Treasure Hunter Prototype Project
The goal of this project was to create a game in the UNREAL Engine with some unique features and to explore alternatives in gameplay which didn't focus on combat.
We were given design specs from a (fake) company to make a treasure hunting game to reflect their new product - a handheld metal detector. We needed to implement a variety of features, but it was up to each of us how we did so and what methods we used.
A few examples of features that were required in the project included at least one form of detection for the treasure, a destructible system for the ground plot or item that had the treasure inside, treasure pickups, the environment needed to reflect a beach, a scoring system, and a lose condition.
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Randomly Colored Lights (for detection)
I made the player carry a gun which fired steel ball bearings to mine the ores and he primary detection method was glowing (randomly colored) lights which emanated from the treasure spots which appeared as golden boulders. Upon being broken, the ores would drop treasure which could be collected by the player. When treasure was created, a sound would play to alert the player, and the same would happen when the treasure was collected and the score was increased.
Revisiting the project, I decided to make scoring be a bit more visually rewarding and more obvious, the sounds were 3D based, I added a scope system using a separate camera and a render target, and I also made the treasure pickups ignore projectiles as they would block them at first. Another change was I added the blue screen flash when collecting treasure as feedback I received said that it could be more "pretty" if I made it more obvious when collecting treasure. The last improvements I made were by adding collision spheres surrounding the ores which would "ping" the player with a sound when they got close to the ore to add an additional form of detection and a ricochet system for when the bearings hit something solid.
Treasure Ore (with surrounding collision sphere)
To make the gameplay more visually appealing , the ores will explode and fragment into smaller pieces when destroyed instead of simply disappearing. They spawned the explosion effect, played an explosion sound from the location, and then fragmented. They were immediately set to turn off collision upon exploding so that the fragments would fall through the ground and not obstruct the player from reaching the treasure. They were then destroyed after a very small amount of time to avoid any FPS loss, but out of view so the player didn't see the fragments suddenly disappear.
Destructible Mesh Component
The most difficult part of the project was designing engaging gameplay with a *fun* objective which didn't include any combat. Not all games need it, but it was fairly new to me given that the game was an FPS and the player did have a gun which fired projectiles. The scope system was really tricky too, but it was incredibly cool to get it working and usable.
The project taught me a great deal in terms of functionality, using destructible meshes, spawning effects, sounds, and helped broaden my horizon in terms of gameplay basics. I had never done anything prior to this using destructible meshes or many of the other features show above. It was one of the first projects I ever created in school, but I feel it was just as important as some of my later work.
