Chimera
Chimera is a 2D action-platformer that is set in a destroyed city that has been taken over by superheroes who have revolted against the city's government. The player must take down these superhero terrorists by using the powers they’ve taken from the fallen heroes.
Genre: Action-Platformer
Engine: Unity, C#
Software Used: Visual Studio (2022), Plastic SCM
Team Size: 6
Duration: Aug. 2022 - Dec. 2022
Platform: PC (Itch.io) link to the game
Trailer created by David Harkness
Postmortem
This was the first game I’ve ever made with a team, let alone the first game I had to create completely from the ground up. This opportunity allowed me to get my feet wet in working with and managing a team of game developers. Above all else this experience taught me the importance of scope and communication during the development process. The original concept of the game was a Metroidvania with collectibles and more ability sets, levels, and bosses. However most of this content needed to be cut as this concept was beyond our scope. These cuts were also influenced by poor communication from the original Project Lead as clear roles weren’t given out, proper timelines weren’t created, and there was a lack of a cohesive vision. Although the development was rocky, this experience has taught me many invaluable lessons that will assist me in future projects.
Notable Roles and Duties
Gameplay Programming:
Implemented player movement and character controller w/animations
Checkpoint System - Player interacts with checkpoint object to set a save point and restore health/energy
Player shooting and melee mechanic w/ animations
Player abilities w/ animations
Player “Aim Mode“ mechanic w/ animations
Player death respawn system
UI Programming:
Pause menu and title menu w/ load save functionality
Health/Energy bars
Aim-Mode text on player HUD
Level Design:
Create the first and third building in Level 1 w/background, ground, and platform tiles
Clean up background tiles for building two and four in Level 1
Remove excess ground/wall tiles and replace ground tiles in the air with platform tiles for building two and four in Level 1
Gameplay Description
Gameplay Programming
I programmed all of the special abilities and the aim-mode system. I won’t describe every ability, but the important ones are as follows: The Electro Attack ability which allows the player to throw an electric projectile that passes through enemies and returns to the player after hitting a wall. The Electro Movement ability which grants the player the ability to shrink down into an electric ball and perform a ground pound. The Terraform Movement ability which lets the player gain some height by summoning a floating rock platform. To assist me in programming these abilities, I created sketches that helped me envision how these abilities would work. These sketches, as well as demonstrations of their corresponding abilities and snippets of their code, are shown below!
Aim-Mode System Demo
Sketch of Electro Attack Ability
Electro Attack Ability Demo
Sketch of Electro Movement Ability
Electro Movement Ability Demo
Sketch of Terraform Movement Ability
Terraform Movement Ability Demo
Sketch of Aim-Mode System
Code Snippets
Aim-Mode Code Snippet
Electro Attack Code Snippet
Electro Movement Ability Code Snippet
Terraform Movement Ability Code Snippet
UI Programming
One of the challenges I ran into was decreasing the energy bar. The maximum amount of energy had to be divvied up between 3 separate bars. So when the player’s energy decreased, I created a method that looped through the bars to check for the first bar that wasn’t drained and decreased the energy from that bar. The code for this is shown below!
Energy Bar Decreasing Code Snippet
