Brought in to do a major refactor, overhaul, and extra gameplay work for Wild Kingdom. The project has been in development for several years and features an animal survival game complete with breeding, territory, combat, and survival mechanics. Soon to release on Steam.
The core loop for Wild Kingdom is simple:
There are many secondary loops to the larger loop, including environmental factors such as fire and such. The game is still in active development.
Gameplay consists of heavy and light attacks as an animal in the wild. Complete with the usual eating and drinking mechanics. Wild Kingdom is a third-person game and incorporates many of the usual features seen across the genre. The game is fully networked for a large map with many players interacting and fighting one another. Combat is tempered with a stamina bar, and is driven via animation-frame based events.
There are several neutral/prey NPCs included in the map for simple food and XP boosting matters.
Wild Kingdom uses Unreal Engine 5 and is built majoritively in blueprint with some C++. The project features survival mechanics, stat-incentivised AI, PVP/PVE combat, and growth/breeding mechanics. The game has been in active development for some years, Developd was brought in to do a refactor of existing systems and to script out new prey AI and a better combat framework.
Work on this project involved refactoring blueprint structures and enumerations, optimizing datatable and data asset pipelines to allow for better designer control of eating spots, animal classes, attack data etc. As also the implementation of smarter AI systems that would avoid predator animals, better stat widgets, and the 3Cs were also overhauled for a better camera system, movement/turning, and control layout.
The project demanded the use of:
Overall, this was a short-term role in a small team working on an ambitious project that is coming across quite nicely. Wishlist today!
