Project: Everything Must Go!
Everything Must Go is free-for-all online multiplayer party game where you race around a game show set with a motor powered shopping cart to buy as many products as you can before the promotion ends!
Overview
Team Size: 5
Roles: Programmer, animator
Time frame: 5 months
Engine: Unreal Engine
Introduction
Everything Must Go! was a video game made as part of the final project for Vancouver Film School. I was responsible for the programming and gameplay animations for the game. It was extremely fun, insightful and challenging working on that game. I worked mostly on network programming, UI programming, animation programming and some gameplay systems.
We've used Unreal Engine and its powerful programming tools such as C++ and Visual Scripting. Using C++ was not extremely necessary, but since me and my team member wanted to practice more of C++ programming skills, we've decided since the beginning to use it in harmony with Visual Scripting, trying to stick with the way Unreal Engine have integrated these languages.
I had lots of learning experience working on this project and I worked on several aspects of the project, however I will be covering only the most challenging aspects of the project and how did I solve them.
Making our cart look and feel fun
In the game, we display the items the players have picked up, stacked inside their shopping carts with a wabbly effect when they move around. I was in charge to implement that visual aspect and I had some challenges I would to talk about.
At first, I started experimenting with the physics constraint component in order to achieve that effect and it worked, but not as intended... It worked in the editor, but when I started scripting to make the items pop in procedurally, it was very funky.
Second iteration...
After days trying to make it work with the physics component, I decided to scratch that idea and come up with a different solution.
I thought to use a spline component where each shopping item would be placed at each point of the spline. It worked procedurally really well, but the wabbly effect was not there. So I had to fake it by playing around with the points along the spline component, procedurally.
Third iteration...
Instead of adding each spline point for every shopping item the player collects, I thought on using just three fixed spline points and moving just the one in the middle based on the player's velocity.
What I learned
It's definitely important to experiment with different solutions and avoid overengineering something. Sometimes you can get the same effect with very little systems as long as you see different ways to use them.
Trailer: Watch trailer