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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 working on the design and implementation of Tricks and Scoring. Beyond that, my responsibilities include 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

To start, I researched various reference games (SSX 3, Rollerdrome, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk) 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:​​

  • High-risk tricks should net the player more points than those with less risk.

  • To pressure the player but also measure their skill, a timer or other condition is put in place to constrain what still counts as a "combo".

  • Having a multiplier that rewards the player based on their prime objective motivates them to do more and aim higher.

  • Reducing the amount of required inputs will reduce the cognitive load on the player. 

  • The tricks should feed into the combat to keep all of the game systems as a cohesive whole.

Scripting tricks functionality using blueprints

Whenever in the air, the player can perform a trick. Based on the trick, the player receives points. Using a data table, I gave each trick animation montage a score value that is accessed from there in the animation notify script. Implementing this in a data table allows it to be easily edited by a developer in a file of its own.

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The animation also provides the player feedback on whether they timed their trick right or not. If the animation is still playing when they land on the ground, they fail the trick and lose their combo score. 

If the player succeeds in the trick, it will add the trick value to their combo score, refill their ammo and restart the combo timer using an interface. Once the combo timer runs out, the combo score will get added to their total score. Developers can edit the duration of the combo timer in the scoring component and trick points in the data table. It's in a component so that the implementation can be done without interfering with the character. 

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Alongside all of this, we also had an event for whenever the player kills an enemy. When this happens, the combo multiplier goes up and the player receives points. This is done to further reward and motivate the player to kill the enemies when playing the game. The score for kills can be edited in the scoring component. 

Click the thumbnail above to view the image in full.

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:

  • Results Screen

  • HUD

  • Settings Menu

  • Controls menu

For the last 2 menus, I also did implementation work using Unreal Engine 5's UMG system.

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 is 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:

  • Templates for writing design specs, performing research & conducting playtests.

  • Documents that detail our Scrum & Jira pipelines and how they are managed.

  • 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:

  • Moderate Scrum rituals and conclude to improve the process with the team.

  • Upkeep the Jira board and set Sprint Goals with other project leads.

  • Plan what content needs to be developed and make decisions to prevent our progress from stagnating.

Takeaways

Achievements

  • I designed the trick system to refill ammo for the player's weapon to connect it to the combat systems and keep everything relevant.

  • I rapidly delivered the trick systems to a functional state, allowing time to iterate.

  • 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.

  • Players had a positive reception when playing the game at events.

Challenges

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I learned how to scope my features based on the time and resources available, while adjusting it with new challenges.​

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Shred Off is in Early Access now!

on Steam

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