Junkyard Heroes
Become a hero of the junkyard by slicing trash to the beat.
Overview
Time Frame: 2 Weeks
Date: December 2021
Team Size: 5
Team Members: Caitlyn Lenhoff, Nolan O'Keefe, Jia (Nancy) Xing, Xiaoying Meng, and Yiming Xiao.
Role: Gameplay designer, UI/UX designer, Gameplay programmer
Platform: Vive trackers, PC platform
Tools: Unity
Keywords: Multi-player, Vive, Rhythm game
Description:
Junkyard Heroes is a multiplayer rhythm game built using Vive trackers. The game was built for the Building Virtual World's course at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. Two guests play simultaneously and slice at trash thrown at them by a trash monster. After slicing enough garbage in a row the monster will try to attack in person and the guests will need to cross their weapons and slice down simultaneously in order to deal a powerful blow. Slice trash and become the savior of the junkyard!
Duties/Personal Contributions:
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Gameplay designer and programmer for the spawning of the trash.
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Gameplay designer and programmer for the monster's attack.
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Gameplay designer and programmer for the health system.
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UI/UX Designer for the UI on the start and end pages.
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Worked as the VFX Designer for materials and particle systems used
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Worked with sound designer to incorporate the music and SFX/
Demo
Process
Trash Spawning
One of the main mechanics that I was responsible for designing and implementing was the spawning of the trash.
In the first designs the team had come to the decision that the multiplayer interaction was going to come from having large types of trash spawn in the center lane, where guest would have to stand one in front of the other in order to have their characters stand on top of each other and slice the trash on the top and bottom half. However, we soon decided that this was impractical as it invited the guests to move from a singular spot, which could lead to them running into each other or hitting each other with the vive controllers.
Thus, I changed the design from three lanes to four lanes where each guest gets two lanes to take care of and cut the idea of slicing garbage in the same lane. Instead as a team we decided to create the combo gauge that fills the ultimate move.
UI and VFX
Due to the other programmer being more familiar with programming vive interactions, I was tasked with designing and implementing many of the UI and VFX interactions.
VFX included adding shaders for the monsters ult attack and shaders that would help indicate when objects were close enough to hit.
For UI, I focused on designing the start, end, instructions, and credits scenes so that they were easy to understand and access. For example, adding images to the large blocks of text in the instructions so that it was easier to conceptualize what was being described.
Health System
One of the main duties I was in charge of was setting up the health system for both the guests and the monster.
The health system was designed so that if the guest misses trash, it will take away some health. However we found that people were dying too quickly and the game cannot be won without cooperation between both people, so the idea of adding health via health boosts was added.
As for the monster's health, the monster will lose about a third of his health each attack, meaning that the guests only need to have a successful attack three times in order to win. This was implemented due to the original attack power being too weak and too many people were dying before they could properly attack the monster enough.
