This page is not up to date with the latest iteration of Gravity Knight, we took the project to steam, which you can play for free there! Steam Link
I worked almost entirely on tech, music systems, camera systems and some skin systems for this after the first prototype was finished
Forum posts link
not the most professional thing, but I wouldn't ever really be able to properly surmise everything I did like I did in there.
While my primary role was as a producer, my tasks were incredibly varied, as I helped out wherever needed.
In summary I did;
Production
Design
Technical Design
Technical Art
Rapid Prototyping
SFX / Composition
Marketing
Gravity Shifting
Gravity Flipping
Gravity Ramps
Grab & Keep gravity
Grab adjustments
Level Transitions
My goal with rapid prototyping was creating a demo for us to test, find if it was feasible, and fun, before we presented it as a project for us to pursue.
This took place within the first week, and by then, all mechanics apart from the grab were in for testing.
A lot of the game revolves around puzzles, namely the put a block on the pressure plate style puzzles, to open doors. A classic really.
Also there are some platforms and such.
I may sound blunt at the start but I assure you it was done in jest since the designers asked me for help themselves.
We are friends, I promise
Also had some other damage actors, being a spike trap and a projectile trap, it was made, but it didn't fit the vibe we were going for, so it was promptly discarded
You can also see the respawn mechanics from the spinning crystal and lava here though- which was fun to do.
Throughout the production of Gravity Knight, I sent the game out every week, along with new questionnaires for the sake of gathering feedback- that I would then take data from, and reformat into a way that's readable (and more engaging) than just numbers on a spreadsheet.
I also used that data to create plans of action for us to follow for the week, and during out meetings with the team leads, would help us all choose what to prioritise and keep us on track.
I also used the notes and such to try and keep the mentality of my teammates up, as I can be aware that pressure gets to people sometimes, and that is always something to be considerate of. The world gets us down, it's up to us to keep each other standing. I think anyway.
Plus it's fun.
(I always made sure to keep the notes people had in there, too)
Using the research and better understanding I gathered from looking at similar styles to what we were doing
I was able to better have a go at making my own versions of these
I eventually mocked up our main theme for the game, and iterated on it till we had our final version
This system was by far, without any stretch of the imagination, the one I spent the most time on getting right, the amount of bugs, small issues with using unreal, and the fact that you can't play silent tracks, it made it rather tough to do, but we do have a dynamic music system.
It works by having a blueprint control what's playing, and cross-fade the tracks based on what changes, this was to have different stems play at different times, ultimately, it got adapted during the prep for a steam release so it is controlled in the game instance, allowing us to have music that stays consistent between levels too.
By the end of it, there ended up being room for 8 separate stems playing, but we found some issues with unreal continuing to play a stem even when we disable it, so we ended up trying to keep it limited to only the first 4, but we had the room should we wish it.
I do want to note, I wasn't the one who modified this to work with game instance, that was my teammate Shirwan, but I did fix all bugs (within reason) that I could within this modified work.
Though the initial dynamic music system was me.
Here is a quick video showing what its like now
Evident there are still issues, but I'm thinking I might try a third party solution for whatever musically inclined project I find myself working on next, looking at FMOD specifically
The grab went through many iterations, as did the characters feel in general. To help with the game-feel, I developed some sliders and had people test them to change the characters feel and such in game and let us know what the thought felt best.
Aside from this, I also setup the player character inputs, controls, and most, if not all of the character logic.
Flying by setting the jump velocity to stupid high with 2 full seconds of hold time
Camera specifically was an entire workhorse in it's own right, we had a couple of different people give it a go till it fell back on me because the others had their own workload.
Initially, I tried to have something like the camera from Mario 64, but I found that very difficult, since I was using a mix of world space, and relative space, and with the ground beneath my feet not always being the ground, I couldn't quite manage it, and when I did my early iteration of it, we quickly found that it was very strange with the gravity shifting mechanics, and opted to make the camera just feel more smooth for the player in general
Unreal functions a little strangely when you try and rotate it, since the up value, by world standards, is always the same, so to try and stop you looking straight up- and keep going, it tries to stop you, and flips you round... It made for some annoying bugs- For example, getting your head stuck in the roof.
There were worse bugs than that (a massive gimble lock one) but I can't find any old videos of it.
My solution was to make a new camera, and use a Quaternian conversion and lerp to keep the camera stable, and it gave me better control over when / how the camera flipped, easing the entire process.
Having an imaginary up value in the form of the Quat's W is so, so lovely.
For this project I made a lot of different materials, I made some post processing stuff, and (the personally more fun stuff) dynamic materials.
The dynamic materials here are used for the player, fading them out when the camera gets close, by applying a mask with a dither, made them seem transparent (I really love this effect!!)
Also reskins for unlockables!!
Lava Material (it rises and falls)
it uses world position offsets, texture bombing, a large, messy, very messy, world aligned texture system as a material function, then using it all as a water mask, with optional colours!
(you can make it blue if you want, or choose the mask)
It looks strange with just the material function for the wobbly mask
