Fiora and The Four Elements
The game project features the main character, Fiora, hunting for the lost gods flames to claim them and become the next god before others who would use the power for cursing the world do. In this game, Fiora can use the four elements and a collection of craftable runes and abilities to traverse the world and fight the enemies ahead of her. Aided by her wisp partner, she aims to become the next god and ensure that the world stays healthy.
This game is a collaborative project, where I created the blueprints and game mechanics. Seth Butler - Art | Rebekah Leon - Sounds | Sasha L'vov - Level
Video
Software
Tools Used: Unreal Engine 4 - Blueprint Scripting
Process: Design
The group came together to create the initial concept of "Fiora and the Four Elements". What was missing was the interaction of how the four elements exist in the world. As the mechanic designer, I first started with the different elements and how they needed to function. I wanted to arrange the elements into "Reactive" and "Reactant" based on their base so it could equal out and have equivalent exchange no matter what you played.
The four elements, Poison, Ice, Lightning, later named to storm, and Metal, later named to war, all had to function differently, but also function with each other. As enemies can have different effects applied to them, each one had to be unique. Starting with poison, the immediate thought was to create a simple DOT that the player had in order to weaken enemies with a few attacks. After testing, it quickly became evident that poison was too strong, against the enemies. The solution, after testing, was to implement a stack based system, meaning having double poison (magic and weapon) would allow for much faster poisoning. Having a single poison item allowed it to occur, but at a slower pace, meaning it became the primary "Reactive" element.
No RPG is complete without some way to mess with an enemy, there will always be a player that plays the "Strategist" role. Ice was the perfect solution. It allowed enemies to be slowed, and, utilizing the same stack system as poison, increase the slow to a much stronger version. Despite having a slow on all hits of the skill, with the slightly reduced damage of ice, it became an excellent option for the "Strategist" player. This also lead to it being another "Reactive" element.
There is also another sub-category of players that enjoy these RPG games, the "brute" player. Brute force and strength is their go to for the weapons and skills. Lightning and Metal both fit this role, but to a different degree. With ice and poison being fundamentally "off hand", having two options to pair with the off hand, based on reactions alone, was important for the point of the game, opening up many play styles. Lightning reduced defense of enemies, which enables ice and poison as viable playstyles suddenly, meaning a "Strategist" type player can play with their food a little more. Metal had, functionally, a crit rate. This let players who love to slap things around hit a little bit harder. Both of these together lets a "Brute" player really go to town and was the thought process of those elements.
Now that the base status's of the elements are out of the way, the next that that needed attention was the interaction between the elements. If they are poisoned, then hit by lightning, what happens? Finding ways to compliment different play styles was the key, as the player has access to two elements at any time. While wielding two of the same element yielded a much higher output, if working on a stack (Poison) or pure damage (Metal), it removed reactions. Reactions, thus, could not be too powerful or there would never be a point to having two of the same. At the same time, they needed to be worth taking two elements. The last bit of thought that needed to go into the character skills was that the player had ranged and melee, both using a separate element. The reactions couldn't be too powerful based on if the player hits it ranged or melee.
The reactions worked well and played into the different styles, such as Poisoned Bleed. This occurs when a poisoned targets is hit with metal. They take exponentially more damage over time, acting as a pseudo crit. This plays into the "Strategist" by setting up the enemy and then popping them with a metal strike. "Brute" playstyle also exists in the same way. Lightning lets the player hit harder with every strike, so Discharge, Ice + Lightning, cripples their defence even more. Reactions needed to let the players be able to find their own playstyle, but not too strong to render the others not worth it at all.
The last mechanic piece to add were the weapon abilities. Each ability was completely different and needed to add to the architypes of "Reactive" and "Reactant" elements and the playstyles of "Strategist" and "Brute". The first things that needed to be addressed were the mobility and point blank skills. A teleport and a cone blast were immediately added. Some skills were created to slightly add a benefit to a playstyle, thus the laser beam and the bomb were created. If the enemy is frozen, or armor broken, the laser helps to capitalize on that damage, perfect for a "Strategist". The final two skills were the remaining sword skills. One of them was ranged, to give some more "Brute" options to those who like to hit from a distance, and the last skill added was a spin attack, designer for the "Brute" players once again. Each weapon had two skills dedicated to a playstyle and one to the other, rounding out the mechanics.
Process: Programming
After creating the initial Game Design concepts and the lore behind both the magic and the characters, we created the abilities for Fiora. Fiora would have access to 3 different Melee abilities and 3 different Ranged Abilities. These would help her in different ways and change the way that the game was played. Having a Teleport, Spin Attack, and Medium Ranged Melee Attack, it gave players different techniques to tackle the enemies. She also had access to a lobbing grenade type ability, a beam based spell, and a large aoe cone blast in front of her. This was to give the character a lot of different options.
Example of the different Ability settings in Blueprint
The next thing tackled in the game are the many different abilities and their interaction on Fiora, the environment, and enemies. Each enemy had to react to the damage type separately and the boss had to change phases, activate stuns, and modify his behaviour based on the damage type dealt and how much of it. The four elements, Steel (For heavy attacks and breaking objects), Poison (For decaying trees and stacking poison on enemies), Shock (For stunning the bosses and destroying rocks), and Ice (For slowing enemies and freezing the top of water to walk across).
This was accomplished with communication using take damage node and damage type with 4 unique damage types set up. The enemies would then parse the incoming damage type information, assign it to custom events, and apply the custom event alongside the damage simultaneously.
Fiora had these elements set and applied to the ranged projectiles and a element ID variable set up in her main file. They came from the Shrine Widget and buttons would set them upon click so there was no need for an accept button, as the icon and the variables would be updated simultaneously. Every hit she would do would be run in a custom event comparing her element ID and relaying that information to enemy targets hit.
Setting Abilities on Fiora from the Widget Class of the Shrine
Setting Elements to Fiora (Both visually and as data)
Enemy reaction to the elements
Boss Reaction to Elements
Enemy AI was also created by hand and was a basic AI designed to perceive Fiora in their sight range, or be activated by nearby enemies letting out a cry of damage or dealing damage. The animations were also assembled from Mixamo and the animation blueprints were created in UE4 for each of the enemies and Fiora.
The Boss AI was designed to be in 3 different phases, with a counter designed into each phase. His first phase is to chase the player and attack with a three hit chain. Hitting the boss with poison in the first phase would slow him down. The second phase involves him summoning pillars of ice to teleport to. Once he teleported, he would charge toward the player. He was able to be stunned by breaking the ice pillar he was on with some shock based attacks. The third and final phase involves him teleporting in quick succession to 3 random points around the player. At the third point, he charges through the player swinging with ice claws. Steel element is able to take out this phase faster by dealing damage and reducing his teleports.
All AI was hard coded and did not use the AI trees by Unreal Engine. It kept them in a impossible to break process and was easy to copy over to smaller enemies by having a base enemy class as the parent.
Enemy AI Blueprint Examples
Boss AI Blueprint Examples
