I learned a lot about Niagara and particle effects by trying to create a trail for the ship. The actual trail in the sand is a virtual runtime texture made by Jan-Mathijs. The dust particles are made by me, with a lot of iterations and research into vehicles driving through sand to get to this result. It scales on speed to make it even more impactful when you are going fast!
