MOTIVATION
Trio is the most ambitious personal project I've undertaken. The drive behind this project is my passion for action gameplay and game feel. I wanted to learn how to program and implement the various techniques and tricks used to make great feeling gameplay.
GAME CONCEPT
Trio is a "Hack and Slash with an All-in-One Party", meaning in real-time combat the player can instantaneously switch between 3 distinct characters with unique movesets based on fantasy archetypes. Each character has exclusive abilities that will be essential to survive, such as the fighter's block and parry, the strider's roll ability, and the mage's healing spell. For a full look at all of the mechanics and plans for the game, please check out the extensive game document.
GAMEPLAY CLIP
DEVELOPMENT
Tech: Unity C#
Role: Solo Project
After finishing the conceptualization and planning for the game, my first goal was to prototype and implement as many combat mechanics as possible. I quickly started to understand the sheer complexity of the scripting it takes to handle dynamic interactions between a player character and enemy AI in an action game setting with lots of different moves. Every enemy has to have a plethora of states and transitional conditions so that they can constantly be reacting to the player's actions, swapping characters means the game must be ready for the player's move set and condition to change at a moment's notice, and each weapon swing must facilitate a communication between two entities trying to do their own thing. Keeping code modular is a necessity as script sizes balloon. The current state of the game represents the majority of planned combat mechanics and player abilities. The next step in development will be building environmental and out-of-combat interactions, as well as scripting for dialogue and events.
TAKEAWAYS (SO FAR)
Creating a fun action game takes a lot of player empathy. Knowing how the player will feel moment to moment and anticipating their expectations is key to creating an engaging combat loop. Core game feel is comprised of a bunch of tiny details that all add together to make the experience. Complex input buffers and telegraphed enemy attacks are just a couple of things I've learned to implement from this project. These kinds of details are essential to a great action game, and I'm looking forward to learning more.
