My Experience
Working in this project has been a really instructive experience for me because I went from working with 8 people at a time to working together with 32 people.
One of the best parts of the project is that I could realise which systems of the engine I’m more comfortable with and what am I interested in so far. I have been mainly working in the animation system and in the gameplay but this project made us work in different zones of the code sometimes, so I also had to work with the UI team, the shaders team and the AI team, from which I learned a lot too.
But the best part in this project has been working together with my friends in a game and making new friends with people that I already knew before but I didn't had too much contact with. Making this game together has been a super fun experience that I enjoyed with my old and my new friends!
Animation System
My principal role in this project from its beginning to its end has been being the Animation Guy, who is that guy that you call whenever you have doubts or problems with animations.
I have previous experience in working with an animation system because I created one before the project, so with Adrian Castillo we managed to improve that system for the engine and make it easy to use. In these 4 months I learned a lot about animation optimization and about ways to manage animations to make them easy to use and try for the artists and the designers.
This has been our first 3D game in an engine made by ourselves, so we had to adapt ourselves to some circumstances while developing the game. I've passed a lot of time in the first two months working along with the artists in their models and animations. We had some limitations with the way that models and their rig had to be done at the beginning. My job in that period was testing them to analyze the animated models and find which problems they could have so we could make them work. During the project the skinning system was improved and the artists have had more freedom since then.
To resume, my job in this field has been:
- Animation System Creation
- Animation Blendings between Animations Implementation
- Mixing Animations through Blending Clips
- Helping Marti Majó with the Skinning through Shaders
- Animation State Machine
- "FX System" to reproduce sound and throw particles from the ASM in a specific point of the animation
- Scripting methods to control Animations
Gameplay Programming
Player Scrum
After finishing the Animation System I was assigned to work in the Player Scrum, which was cool because I have always wanted to work in a gameplay. We were 8 teammates people working to make the player functional and interesting following the ideas of the design group. As we were 3 programmers and we have 3 characters in our game each one of us focused on 1 character while helping each other when it was necessary.
I had to work with Theon, a ranged character able to go melee to stun enemies pushing them against walls and keeping distance that way too. But as we had too many tasks I had to work in Jaime and Daenerys abilities too.
Combat Scrum
When the player and the enemies were fully functional we had to focus in improving the combat to make it more dynamic, so we created the combat scrum.
In this scrum we worked with Nicolás Babot, who came from the AI department. We focused on the feedback of the combat and also in making it more realistic. I worked a lot with the AI as well as learning how it works and fixing bugs. Mainly the ones related with animations.
Some of my gameplay work has been:
- Creating player projectiles (Theon Arrow and Daenerys Fireball)
- Character Manager
- Stamina, Mana and Health waste feedback
- Second Version of Daenerys Firebreath
- Fixing AI Bugs
- Characters Deaths