Chimera
Game Mechanics / UI Programming
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About the Project
Chimera is a game produced by a team of 14 members over a span of 8 months. The goal was to create a fast 3D isometric roguelike game where the main feature involved defeating creatures and using their limbs to further your own powers. There are a total of 6 major enemies, each dropping two unique limbs that the player can choose to equip as well as 4 unique bosses to face with their own challenges.
My Contributions
One of my primary roles on the team was to create and implement the majority of the UI elements. Some of the biggest UI elements I implemented were the Shops (Body Shop + Relic Shop), the Equipment Menu, the Codex, and some other smaller UI tasks. I also took on the role of creating the save manager and associated UI elements.
UI Showcase
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Body Shop and Relic Shop
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The Body and Relic shops are the two main ways the Player is able to spend the currency they earn throughout their playthrough; Bones and Essence.
Body Shop
The Body Shop is used to sell limbs to the player which act as their tools to help them traverse through the levels.
The shop displays all of the relevant stats of each limb, giving the Player the limb in exchange for some Bones.
Relic Shop
The Relic Shop is where the player can use their hard earned Essence to buy relics that act as buffs that are permanent from the start of your run. It is pretty straight forward, showing the price and description of what is available, and nice enough to let you know which one you currently have equipped too.
Body Shop
The Body Shop is used to sell limbs to the player which act as their tools to help them traverse through the levels.
The shop displays all of the relevant stats of each limb, giving the Player the limb in exchange for some Bones.
Relic Shop
The Relic Shop is where the player can use their hard earned Essence to buy relics that act as buffs that are permanent from the start of your run. It is pretty straight forward, showing the price and description of what is available, and nice enough to let you know which one you currently have equipped too.
Equipment Menu and Codex
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The Equipment and Codex menus are tied together in a menu along with the settings options. The Equipment Menu used to show the limbs and stats of everything you have on you, as well as showing all of the Trinkets the player has acquired and their effects on the side. The Codex however, acts as a player's database to see all of the relevant information you should need, as long as you have discovered it first. Both are fully navigable by controller as well as keyboard/mouse.
Save Manager
The Save Manager was definitely the hardest thing I had to do alongside the Codex which was also tied to this. I used JSON to save the files and data, which I feel is pretty standard format for unity games, but it made enough sense to use since there isn't any really complex information that this game needed to be storing.
What it saved: (this data also can be encrypted if needed)
I also created the associated UI in the main menu for the players to access one of their 3 saves, deleting or overwriting as needed. Since the saves track which one was most recently played, you can also just hop right back into the last file played on.
What it saved: (this data also can be encrypted if needed)
- Date/Time and most recent save slot
- Essence acquired
- Total Deaths on the save
- How many relics the player has purchased
- All of the names of the Codex Entries that the player must discover
- Bools related to progression states
I also created the associated UI in the main menu for the players to access one of their 3 saves, deleting or overwriting as needed. Since the saves track which one was most recently played, you can also just hop right back into the last file played on.
Save Menu Showcase
Code Examples
UI Code Examples
Most of the UI takes values from other sources during the game so part of the challenge was making sure that all of the different systems were acquiring the right information in a clean manner. The Trinket code snippets show me accessing values from multiple sources and in different ways, primarily sourced from the UI features mentioned earlier.
Gameplay Contributions
The main feature that I assisted with revolving around gameplay was creating the Trinkets in the game. The Trinkets are pickups from enemies that can alter how the player plays the game, from giving the player more health to entire new effects on their attacks. This system helps create uniqueness between run as well as an RNG factor to keep gameplay fresh. This system utilized scriptable objects which helped modify all of the stats revolving around the player.
Other Contributions
Here is also some of the smaller things I worked on within this project
Limb Health UI |
Other UI |
Reflection
This project was easily my largest that I've worked with in all facets. Working on a project with a scope as big as ours for our production time meant everybody on our 14 man team had to finish their respective work so the entire project could continue a smooth production cycle. I spent a lot of time researching to achieve what was needed from me which helped me learn new techniques as well as practice removing redundant code to help guarantee that others could critique my code without looking over unused lines. My proficiency with Unity and it's tools has increased significantly from this project over time and has benefitted me quite a bit.