The concept behind Monkey Banana Defense 3D is that a tribe of men and a tribe of monkeys are feuding for territory. Monkey Banana Defense 3D is a 1 or 2 player game with a play-style much similar to a game of dodge-ball. Each player starts the match with no ammunition, but must scramble to gather fruit, which they then hurdle across a great chasm in the mountains in order to knock out their opponent, while simultaneously evading incoming fruit-fire. In one player game mode the opponent is controlled AI.

        Monkey Banana Defense was the first full game I developed for Southern New Hampshire University using Unreal Engine 4, back in January of 2017. The class this assignment came from was GAM-207: Information Technology and Digital Games.  To this day I’m a little unclear if the assignment was to make a game, or simply design the UI. Even though the majority of the content in this game was self-taught and not part of the material, I did find the processes very enjoyable. The most challenging aspect was probably the AI because, at the time, I had not had any exposure to AI in an academic setting; however, I did leave the class with a strong foundation in AI. In addition, I was exposed to facets of 3D modeling, texturing, as well as a good amount of physics, with the trajectory of the thrown fruit.

        As Monkey Banana Defense 3D was one of my first major projects in UE4, when I revisited the game to polish it in my last term at SNHU, I had a lot of new ideas and knowledge I could apply to improve my game. 

        One of the largest yet least noticeable changes was I rewrote the AI. In addition to fixing a few breaking bugs, I also made it much more modular, and streamlined, so that each character could utilize the AI without as much duplication of code. The simplest yet most noticeable change would have to be a complete texture overhaul.  The original release included a very flat terrain texture which included 2 layers, green (to represent grass) and brown (to represent dirt).  The new texture I have implemented is not much more recognizable for what it is meant to be.  I also tweaked the settings on the foliage which allowed me to make it more dense without having nearly as much of a performance impact as it did in the original release. Lastly, I have implemented a trajectory assist, which displays the potential arc in which fruit would fly when thrown.