Shred Off
"Shred Off" is a 3rd-person snowboarding shooter made with a team of 12 students where you perform stylish tricks in the Alaskan mountains while gunning down enemies with an arsenal of ranged weaponry. Shred down the mountain and score points to compete against your friends.
I was a Game Designer on this project, designing and implementing Tricks and Scoring. My responsibilities also included creating UI wireframes, production (Agile), decision-making for project goals, and maintaining documentation.
Engine
Unreal Engine 5.3
Team Size
12 Developers
Role
Game Designer
Genre
Sports x 3rd-person Shooter
Development Time
32 weeks
Tricks are part of the player's movement/traversal as they combat enemies.
My goal for the design was for the players to perform tricks that award them points so that they feel the rush and excitement of being a pro snowboarder stylishly rushing down the mountain. The points received should be aligned with how exciting the action is. Due to the combination of 2 genres (Snowboarding & Shooters), I aimed to keep the trick system simple enough so that the player is not overloaded by the controls of both combat and doing tricks.
Tricks & Scoring
Trick Summary
In the video shown below, you will be able to see an edited video that showcases the important elements of the trick & scoring system in practice.
Researching trick & score systems
I researched various reference games to get a grasp on the building blocks of trick systems and figure out what design would be the most beneficial for our project. This research was performed by playing the referenced games and analyzing the systems involved.
These were my conclusions:
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High-risk tricks should net the player more points than those with less risk.
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Use a timer to test a player's skill under pressure.
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A multiplier motivates a player to repeat the behaviour that rewards it.
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Reducing the amount of required inputs will reduce the cognitive load on the player.
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The tricks should feed into the combat to keep all of the game systems as a cohesive whole.
Controller scheme of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk using Padcrafter.
Breakdown of SSX 3 trick and scoring system.
Diagram showcasing my research process and example diagrams from the research document.
Scripting tricks functionality using blueprints
With the responsibility of implementing the trick system, I wanted to make it easy to iterate on the feature in the future. Along with that, I designed it to tie into combat and reinforce the gameplay loop by refilling the player's ammo for every succesful trick. This rewards the players for every trick perfomed and should motivate them to keep doing tricks outside of getting a high score. This resulted in the following implementation:
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Utilizing separate actors to avoid version control conflicts.
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Data table for animations & balancing score values.
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Animation Notifies to run logic using animation data.
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Scoring component to keep count of score & the timer.
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Interfaces to avoid hard references.
Click the thumbnail above to view the image in full.
The data table used to save trick animations and scores.
Check if player is in the air and if a trick animation is already playing before playing the montage.
Image that shows the entirety of the scoring component.
The data table used to save trick animations and scores.
Click the thumbnail above to view the image in full. Click the arrows on the left and right to scroll through the gallery.
Supplementary Work
With this being a student project that aimed to deliver a full player experience I picked up some additional work where it was needed. This included making UI mockups, animating character tricks and poses & community management.
Creating animations to visualize tricks
When making a trick system, you need the animations to feed the player's fantasy and make them feel stylish when performing tricks. However we had no dedicated animators, so I used the Unreal Control Rig and made the animations myself using Sequencer and baking the animation sequences.
I also wrote a Confluence page for my team members on how to set this up themselves and make animations.
The video showcases the Spin animation using Sequencer & Control Rig.
Creating UI mockups & implementation
When it was time to build out menus and all other UI for the game, I shared the responsibility with another developer to make mockups for the UI of the game. I took responsibility for:
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Results Screen
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HUD
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Settings Menu
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Controls menu
For the last 2 menus, I also did implementation work using Unreal Engine 5's UMG system.
First idea/mockup for the settings menu.
The first idea/mockup for the menus in the Settings.
First idea/mockup for the settings menu.
The UI mockups were made in Figma. They would indicate the way buttons were laid out but also suggest the style which would be reviewed as well.
The settings menu implemented into the game after some iterations. Assets were made by another developer and for implementation I collaborated with another.
Management
For this project, I was responsible for championing team alignment & collaboration. This was done through different methods such as team documentation, monitoring meetings and macro planning.
Writing team documentation
Using Confluence as our game wiki and Microsoft Teams for other essential files, I wrote several documents for the entire team to improve pipelines and finding information:
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Templates for writing design specs, performing research & conducting playtests.
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Documents that detail our Scrum & Jira pipelines and how they are managed.
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Documentation on Confluence that help with project alignment such as Project Pillars, Game Loops & Player Motivations.
Managing the project
In my role, I also took up the responsibilities of a Producer & Product Owner. This meant that for this project I had to:
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Moderate Scrum rituals and conclude to improve the process with the team.
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Upkeep the Jira board and set Sprint Goals with other project leads.
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Plan what content needs to be developed and make decisions to prevent our progress from stagnating.
Takeaways
Achievements
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I designed the trick system to refill ammo for the player's weapon to connect it to the combat systems and keep everything relevant.
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I rapidly delivered the trick systems to a functional state, allowing time to iterate.
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Despite the multiple responsibilities I had in this project, I maintained a positive attitude and kept the team aligned on our project goals and motivated.
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Players had a positive reception when playing the game at events.
Challenges
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We had no artists on our team for this project. This includes animators, so I had to make the animations for the tricks and implement them.
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While intending to keep the trick system simple, over time I learned that it needed to have a lot more gameplay depth from playtests performed.
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Being in a leadership role for a full year was stressful due to wanting to do development work on the project along with the responsibilities that came with it.
Learnings
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With a wide amount of responsibilities, it would be best to have a personal plan of tasks to keep track of what to do and manage my time.
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For scoring systems, it's important to have a wide range of actions that reward the player points, so that they don't fall back onto the same actions.
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I learned how to scope my features based on the time and resources available, while adjusting it with new challenges.
Shred Off is available now!
on Steam