MIXT
As Technical Designer & Technical Artist & Blueprint Programmer
Team size: 9
Timeframe: 3 months
Overview
MIXT is a collaborative hot seat card game/engine-builder where 2 local players work together to build a floating engine-driven city/ship which blends UK and China influenced Steampunk structures to escape the toxic fog which is growing on the planet.
Building-Placement Functionality
1. Placement Functionality
Buildings should only be placed on the center of each grid (mesh), so that location of the current placing building should be updated when the player moves the mouse. When the player clicks LMB the building should be placed on the current grid. Additionally, it's not allowed to be placed where a building already exists.
2. Mesh Generator
The game divides buildings into different categories which benefits players from different perspectives. As a technical level designer, I decided to expose the parameters (e.g., width and depth of the grids, gap between grids) for level designers to create the game play area for players, as well as the classification of different grids fields.
Niagara system & Audio spectrum & Animation VFX
I made the thruster engine fire(beam) and its rings based on UE4 Niagara system, the generation frequency, speed, drag, and radius of particles are binded with scratch pad parameters based on the intensity of audio spectrum. Meanwhile, some of parameters are exposed to the external blueprints. I created a engine manager to manage all the engines of the ship which contains encapsuled methods that can be externally called by player controllers. Those methods are in charge of the intensity of the thruster engine fire, matinee camera shake, cloud moving speed (i.e., dynamic sky asset from Epic Store), and the animation of the ship fins.
Learning
This was the project I participated in recently. In the production of this project, I believed my technical ability has begun to become mature. I could use material nodes or some systems to realize different VFX at will, or use the functions desired by the blueprint development designer. I made the master material and encapsulated the maps such as diffuse, normal, and roughness into variables for designers to create materials freely. I made a post process material to make all objects in the scene cartoon rendered. As a technical designer, I designed and implemented a grid based architectural placement method. In the study and exploration of new functions, I made Niagara system resonate with the frequency spectrum of in-game audio as the flame sprayed by the engine. After encapsulating them, it was convenient for other partners to call the flame effect of the engine. Through this project, my hard ability had been expanded and my soft ability had been strengthened, especially in completing the needs of designers and cooperating with other programmers.