Claira G. Ames

The Harpy Queen is the boss-fight at approximately 50% through the game’s critical path. The boss is designed to terrorize the player at range but be easier to face in melee combat. This creature was my largest design undertaking and it taught me many things listed below.

• On the technical side I learned:
  • Proper naming convention and file structure.
  • RepNotify Boolean functions.
  • How to utilize AI Actions and Behaviour Trees.
  • Animation notifies to properly time functionality to an animated ability.
  • Additionally spawning creatures flexibly based on timing and variables.
  • The danger of renaming and deleting files!
• On the personal side I learned:
  • How and when to ask support from peers, programmers and artists.
  • Knowing the pipeline and adhering to deadlines for a “start-to-finish” creature.
  • Documentation of specific features required for the creature to challenge the player.
  • Having an idea vs. knowing the design of a gameplay moment.
  • Frequently showing my work despite it being a flawed work-in-progress prototype.

Bound Sunderer

The Bound Sunderer is a kamikaze type enemy who will sacrifice themselves to deal massive damage to the their target.

Bound Bombardier

The Bound Bombardier is a ranged enemy who will pelt the player with grenade projectiles and constantly reposition.

Burrowing Bear

As a rapid proof-of-concept prototype I made a creature that can burrow below the ground and navigate as normal.

The Bound Sunderer has a ton of death logic that allows it to behave how it does in game. My goal was to have the player recognize it as a walking explosive barrel that can benefit the player if they are observant and quick.

The Bound Bombardier has their projectile become an item proxy in game that has to emulate physics until it detonates.

• I gave it a rotation random based from a timeline while the projectile was in airborne.
• Carried that value into the item proxy.
• Granted it a collider and a rigid-body so it can roll.
• Ensure the fuse effect always played upwards so it was visible in foliage, and a few other items to make it behaved correctly.

The Burrowing Bear utilizes RepNotify’s to manage two states of being (underground or above-ground). These two states have different presets as well as manage different AI Actions that it can utilize in each state. All-the-while using tags as cooldowns instead of previous method of removing tags on a delay.