Final Build

I have now released the final build of my game, Hell is Full! This new build has the finished “Arena Mode” with tracked high score, a complete visual overhaul, rework to the grapple, and lots of other minor tweaks and fixes. Some unfortunate shortcomings at this stage are the lack of arm assets and grapple vfx (using unreal line trace debug for right now) but I plan on updating the build soon with those when I have the time. 

The majority of the additions and changes made for this final version of the game were features that I had planned beforehand; however, some of the best tweaks made to improve game feel came from playtester advice. The biggest change made from playtester feedback was the improvement of the hit stop effects. As I had it before, every time you hit an enemy there would be a brief hit stop effect based on how fast you are moving to emphasize the hits. While I think this is a cool idea, in practice it led to the players feeling a lack of control and what was described as an almost “laggy” feeling, something I definitely did not intend and want to avoid in a game where I want the fluid movement and combat to be the main focus. After speaking for a bit with one of the playtesters on potential ways to fix this, we came to the conclusion that there should be a minimum speed required before the effect plays and also change it to a smooth slow motion instead to prevent the confusion with lagging. This ended up feeling really good and fixing this problem I had entirely, resulting in satisfying moments that feel cool and impactful rather than confusing and obstructing. 

One of the bigger changes that was made last minute was the rework of the grapple. The reason I decided to scrap the way that the grapple worked entirely and make a new one from scratch was for a few reasons; one, the more “swinging” style of grapple that I initially made didn’t really fit what the level came out to be, two, I wanted it to feel snappier and fit more in line with the other abilities movement style, and three, I wanted it to be able to pull enemies and the way that the held input of the grapple functioned before made that very hard to design and implement a way for that to work. The end result of this rework is an instant pull in a direction that sends the player along an arc to where the grapple connects. The cast is instantaneous and does not need to be held. When an enemy is hit with the grapple they take a small amount of damage and get pulled towards the player, meeting them about halfway in the air and resulting in potentially really sick aerial combat moments. I’m very happy with the way this turned out and programming turned out to be a very streamlined process with everything working as I envisioned (very rare).

The last thing I want to touch on more in-depth would be the visual overhaul of the game. From the beginning my plan was to go for a more psx type look and I believe that I more or less achieved this to a degree that I’m very satisfied with as someone who does not focus much on aesthetics. The way I achieved this was by utilizing a combination of a post process, a type of material in Unreal Engine that when applied to a volume in the level puts a sort of filter over the player camera (often used for under water visuals), lowering the quality of all the textures used in the game, disabling anti-aliasing to get those pixelated edges, as well as disabling pretty much all built in Unreal lighting stuff. In the post process material, I used pixel size, dithering, and color depth modification to achieve my desired effect. This resulted in a really nice retro style graphics that in turn greatly increased the performance of my game as well.

With all these final additions implemented I’m overall very happy with the finished product I was able to put out for this project. With only about eight weeks of development I was able to create an intricate and fluid movement system, satisfying melee combat, scalable enemy AI, damage system with customizable hit reactions, as well as a functioning infinite arena game mode with high score tracking. More on the development process in the postmortem but this game is a culmination of all the systems and mechanics I have learned to develop during my time in college. I really hope you enjoy playing it!! And of course, I am always still open to feedback so feel free to leave a comment or dm me on discord @joshtm26!