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2nd Year Game

Freeflight

"Gliding your way through a dream-like unknown planet, play as the pilot of a glider ship gathering resources for their morally dubious employers. Use the environment to your advantage, catching drafts of air to gain momentum and using unlocked abilities to open new paths on your journey." - Freeflight

  • Responsible for coding the flight system and character controller.
     

  • Created a 3D Theta* pathfinding AI
     

  • Created multiple shaders & VFX
     

  • Misc. Coding / Systems (Respawning, flap ability)

Aerial Theta* Pathfinding

To have flying bonus objectives, I created a pathfinding system and AI that could fly a glider with natural movement.

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Features of this system include:

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  • Multi-Agent Control
     

  • Optional Preset Patrol Routes
     

  • Evasive Behaviours around
    moving targets.

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Flight Controller Development

One of the main challenges I faced when creating the intuitive flight system for our game was getting the controls to be sensitive to minor adjustments.

Since our game's main platform on PC I first used the “WASD” keyboard keys to control a flight system that would pitch and roll the glider. This worked, however it was lacking in control over minor adjustments and was difficult to learn.
Since we wanted a key feature of our game to be that it was easy to learn and relaxing to play, I had to design and build a new type of flight system that was easier to make precise and subtle movements with.

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I decided that switching to using the mouse as the main method of control would solve these problems and I started to devise a flight system based on mouse movement. I ended up programming a UI target for the glider to autonomously attempt to fly towards. This new system is a lot more intuitive to use and gives finer control over the previous flight system.

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