What did I learn?
I focused on AI again because I enjoyed it so much last time and since it was such a long time ago since I’ve used Unreal’s AI system, I wanted to work with it again to refresh my memory on how it works. I learned to always try and solve merge conflicts in Github with my peers because there were times when we lost a lot of progress because changes were made by someone else in files that I was working on at that same moment. This caused me to rework some of the same mechanics which resulted in time loss. This made me realize again how important it really is to properly communicate to your peers what needs to be done concretely to avoid such situations. I also helped with some of the mathematics behind the mirror mechanic as I already had experience with that from making my Portal project. I also did some level design because I was responsible for creating the lay-out of the house where the game takes place. This taught me that horror games and wide open spaces really go hand-in-hand unlike the environment that I designed for this game. My thought process was that I had already made a horror game with a wide open space so I wanted to change that up a bit this time. But an enemy AI chasing you in such a small environment takes away from the fun factor in a horror game which I will remember for possible future games.
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Contributors
Programmers:
- Oliver Lambreghts
- Tom Stevens
- Luka Verhelle
- Gianni Walraet
Artist:
- Yvette Kooke
Introduction
Other Me is another horror game that me and a couple of friends made for the 2022 Epic Megajam. The theme for this jam was "As Above So Below". For the making of this game we had gotten a week's time.
When we started brainstorming the first thing that came to us was the idea of a mirrored dimension. This was intriguing because I had already created a portal project in a custom engine before so I already had some experience in that field and seeing as we only had one week to create this game, we didn't want to waste any time.
After some further brainstorming we had the idea to make it a horror game. So let's jump into the core mechanics of the game.
The Mirror
The player starts in a regular house and is somewhat guided towards a mirror standing upright in front of them. This mirror is the main mechanic of the game.
We made it so that the render target of the surface of the mirror is linked to a camera placed in a mirrored version of the house. I handled the mathematics to correctly determine the positions of the camera's linked to each mirror. The logic here is the same as that of the portal mechanic in my portal project. When the player looks through a mirror and moves around it, the camera linked to the OTHER mirror moves relative to the player's position but in the local space of the mirror it is linked to.
The player is able to pick up the mirror and place it in different mirror-stands located around the house. This allows for several different puzzle mechanics, for example when a room is locked in the normal version of the house, you could move through the mirror into the other dimension and see that same room unlocked. When placing the mirror in a different stand, you'll notice that the mirror in the other house then also teleports to the mirror-stand in the same, mirrored, position of that house.
Oogie Universe
The team and I though it to be a fun idea to put some references to "Oogie's Spacepark into our game. This is another horror game that I made for last year's Epic Megajam.
We started by putting in some stickers on the sides of cupboards and eventually also added an ending which references the game, but in order to know what the ending actually is, you'll have to play it for yourself.
