{"id":1341,"date":"2024-02-29T15:57:02","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T23:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2024-08-15T08:10:12","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T15:10:12","slug":"leading-the-player-abilities-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/leading-the-player-abilities-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading the Player Abilities team"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Project:\u2003\u2003MythForce <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Engine: \u2002\u2003\u2002Unreal Editor 4<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Feature: \u2002\u2003\u200aPlayer Abilities<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
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After unexpected attrition on the design team, I was quickly offered a chance to lead the Player Abilities team towards a critical milestone. This lightweight group made excellent progress in these two months. Our main focus was to crystalize Victoria’s abilities to better match her to the Tank archetype by<\/h5>\n\n\n
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  • Merging two existing prototypes into the Lion’s Roar<\/strong> Overcharge ability<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n
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    • Designing and coding core aspects of dashing in the Traversal ability, Vanguard<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n
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      • Merging two existing prototypes into the Lion’s Roar<\/strong> Overcharge ability<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

        Shifting directions for the next content lock<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        September ’21 Deliverables for Maggie, Rico, and Victoria<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

        In July, our team is now tasked to final nine abilities, towards the immediate goal of shipping our three existing player characters.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
        \"Alpha<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
        However, three of those characters’ existing abilities seemed unlikely to succeed. Either not expected to reach quality targets or don’t fit into future visions for MythForce gameplay. We held a one week Strike Team to remedy this issue. Our team’s newest hire, a Combat Design specialist, created the high level plan and set clear paths towards our goals.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
        With two additional engineers involved, we accomplished a quick turnaround. Our team also brought these and the nine other abilities to shippable state with respect to gameplay and UI.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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        • A novel Deadly Thrust<\/strong> to replace Rico’s Combat Ability Riposte (as seen above<\/em>)\n
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          • The active counter ability was failing to be used effectively, due to poor enemy telegraphing<\/li>\n\n\n\n
          • The new active forward jump attack used similar logic to provide conditional<\/span> invulnerability<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n
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            • Converting Maggie’s Barrier<\/strong> into an Overcharge ability \n
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              • New and improved version buffs the entire team while slowing enemies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n
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                • Replacing Maggie’s powerful Rewind with the Utility Ability Teleport<\/strong> \n
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                  • Too many edge cases introduced by moving her back in time to heal and get out of danger<\/li>\n\n\n\n
                  • New Blink-like ability took reference from Dishonored gameplay<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
                    We iterated on Player Abilities, adjusted scope, and completed 30+ variants in 8 months. I personally handled all incidental requests and implementations for their SFX, VFX, functional tests, and the player-facing loadout menus required to make these variants playable.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
                    During functional changes to these abilities, I guided implementation through daily conversations with our junior programmer. Our pod would meet regularly in an optional drop-in voice chat during the afternoon. There I assisted with high level guidance and we worked out the details for each of the ability animations and variants. Additionally, I provided mentorship and networking support for the programmer on his career journey to become a Technical Game Designer on Apex Legends.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                    Project:\u2003\u2003MythForce Engine: \u2002\u2003\u2002Unreal Editor 4 Feature: \u2002\u2003\u200aPlayer Abilities After unexpected attrition on the design team, I was quickly offered a chance to lead the Player Abilities team towards a critical milestone. This lightweight group made excellent progress in these two…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,40],"tags":[30,33,20,34,28],"class_list":["post-1341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership","category-showcase","tag-beamdog","tag-hawkins","tag-multiplayer","tag-abilities","tag-unreal-editor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1765,"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions\/1765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dodgethis.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}