Kieran Cooksley

Technical Designer

Role
AI Technical Designer
20 Person Team

Made With
Unreal Engine 5
Blueprints

Timespan
6 weeks
2 Jan - 10 Feb '23

WINNER of 'Best Pick-Up & Play Experience' and 'Game of the Year' at the Staffordshire University 2023 Collaborative Game Awards

A single-player, wave based Horde Shooter where the player must fend off against increasingly difficult waves of enemies by purchasing weapons, collecting power-ups, and unlocking new rooms.

Project Goals

Work collaboratively to develop a vertical slice of a game in a full-time, 6 week timeframe.
Implement core elements of the Horde Shooter genre into a compact, fun, and intuitive gameplay experience.
Create a compact, intuitive, and replayable single-player gameplay experience

Key Responsibilities

Implementation of enemy system architecture, allowing for efficient expansion & modification of enemy data & behaviour.
Collaboration with the design team to ensure accurate implementation of AI behaviour
Identify, log, and bug fix issues related to enemy pathfinding & behaviour.

Tools Used

Unreal Engine 5

The primary engine used for development

JIRA

Task Tracking & Management

Microsoft Office

Documentation

HighresScreenshot00007 (1) (1)_edited.jp

Inspirations

Call of Duty: Zombies

Left 4 Dead

Warhammer 40k: Darktide

TABS

Gangbeasts

Gameplay

Visual & Game Feel

Documentation

Inheritance Diagram

The inheritance diagram depicts the layers of inheritance used to create the enemy AI. It is visualised what enemies fully inherit from the base class, and which enemies have either partial or no inheritance due to vastly differential behaviour & properties.

Breakdown Diagrams

Each enemy has a couple of breakdown diagrams, to visualise and present the construction and inner workings of the class including its Event Graph, Animation Blueprint, & AI Behaviour Tree.