Just Desserts
Overview
Just Desserts is a three vs. three arena party game where the first team to fill their fridge with desserts wins. My goal for this project was to prototype a creative, silly shooter game (reminiscent of Splatoon) with ammunition that could be combined and would have different effects. Based on the asset packs available to me at the time, I ended up going with the premise of a high school food fight as this fit the tone nicely and provided many playful opportunities for game mechanics. This project also served as an exploration of Unreal’s AI Blueprint systems and I took the opportunity to learn about behavior trees, blackboards, blackboard tasks, and the environmental query system. Each of these items allowed me to create increasingly complex AI behavior every iteration.
Role: Solo Developer
Team Size: 1
Game Engine: UE4
One-Page Design for Ingredient Combo System and Abilities
Responsibilities and Contributions
As the sole developer of this ongoing project, I am responsible for the design and implementation of each of the game’s features including the ingredient combo system, AI behavior, dessert abilities, UI, and so on. Working solo reinforced in me the value of a minimum viable product as I endeavored to layer on functionality with each iteration of the game. Below is a brief summary of what I accomplished with each iteration of the project thus far.
1st Iteration
Features:
Core player ingredient pick up functionality.
Framework for dessert combination.
Four unique dessert abilities.
Simple point-based AI movement.
2nd Iteration
Features:
Refactored ingredient pick up functionality to work with player and AI.
Refactored dessert combination to work with player and AI.
Scripted more complex AI movement using behavior trees, blackboard, and blackboard tasks. AI now proceed to two random pick ups, combine them, head back to their fridge to score, and repeat.
Used Unreal’s AI perception system to add an “attack” behavior which will throw a held dessert at the closest opponent in sight.
3rd Iteration
Features:
Added new Trifle dessert, worth 3x more points than regular desserts, to create additional chaos/urgency during gameplay.
Being frozen by an ice cream cone causes characters to drop the Trifle, which can then be collected by others.
Updated AI behavior using the environmental query system. AI now proceed to the closest ingredients in range depending on its priority value. AI will also prioritize collecting Trifles over other ingredients.