Volimental
Design Process
Idea
Volimental Design Breakdown
Game Overview
Volimental is a game I designed to learn as many game elements as possible and implement them into one game. The concept is simple overall; the player can choose between the fire or the ice spell, giving them the ability to complete one of the areas and unlock the second spell and area. Once both areas are complete, the player can unlock the final area and win the game. Each area has a special ability (hover or warp) that must be found and unlocked to traverse through the rest of the area. The player can set the difficulty of the game: affecting their lives, defense stats, and the boosts given from in-game items. If the player loses all their lives, the game is over and all progress is reset. The game’s name is a combination of elemental and volition meaning free will or choice.
I worked on this game for months and learned many valuable lessons about blueprinting, testing, UI and level design. I created my first enemies using AI and Nav Mesh Bounds, as well as utilized a spline for a coaster ride. There was a lot of trial and error, but it is still one of my most massive projects taking up to a couple hours for some testers, without major stallers or frustrations. It has spell casting, hidden collectables and abilities that can be earned.
The music featured in game was created and played by Jarrett Holbrook.
Game Mechanics and Implementation
Checkpoints, health, life system and mana along with corresponding UI
Checkpoints activate when a player steps on them. They restore the health and mana as well as set the location for the player to teleport to on death. They also use a “for each loop” to check for other active checkpoints and deactivate them. Stats are variables attached to player character and widget bindings.
Spell casting and world response to spells
Inputs for casting and switching were added to the player controller. Casting spawns an actor with projectile movement, a life span and a collision sphere that triggers collision events. Torches can be lit or extinguished, lava can be cooled, enemies can be damaged- etc.
Power ups and character abilities
(hover glide)- character can hold jump button for a short time after their initial jump. (warp)- player creates line trace detecting for collision within 500 units and teleports there if nothing is blocking. The player has to find power ups in each area to unlock these abilities, and they cannot continue or complete the area without them.
Collectables- spells, upgrades, life crystals and emeralds
Fire and ice spell pickups grant the ability to cast the respective spell. Picking up the second spell grants the ability to switch spells. Each area has an ability to upgrade- one being hover or a double jump with extended hold time, and the other being a warp or a line trace for possible teleportation. The teleportation ability created a far more diverse system than a regular dash and allowed the player to pass through entire walls as long as the trace could pass through with no collision.
Enemy AI
The enemy waits in place until the player enters their area to activate. Once activated they will chase the player and deal damage on collision. They can also be hit and destroyed by ice spells that slow them and deal damage. The only variation in enemies is a larger version in one of the main rooms.
Mine cart on spline
I created a simple box with a rotating door that goes around an area on a spline. The player can enter the cart and start the spline path by interacting. There are 4 torches that can be put out with the ice spell along the path to unlock the fire area’s ability (warp). When the spline loop is over, the door opens and the player can interact again.
Issues: originally, I had the cart only go around continuously after triggered. Testers would have to wait for it to make a lap and then hop into the moving cart, which was not ideal for gameplay. For this reason, I made the ride trigger only by the player command once at a time.
Cutscenes
I used set target with blend space to show game events being triggered including opening the main chest of each area, starting the Ferris wheel, the special torch responses, and the pressure plate door. My favorite cutscene is in the final area when you teleport to the fire room. The camera shows a far off cut of the player and the wall behind it starts to close in quickly before blending back and giving the player control.
Pressure plates and responding doors
Pressure plates were meant to be attached to a door and open only when actively triggered. They were also able to be triggered by “rocks” or movable physics objects.
Issues: At the time, I was not great at arrays or event dispatchers- or anything, so I made a pressure plate door for 1 and 2 plates rather than just one I could tell to respond to however many plates I wanted. On top of this, rather than having the plates check for the actor being equal to pawn, I was casting- and worse I was taking that fail result and casting to the rock blueprint. Now, my pressure plates simply have a Boolean to determine if something is on them and an array element is added or removed to the array of actors on collision begin and end. On end overlap, if the array is empty, the Boolean is set to false and the movement timeline and effects are reversed.
Turret Cannons
These cannons have a large sphere collision to detect the player and enable their event tick. On tick they have a dot product function to add local rotation and make them face the player. Once they faced the player, they check for overlap of firing range and spawn a bullet actor. These cannons are dangerous to the player but can also be used to unlock areas by having the player direct them at doors. Certain cannons in the game can be destroyed by making falling rocks hit them and they will spawn a life crystal.
Bouncy Pads
There were 2 types of bouncy pads in the game, one is the class instant launch on contact, and the other is a slow drop before the launch. There is no purpose in having 2 besides the fact that I wanted to create it and add more diversity to the game.
Interact Command
Player input used to trigger the mine cart, the lever for the Ferris wheel, and the levers for the teleporters in the final area.