Sizzle

Unity

HLSL

Play as Sizzle, a wood salamander trapped in the underground as they need to make their way out past interesting environments and less than friendly habitants. This project was made as a prototype for MAGIC Maker.

My roles for this project were as team lead and as a gameplay programmer

Animator: Fabian Sanchez

Illustrator: Forrest Laffely

Modeler: Chris Reynolds

Player Controller

This was a simple movement controller that would make sure the character did not collide unnecessarily with the environment. Since our character is controled using physics joints these collision could lead to very unpleasant looking positions for Sizzle. One of our checks is making sure that dashing does not make the character’s physics freak out.

Procedural Animation

Animation of character is done via script logic rather than animation files. This does let the character interact with the environment in a more dynamic way it does require a large overall on walking.

Ai Spearine Boss Controller

This was the finale for Sizzle before they are able to make it out of the current cavern they were in. This boss encounter had Sizzle needing to spark different amber in the room in order to open the door at the end. Spearine could be distracted with sparks which they would take an interest in over Sizzle. What Spearine was thinking was depicted using a burst of emotive particles above them.

On the side is an OLD but interesting video of when we were first implementing Spearine.

Spearlings

These were the small plants that Sizzle could interact with in game. They can be bumped into causing them to rock slightly and when sparking near them they would take an interest in the sparks rather than Sizzle.

Pose Copy

This was a tool I created to help us bridge between custom animations and procedural ones. The video exaggerates the visualization but it essentially interpolates between the bones of two hierarchies. Each bone has their own interpolation.

Charge Puzzle Tools

To progress, Sizzle typically has to charge a set of objects which when fully charge play some form of animation. When all of the chargables are fully charged a finally animation plays and the target is unlocked. I created a tool that let artist create these puzzles and visualize where mushrooms would grow associated with each chargeable and where mushrooms would be for the final animation.

In our build these puzzles could lead to opening doors or creating large purple mushrooms that could be jumped onto.