Mob - Technical Design

ss_cfbcaafa1d88fc0c83c9f0c2c7ff70ff96201f18.1920x1080.jpg

THE BASICS

Summary

For Poppy Playtime Chapter 4 I worked on a wide variety of systems, from the Nightmare Critters, to reworking the burnable system, to a number of one-off mechanics.

What were the broad systems I touched?

Burnables
VHS Tapes
Gears
Nightmare Critters

Having joined Chapter 4 midway through production and taking over the Nightmare Critters, my work was largely enabling Level Designers to execute their vision for different encounters with the critters...

Set up Data Assets so designers could easily modify Combat / Visual data without interacting with the creature blueprint
Simplified and modified the Creature Spawner so designers could set if creatures animated into existence, set unique spawn points, and unique points to retreat to
Modified existing animations to make a melee attack
Optimized state transitions to reduce behavior related bugs
Created different NavLinks that would lerp and play animations for critters making long jumps, reducing our reliance on physics and making these interactions consistent

Set up custom NavLink system where critters are translated across the spline, this cuts away at needing to use physics, which was leading to inconsistent results. I had to dip into C++ a little for this one to grab the end point of the NavLink so I could determine the spline points.

Also, as depicted, I set up controls for designers to easily tune the arc for the spline, so one could easily make a jump across a small gap without a high arc, or do a super-man jump with a tall arc across a small horizontal distance very easily.

I managed states and animations in the critter blueprint so all designers needed to do is incorporate these into the level and tune the jump values.

Worked on some cut features as well, like the ability to distract a very hungry creature with bait!

This was pretty simple, if there was no bait the creature was aware of, they would always target the player. Targeting was handled by a small and large sphere attached to the critter. If the critter detected bait, it would be added to a list, if the player intersected with the small sphere, the critter would prioritize the player even if bait was detected, if the player exited the large sphere, then the critter would prioritize the closest bait. Players could of course pick up and drop bait to use as a distraction.

One-Offs

THE ONE-OFFS

In addition to mechanics that were more prolific throughout the game, like the critters, I worked on systems that were generally used for a single use, like the simple gear puzzle before entering Safe Haven, pulling open a morgue drawer, body bags attached to cable constraints, and exploding cannisters for the Doey fight at the end of the game.

Very simple little system.

If all the correct gears are placed, the door will open
Gears up to and including the last correctly placed gear will spin
If a gear is removed earlier in the chain, the later gears will stop spinning
If a gear is removed after the puzzle is completed, it send out the power off signal

Also! Very beautiful little gears I modeled in blender to very quickly get the prototype to be closely representative of the final product.

In this video, I worked on the morgue drawers, setting up the blueprint to allow you to open the different doors, and pull the object out along the spline, and the hand scanner that requires the cut off blue hand.

The "fake" hand scanner required a more unique setup, using the same object receiver as the battery receiver seen in the video, where it interfaces with the regular hand scanner and forces it's default events to happen, so to players it looks like any regular old hand scanner.

Set up the VHS player states, it can call events when the tapes start and end. Delved into C++ to hook up these events.

Set up blueprint native events that get called when tapes start and stop playing so designers could write unique events, or more easily use timelines for any cosmetic events in the tape.

Also set up the ability to easily either use static images and audio, or MP4 videos, like the one depicted in this slide.

Kyle Rasmusson

Technical designer

KYLE
RASMUSSON