Kaya's Vale
Kaya's Vale is a 3D third person adventure game. The player traverses through a jungle and ancient temple with their dinosaur companion, Apollo, solving puzzles and avoiding dangers to find their lost tribe.
Pre-award (third year project)
This project was a university group project that was entered into and won Tranzfuser Enterprise Pathway 2021 (UK Games Fund). The funding awarded was used to create a more refined prototype.
Created with the Unity Engine, C# and Wwise.
Post-award
My Contributions and Improvements
My contributions to date are:
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Project concept
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Tech lead
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Prototyping
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Player movement
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Ledge grabbing
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Throwing
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Pushing objects
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Apollo's Command System
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Apollo's companion AI
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Riding dinosaur mechanics
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Event trigger tools (for scripted events)
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Dino companion behavior triggers (for scripted events)
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Reflector puzzle mechanics
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Bridge manager (for puzzles)
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Checkpoint system
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Cutscenes
Working on the player controller has improved my skills in both programming and using Unity. Mechanics especially like the ledge grab have introduced me to techniques like root motion that allow the animation to the player's position allowing for much smoother movement. In addition, I have a greater understanding of how ridigbody components interact with game objects and other Unity's components.
The Dino Command System (DCS) is the one of the games Unique Selling Points (USP) and allows the player to control Apollo, these actions are:
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Follow
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Got to where the player is look
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Charge and destroy what the player is looking at
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Stop
Apollo's Artificial Intelligence (AI) also improved my undergraduate AI programming skills as this was the first time I had to create a companion AI. A challenge I overcame was getting the AI to cooperate with the riding mechanics specially when the player told the Apollo to do something when riding.
Another challenge I solved was allowing Apollo to follow the player when at a specific distance from the them. this was problematic, as when Apollo was told to go to a position outside of the his following distance he would immediately go back to the player. To counter act this I simply implemented a task system that would ignore the distance limit until Apollo's current task was complete.