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Game Designer
Jonathan (J. L. Vance) Williams
Down-Under Destruction
Game Designer
Down-Under Destruction is a 3rd person arena shooter where you play as Keenan, attempting to protect his precious ores in his coal mine and keep evil mining robots from stealing his power gems.
Down-Under Destruction was a project done for a 1 month long game jam through my scholarship PlayStation Career Pathways where the project won 2nd place among the senior cohort!
This will go over the development process of the project.
Opening Gameplay Trailer
Ideation
For this game jam the prompt I chose to go with was to create a game from scratch featuring a tool with a fantastical twist.
After a long week of ideating and creating game ideas from tools like levelers, hand sanders, and awls, I had finally found a tool that spoke out to me. The handheld mining drill
Though this tool is uncommon I couldn't help but see all the opportunities that could come from it's main purpose of digging up ores from mines. The idea of digging for special ores that each have a different ability intrigued me, and after some time I had my goal.
Ideation Document of each idea made for this game jam
Workflow
The player runs to a boulder to drill for more Special Ores to use in combat
Special Ores
When drilling boulders found around the map, each will drop special ores the player can use in combat. These ores each have different capabilities and are limited resources players can find around the map. Their abilities are:
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Power Ore: Creates a shield around the player that absorbs damage and releases a concussive blast back at enemies
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Healing Ore: Heals a portion of the players health
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Rage Ore: shoots a powerful red beam at enemies. each ore holding 10 shots
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Explosive Ore: shoots an explosive item that after some time will explode damaging enemies
The Handheld Mining Drill
The handheld mining drill is a portable percussive-rotary tool used in mines with three distinct functions for digging up ores underground. drilling, air pressure blasts, and water pressure blasts.
Using these three different modes is where I created the base of our fantastical tool players will use to fight off enemies and dig for ores:
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Drilling: Used on boulders to acquire special ores
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Air Pressure Blast: Shoots a concussive blaast that can stun enemies
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Water Pressure Blast: Shoots a consistent stream of water that damages enemies
This is where I built the base for gameplay, players will never run out of any of these resources.
The player stuns the enemy with an air pressure shot then uses a Power Ore and a Rage Ore to wrack up damage
These different ores allow for variety in how player's take on different groups of enemies in each section of the map.
The player drills through a wall to traverse to another section of the map
Level Design and Movement
To tie all of these elements together I a unique player dash that allows players to drill between sections of the map. These are all the elements of the player dash:
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Dashing near a wall: If the player dashes close into a wall they will enter a Drill Form and drill outside the map where they can freeroam until drilling back into a new section of the map
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Dashing far from one: When not near any wall a player will simply perform a regular dash getting a massive boost forward in whatever direction they're facing
These last elements added that explorative feel I wanted to evoke in traversing each arena you fight enemies in.
Case Study: Hitscan Shooting & Pawn Switching
There were two large issues I faced when working on this project. The first appeared while was creating the two hit scan abilities, the Water Pressure Blast and the Rage Ore Shots, and the second appeared when I was handling the switch between the player and drill pawn.
Issue #1
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Shot's we're not lining up with the player's crosshair at long distances
My Goal
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Make the hitscan shooting more accurate for players to use
Action Taken
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Shrunk the maximum size of each area in the map
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Calculated the longest distance to shoot the camera's raycast
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Calculated the line from the player to that end point if the raycast hits nothing
Results
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No matter where players shoot from it is always accurate to wherever their crosshair is pointing
Issue #2
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Player information was not transfering between both pawns and was getting lost on the switch back and forth
My Goal
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Track player information like ammo and health between the player switching pawns
Action Taken
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Created a tracker blueprint that holds the player's important information
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Passed information to the tracker than to drill pawn when the player switches from character to drill
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Passed the information back to the player pawn through the tracker when it is recreated
Results
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None of the players information is lost in transition between it's two separate modes
The player attacks the enemy drill bot with his rage shot
The player drills through a wall to get to a better vantage point on enemies
Project Takeaways
It was super fun to have had the opportunity to work on a game jam by myself. I felt as though I learned a lot about how to problem solve and forced myself to expand my skillset in different game design elements I hadn't gotten much hands on experience with. I hope to continue to work on more projects like this and I look forward to more opportunities to continue broadening my problem solving skills and my skills as a designer.
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