| Platforms: PC, Switch
| Genre: Third-Person Platformer
| Team Size: 20+
| Engine: Unreal Engine 4
| Role: Technical Designer
| Developer: Broad Strokes
Overview
Floppy and the Sleepy Planet is an immersive family-friendly, non-violent, 3D, third-person platformer where the player guides Floppy through the world and solves the mystery of the Sleepy Planet. Helps a variety of Guardians overcome their problems and slowly learns more about its background and where both it and its helpful chatty companion Kara, came from. The game is designed with young children in mind but has a fun, colorful palette and humorous dialogue (akin to a Pixar movie) which makes it a timeless experience for all who play.
Gameplay Ability System
The Gameplay Ability System is a highly flexible framework for building the types of abilities and attributes that you might find in an RPG or MOBA title. You can build actions or passive abilities for the characters in your games to use, and status effects that can build up or wear down various attributes as a result of these actions, additionally you can implement "cooldown" timers or resource costs to regulate the usage of these actions, change the level of the ability and its effects at each level, activate particle, sound effects, and more. The Gameplay Ability System can help you to design, implement, and efficiently network in-game abilities from as simple as jumping to as complex as your favorite character's ability set in any modern RPG or MOBA title.
Workflow
My primary responsibility was to create and implement player abilities using a combination of C++, Blueprints & and the Gameplay Ability System Plugin. These abilities were created and designed to be easily modified in blueprints so that designers were able to make significant changes without the assistance of the programming team. One of the Abilities that I worked on was the charged jump. I started by reviewing the design document and confirming all of the specifications with the design team. Once I got the go-ahead, I started working on expanding the currently existing system by adding a resource to track when the player could perform this ability. This ability is the key ability of the game and is a tool that the design team will be working intimately with. As such, I had to ensure that the code was modular and the necessary parameters were exposed to blueprints. Once all of the parameters were exposed, I made sure to create delegates and callback functions that would allow both designers & other programmers to receive information on state changes and modify the game state/UI accordingly. Once I made sure that the system was functioning as intended, I marked it for review and sent it to my lead for review. Once approved, I pushed the system to our source control and notified the design team that the change was done and ready to be checked for quality. Once the team reviewed the changes and made notes, I made changes to the system to fix the minor bugs and resubmitted the mechanic. Once I submitted those changes, I moved on to the next mechanic and repeated the process!
