Iron and Steel
Mistborn: Iron and Steel is a small 3D platformer. Garrick Hilliard and I worked on it together. We both contributed a lot to the project. We both have a passion for Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series of books, so we wanted to create a small game as a proof-of-concept that the books would make good games. It was built in Unreal Engine 4 over the course of a few months.
Problems We Solved
- Custom Collisions
- Performance improvements: the game initially had some frame drops that we could not locate. Garrick and I both fixed bugs in the FX and Physics systems that affected performance and the game now runs smoothly.
- Vision Selection
- Based on player feedback, we changed a lot about how the player moves. Specifically, we added actions to automatically move the player to a location or move an object to a player, changed the selection, changed what points the player pushed and pulled away from, allowed a selection to remain selected when the camera is not on it, removed functionality to turn on and off the selection mode, and added a speed control. All of these features were decided using an iterative process in order to meet users' needs.
What I learned
Deadlines are important. When our deadlines came close, we worked harder and got a lot of good work done.
User feedback is also important. We thought our controls were intuitive until we tested them. After testing them, we changed a lot about how the player inputs.
Unlike my other projects where I focused on UI elements, I worked with physics and collision. Gameplay programming (especially in Unreal Engine) became a strength of mine after this project.