Beat Em’ Down (Unreal C++)

Late in 2016, having spent close to 3 years working on the Unity engine, I decided to branch out and try something new. In September I met with the Video Game Development club at UC Irvine to sign up for a game using the Unreal Engine hoping to get more experience with C++. Enter Beat em’ Down.

Beat em’ Down is a beat em’ up game, much in the style of the Streets of Rage and the Final Fight games for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.

Unlike any game I had worked on previously, Beat em’ Down has involved a lot more development with developing the artificial intelligence. Where in previous titles I had mostly worked with a “follower” AI, this game involved helping create a more complex state machine system, to more easily prototype and develop enemies that the character would encounter.

We also are working on enhancing collision physics in the game. Instead of simply going for a basic collision box, where instead of the player being hit based on a single damage value through a collision box, the character has defense and resistance stats. Furthermore, the damage can be changed based off of states the player character is in and what angle of attack the player is approaching the enemy with.

Overall, while I think the Unreal engine isn’t as refined as the Unity engine is with regards to 2D, it has still remained an interesting challenge getting used to the new technology and game design.

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Overwatch Sounds (Lua Mod)

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of my spare time playing World of Warcraft. I also spent a lot of time toying around with different addons, excitedly looking for new ways the modding community had tried to enhance the game’s UI.

One of my favorites was one named Shao Khan FTW. With this mod, specific actions in the game would trigger sound files from the original Mortal Kombat to play. Such as the “FINISH HIM” line when an enemy would reach 20% health.

It wasn’t until later when I decided to try and play around with the Wow API and develop my own version of this mod, instead using Overwatch sound files. It’s the same concept as the original Shao Khan FTW mod, but with a little bit of added detail. For example, I hooked more specific code calls to different spell IDs to be able to play sound files when a player uses a certain spell. For example, playing Reaper’s “Death Walks among you!” when a Death Knight begins summoning ghouls using Army of the Dead. Or Soldier 76’s “I’ve got you in my sights” when a Hunter casts Hunter’s Mark