DigiPen Institute of Technology (2022-2023)

Scrap and Battery

"Scrap and Battery" is an action game with roguelite elements. You play as a robot escaping a facility by fighting off enemies with a host of random weapons. Make your way through seven levels and see if you can escape the facility!

Overview

"Scrap and Battery" is the project I worked on for my junior game class. The game is built within Unreal Engine 5. The project was worked on for 8 months. I worked as a programmer and producer for this project. On the programming side, I handled programming the UI, player animation calling, UX effects (such as hitstop), and much others.

Skills

  • C++: The game is built in UE5, and some of the mechanics are coded in Unreal's C++.
  • UI Programming: Implemented the player HUD and prompt system. Utilized Unreal C++ to make system for helping with UI animation. I also implemented the tooltips and demonstration videos on the pause and store screens.
  • Gameplay Programmer: Implemented some player abilities for the player to use. I also worked on improving some of the gameplay's UX, such as hitstop and battery tracking.
  • Task Delegation: As the producer, I worked with to team establish priority tasks to complete the game and worked with the other leads to hand out the tasks to other team members.

Team

The game was produced with an 8 person team. I served as the project's producer, UI programmer and generalist programmer.

Lessons

  • Unreal UI: On the technical side of things, this project taught me a lot about UI editors and how to program features to interact with them. After a long amount of time fighting Unreal UI, I ended understanding it a bit better in the end, allowing some of the cooler effects to take place. I also learned how to integrate C++ into unreal UI, as can be seen from collecting scraps from the ground.
  • Strike Group Development: The team I worked with this year was very tech-centric. To prevent us from focusing too much on tech, we divided ourselves into strike groups to each take a feature under our wings to manage. This allowed elements like sound, level design, and art to maintain a roughly even pace with the rest o fthe tech developments. This also helped me create more effective meetings as a team, as many smaller decsions could be left for the respective strike group to manage.

Demo and Downloads

You can download Scrap and Battery on DigiPen Game Gallery here! or on Steam here