Leonard Ray Conradson
Gameplay Designer
Critter Ball Boom
Critters and Golf, what could be better!?
Teams of 2 take turns as they navigate through obstacle filled levels.
Development Time: 6 weeks full time
Team Size: Group (12 People) Role: Gameplay & Systems Design
Tech: Unreal Engine 5, Blueprints (Visual Scripting), Niagara VFX, Adobe Photoshop, Jira, Github
Role Overview
During this project, I was on the design team so I spent a lot of time making documentation. I did also still implement some features. As nobody on the team specialized in particle effects, I volunteered to figure it out. It wasn't my strong suit, but it did help me acquire a basic understanding of that department.
Itch Link
Designing, Documenting & Planning Features
The main role given to me was to design features and then document them in pre-production. Afterwards, I then was responsible for testing and iterating on those features, seeing them through & maintaining quality during production.
Features I was responsible for designing & implementing: Hitstop, almost all visual effects (particle & UI), real time camera movements and shakes, camera lag, gradual movement acceleration, gradual camera acceleration, & playtest questionnaires.
Design Documentation
Visual Effects (Particle Effects & UI)
The non blurred out effects are the ones I made. Having gone into this with no understanding of how particle effects work, I felt incredibly challenged. I'm a game designer not a VFX artist, but it's something I felt might benefit my interdepartmental communication skills in the future. I was grateful for the opportunity to dive into a new realm of competencies.
Making Proposals From Playtest Feedback
Since I was responsible for conducting the playtesting on our team, I wanted to draft some initial proposals for the team. Usually on small things, but it could've been on anything that came up and was worthy of sharing.
Acceleration Curves
One of the biggest things I did for the team in terms of improving gameplay was recommending, designing and implementing acceleration curves. For both the camera and movement systems. Sadly because of merge conflicts only some of this was able to be added on time to the final build, a huge tech learning that I had to learn more about.
It contributed to the feel of the game and made the overall experience less frustrating.
The first video is with camera acceleration, the second is before it was implemented.
Blueprints (Click to Open Full Image)
I tried & tested both torque and standard force for the physics systems. Along with other scripting.
