Pop’d
a third-person arena deathmatch where players take on the role of balloon animals fighting to the last breath.
My Role
At Name of the Week I was namely the systems designer and quality assurance manager. Throughout the development of this game I led quality assurance testing from writing the testing documents to leading the testing process and taking notes on how they play outside of their. Over the course of three months I went from having never touched blueprints to developing all of the systems below and more from scratch using said system. Below you can get a story for each of them and how we arrived at the final product rather than a comprehensive view of how it was done.
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Unreal Engine 4
Waterfall Development
Team Management
Items
Items can be found the map at specified spawn points, the two items that can spawn are “heal-ium,” which refiles the player’s air over a brief time, and scissors, that can be thrown in an attempt to pop the opponent.
During the development we decided that destroying “heal-ium” would provide the same effect as picking it up after noticing that testers often enjoyed shooting them out of the air. It was also originally a pickup that players could stock pile, but having to spend time to suck in the air.
Scissors can be used to attack their opponents, they have a very large hitbox which makes it harder to avoid, but also harder to aim it, as it might hit a wall before reaching the target.
Air
Air functions as a meter which players can use to give them a burst in movement speed either by dashing or sprinting. This was built in a way to give players the air movement they desired while keeping the feeling of playing as a balloon. Originally air was meant to be health, thus creating a trade off for the control and movement speed. However the game ended up centering around one hit kills so it then became a meter. Some of the relics of air being health still helped in making the mechanic interesting, as the less air a player has the thinner their character gets, thus decreasing the area in which they could be damaged.
Static Electricity
Players can build static electricity by moving on the on the ground and can release the built up energy in a massive blast with unlimited range. Players can use their air to move on the ground faster and building their static even quicker. The static can clash with the scissors stopping both of the attacks, this being the main mechanic the game was built off of. Over the course of the project we increased it’s versatility allowing the blast to destroy items before their opponent can use them.
Melee
Melee probably has the most interesting tale of this game, because it evolved with the game itself. It originally only depleted air and sent the player skyward. But as the game evolved and the meta developed around mid to long range we improved the reward for getting in close. Eventually it got to the point where it so the it stole the opponent’s scissors, static electricity, locked on to them as well. By the end point we got it to a state where we thought it was balanced. It now robs the opponent of their static and weapon while still sending them flying setting them up to get an amazingly satisfying combo.
Balancing gameplay systems
The Other Members of Name of the Week:
Alex Dalton- Producer
Brennan Howell- Lead Artist
Josh Lanham- Level and General Designer
Rosser Martinez- Lead Programmer