Spirit Guider is a 3D co-op puzzle exploration game, where each player will need to guide their spirits to a safety and harness their powers to brave the many dangers they will face together
My last big project with IIM! We had 6 months to do it, but a number of organizational problems with the team made it difficult. For my part, I was balancing between this project, school reports and my apprenticeship, but I think I managed to get organized with the other developers and get a good result. I was able to continue making tools, whether for levels or for VFX and SFX implementation.
Release : June 2024
Period : 6 months
Platform : Unreal Engine 5 - C++ & Blueprints
Team Size : 13
- 4 Game Designer
- 3 Game Developer
- 2 Game Artist
- 3 Sound Designer
- 1 Producer
My Role : Lead Gameplay / Tools Programmer
- Task distribution
- Player Shield Feature
- Level Generation Tool
- Corruption Feature
- Event Architecture for VFX & SFX
- Level design ingredients
- Art Integration
- Gamefeel
- Git Management
- Build Distribution
Task Distribution
To get a better overview and distribute tasks more easily, we used ClickUp (Jira like) with the other developers. This enabled us to work more efficiently and keep track of project progress as we went along.
Designers could also easily report any bugs they found that we needed to fix.
Level Generation Tool
To allow you to iterate quickly and place hexagons easily, I've created a fairly simple tool that lets you set the floor of the level. The tool will also define the direction of the level to help designers.
Each hexagon created is then sorted to form lines of hexagons in code according to their coordinates.
Puzzle Zone Tool
Later, I enhanced the tool to add a simple way of defining puzzle zones in the level. So you get colored feedback on the level with all the hexagons contained in the defined zone.
When corruption occurs, a timer starts and all the hexagons fall at the same time at the end of the timer.
Corruption feature
With the tool I've created, I've been able to sort all the hexagons in the level by line according to their coordinates.
Every X number of times, a line of hexagons corrupts and falls into the void. When you reach a puzzle area, the corruption stops and resumes after a set time, with the entire area falling.
Event Architecture for VFX & SFX
To help Artists and Sound Designers, I've created a number of events in C++ that can be implemented in Blueprints, enabling them to integrate their creations themselves and test them live.
All implemented events are recorded in an excel file containing the name of the blueprint in which they are located and their precise name.
The name of the event is always very explicit, so that they can easily understand when it's being performed.
