Jumper Demo of Watch Dog 2
Individual Work
Team size: 1
TimeFrame: 7 days
Walk Through Video
The demo was made to implement the beam guidance interaction system and the hacking puzzle of Jumper Mode in Watch Dog 2. The demo was made with UE4 and the level was build using grey box geometry, and it is a pure blueprint project. Main art asset was made with beam system in UE4. Interaction Icons were made with Adobe Photoshop.
Beam Guidance Interaction System
Interaction way of the Jumper of Watch Dog 2 is unlike most of RPG games, after looking over the game I found the interaction guidance (beam) always leads to the nearest object which can be interacted with. I created a parent class which contains the functionality of being interacted with, creating child classes for it and assigning different appearances and interaction feedback for them. To optimize the system, only when the player is moving, the distance detection should be executed in event tick. If it is an open world game, the interaction guidance beam will be activated specifically for objects in a limited area.
Hacking Puzzle Minigame
After the enter interaction is activated, there should be a transition between levels using load stream level and unload stream level of the puzzle level. Interaction way from view port also should be LineTraceByChannel by player camera. For each node in minigame, I created a 4-length queue which is filled with 1 or 0 in each element, representing the state (block or connect) of the node. Every time players rotates the node, element in the queue will be pushed to right once and the last one will be the first one in the queue. Here is an example for a 3-side node.
Learning
This is a project I completed independently using UE4, and this is also the first time I used the UE engine (unity before). The process of getting familiar with a new engine and its functions is painful. I take restoring the jumper mode in watch dog2 as my goal, regard it as a challenge within 7 days, gradually learn UE4 and improve my technical literacy. After completion, I have roughly mastered some functions of 3D, 2D and particle system of UE engine (Niagara system was not available at that time). The production of this demo is also the starting point for me to become a technical designer.