Catalyst Overview:

Catalyst is a student game project that I worked on with 3 other classmates under the studio name Wish Upon A Wizard. It is a First-Person Shooter (FPS) that focused on exploration through intuitive level design and mechanically distinct weapons. It follows an astronaut who crashed onto a planet, and must fight their way across the planet to restore their ship back to operability.

In its development we had a strict timetable:

2 weeks for learning the engine
2 weeks for prototyping
1 week (Alpha)
1 week (Beta)
1 week (QA)
1 week (Gold)

Game Trailer

Development Task Highlight Reel

Gameplay / Systems Programmer:

Designed and implemented the projectile deflection mechanic. If the player has the shield equipped, pressing the attack button with the correct timing will allow for all incoming projectiles caught in its collider to be reflected back.

Designed and implemented the AI for the baby and boss golems in the Crystal Cavern level. Both AI ran off of the same conditional logic for states like search, ranged attack, melee attack and death. The boss and baby golem had different melee attacks, stomp and punch respectively.

Designed an upgrade system and its UI that could be accessed at each checkpoint in the level. Allowed the player to increase base health, stamina, speed, or damage values based on experience points collected from killing enemies.

Modeled, textured, and designed the AI logic for the turrets, along with their proximity explosion mechanic.

Technical Artist

Modeled a variety of props (Health, Damage increase, speed boost) and the player shield in Blender. Props were textured using flat materials created in Unity.

Modeled the layout of the Crystal cavern in Blender. Applied materials were created from a variety of free stylized stone and crystal textures.

Modeled the Moon levels Parasite boss along with all of its animations in Blender: Idle, Shoot, Swipe.

Created a MonoBehavior script that allowed for the scrolling of UV in a customizable manner

Created a MonoBehavior script that allowed the user to interpolate between two color values to produce a flashing light effect.

The first half of the following clips shows the use of just the flashing color script while the second half shows it being used with the UV scroll script.

Created new and tooled existing particle systems to be used for a variety of other uses.

Boss / Mini Boss Golem Stomp
Turret Self Destruct
Baby Golem shotgun blast
Golem Death explosion

Level / Environment Designer:

Prototype:

Created the initial linearly pathed prototype level. Focused on leading the player to new items, teaching core mechanics and imparting a sense of player discovery.

Crystal Caverns:

Modeled the basic rooms in blender and then imported them into Unity and arranged them to create the open zone area for the Crystal Caverns level.
Populated the individual caverns with color coded crystals to act as signposts to help guide the player to unexplored areas.
Used the crystals to act as sources of "natural light" throughout the level.

Play:

Downloadable:

If you are interested in trying the game out, go ahead and follow this link over to my itch.io where you can access the Catalyst installer!

WebGL:

Don't want to download some .exe off the internet? I don't blame you! Head over to my teammate's itch.io and you can play a WebGL version of the game there!

Don't forget to take this password with you!

Password: hownice2!

Post Mortem:

Development Process:

Due to this starting as a class assignment, we were forced to adhere to a strict timetable (2 months). Also with this being our introduction to Unity there was a bit of a learning curve. The first two weeks were the initial prototype period while the second two weeks was spent refining it into a fully playable demo.

The next month was spent continuing development of the prototype through an Alpha, Beta, QA and Gold milestones.
We tracked the team's progress, tasks, and bugs using Trello and Scrum for Trello.

Personal Reflection:

Looking back through everything that I have done on the project and even playing it again months after it coming to a close, there are so many things that I would have done differently. With this being my first time using a game engine and having only done some simple software applications, I had the opportunity to really take chances and got to work freely on the project. Some of those chances I took paid off, and others didn't, but in the end gave me a better idea of how game engine's work, and deeper understanding of where I could improve as a developer.

There are more aspects of development that I have learned since completing this that could have helped elevate this game to another level. I spoke with my former teammates and they gave permission to continue work on the project if I wished. While I doubt that I will pick this back up and continue working on it, I think that I may one day revisit the level I was responsible for and see if i can remake it as a standalone project. Only time will tell...