Key Responsibilities:
Scrum master. LAN session management.
Replication. Main gameplay loop.
Duration: 4 weeks
Team: 2 programmers, 5 designers
Engine:
Links:
Help me help Me is a 2-player co-op LAN-networked horror game, where the players share a space but cannot see or hear each other.
The players are locked into a dark and narrow house, and they have to collaborate to solve a series of tasks to catch an evil spirit that haunts them. Their only way of communicating is through manipulating objects in the house.
This project was the fourth and final school project at FutureGames. I suggested we make the game a networked one, since I wanted to gain more experience with replication, and so I had the main responsibility for networking functionality.
LAN Multiplayer
This was my first multiplayer project, and I decided to limit our scope to only LAN games, to focus my time entirely on replication rather than online session management.
Key Contributions
Tasks
Three interactable "task stations" as well as a starting and finishing ritual task, form the main gameplay of the project. Each of them have customized networking code to ensure they work properly between client and server, as well as various event delegates and sound triggers which designers can use to add feedback to the stages of each task.
Monster AI & Navigation
The game has a monster that travels around the level. It causes lights to flicker, nearby players to slow down and can even interfere with task completion. It also travels between player worlds, and sometimes affects both players, sometimes just one or the other. It navigates randomly around the level, but prioritizes chasing after players if they remain in one place for too long.
Designer-friendly level dressing tool
We wanted the players to have the ability to interact with many objects in the level. I implemented a Blueprint base class, which the designers could use to make props. Once placed in the level, you can record multiple Transform values for these objects in the editor. During gameplay, both players and the monster can interact with an object to animate it, interpolating it between these recorded values. This made it easy to add many small interactable objects into the level quickly.
Team Limitations
Challenging Decisions
For this project we had no artists available, which meant we had to rely on our design team to find the right assets for the game. FutureGames provided a budget of 1000 SEK in the Unreal Marketplace for this purpose. Still, with no artists and only two programmers on the team, completing the game in four weeks was a challenge.
In the third week of work, we had major issues with the sound plugin we used. We couldn't build the game, and we could not figure out a way to solve the issue quickly. After extensive problem solving without success, I made the difficult decision to remove the plugin altogether, which unfortunately meant some of the audio work done was lost. However, once it was gone we could adjust accordingly, and in the end were able to meet the project deadline.
