The Rift Guardian.
Introduction
This was my first Unreal project as well as my first VR project. We were tasked with creating a first-person shooter game. After much brainstorming and consideration of various ideas, we eventually agreed on all the mechanics. It was a very bumpy ride for everyone, myself included, but in the end, it became one of the best games I've had the pleasure of working on.
The Rift Guardian
My Contribution
My first and biggest contribution was the creation of a new AI, a flying enemy AI that could move in a zigzag pattern. After that there was a lack of visual effects to give the game life. I decided to create two effects, that of the portals the enemies come from, and the black hole.
Flying enemy Ai
The idea for this game was to create a first-person VR shooter where players remain still in a small area, use power-ups, and try to survive as long as possible.
I came up with the concept of adding an enemy inspired by a Beholder from DnD, mixed with Shockwave from the Transformers series. Along with a game artist, we designed the enemy to be challenging to hit, capable of flying, and capable of entering a combat state upon reaching the player.
I decided to make the enemy zigzag and fly at quick speeds to increase the difficulty of hitting it while ensuring it performed all the typical actions of a normal enemy.
What I did was create a loop within the enemy AI. Each loop generates a cone, creates a waypoint at a random location at the end of that cone, and moves the enemy toward it.
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The AI then checks if the enemy is close to the player. If it is, it enters its attack state and begins attacking. If not, it repeats the process, resulting in a zigzag movement. The enemy is always facing the player as well. There was a lot of math involved, and it was quite challenging at the start, but after extensive research and time spent, I managed to make it work properly.
Portal Effects
The two effects that I have created, are a rather simple Portal effect that increases and decreases in size, creating the illusion of depth.
For the blackhole effect, I create a vibrating effect in the middle of the black hole holder and put two portals diagonally ontop of it to give it the illusion of gravity.
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Reflection
I really should have done more research about how Unreal and perforce worked before this. I struggled at the start because of it. Other than that, there is not much else I believe that I could have done other than making my graphs more readable.