ANDREW SIPES
GAME DEVELOPER

WaxHeart is a puzzle platformer where you play as Waxboy with a lantern for a heart. You'll journey through a dark in search of your lost memories encountering many monsters, mysteries and challenging puzzles.

Teaser Trailer
Platform: PC
Playtime: TBD
Engine: Unity
Roles: General Programmer
Time On Project: Nov 2024 - Current
Team Size: 20-30
Website: waxheart.info
Steam (Free Demo!): Steam
MY ROLE
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Contributed to code base by taking Trello cards on new Features, and Bugs
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Participated in Play Tests and provided feedback to help improve gameplay and identify bugs
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Participated in Git Workflows, and Code Reviews to ensure clean code was added to the game
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Primarily worked on bringing Animations to life in the game from the Animation Team, Gameplay and Physics Bugs and new additions, and Build Tools
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Attended Engineering Department meetings to discuss current progress, Sprint Planning, and discuss improvements / changes to the development team process
EXAMPLES OF MY WORK
HOOK UP LADDER ANIMATION
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This task required me to take new animation where the player would play an animation and move down a ladder. This task required me to take the FBX and split it by frames and blend it into the player's animation blend tree and move the capsule collider down during the blend.
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When implementing the animation, I found the capsule was not moving with the player as expected.
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Essentially the player would enter the animation leaving the capsule behind and ending up half way down the ladder before the capsule would lock into the correct location and then the next animation would play resetting the player

There were steps needed to resolve this issue:
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First I split the Clip into 2 pieces, the start transition, and the move down animation
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The Start Transition was the first 28 frames, and the move down sequence was the last 8 frames
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Next we updated the Transform positions for each clip, we needed the Y-Position baked into the Start Clip, but not the Move Down Clip since we were moving the capsule independently of the animation.
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I also needed to update the XZ position to be based on the center of Mass to ensure the player was properly positioned on the ladder.
When implementing the animation, I found the capsule was not moving with the player as expected.
The player would enter the animation leaving the capsule behind and ending up half way down the ladder before the capsule would lock into the correct location and then the next animation would play resetting the player



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With 2 Separate Clips requires 2 separate States in the Animation Controller, with some changes to the Animation Controller, this is the updated logic:
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Start ENTER_LADDER_FROM_TOP state
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On Exit, Transition ENTER_LADDER_FROM_TOP_MOVEDOWN
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On Exit, If (isClimbing) Transition to CLIMBING_LOOP
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The last piece was the Climbing code to support the player enter the transitions properly.
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Lines 15-20: When climbing is triggered (assuming player is above the ladder), we look direction and rotation based on the ladder, the target rotation (facing towards the ladder) and the starting position and rotation of the player
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Lines 22-26: We're using a tween here to smoothly transition the player to face the target rotation
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Lines 28-40: After the Tween completes, we're following up by having the player face the edge now, and play the ENTER_LADDER_FROM_TOP animation state, then start climbing
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The Final Result is now the player seamlessly transitions onto the ladder and begins the climbing loop
