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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

Teaser Trailer

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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

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MY ROLE
 

  • Contributed to code base by taking Trello cards on new Features, and Bugs
     

  • Participated in Play Tests and provided feedback to help improve gameplay and identify bugs
     

  • Participated in Git Workflows, and Code Reviews to ensure clean code was added to the game
     

  • Primarily worked on bringing Animations to life in the game from the Animation Team, Gameplay and Physics Bugs and new additions, and Build Tools
     

  • Attended Engineering Department meetings to discuss current progress, Sprint Planning, and discuss improvements / changes to the development team process

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EXAMPLES OF MY WORK

 

HOOK UP LADDER ANIMATION
 

  • 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.
     

  • When implementing the animation, I found the capsule was not moving with the player as expected.
     

  • 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

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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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There were steps needed to resolve this issue:
 

  • First I split the Clip into 2 pieces, the start transition, and the move down animation

  • The Start Transition was the first 28 frames, and the move down sequence was the last 8 frames

  • 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. 

  • 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.​​

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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:​​

    • Start ENTER_LADDER_FROM_TOP state​

    • On Exit, Transition ENTER_LADDER_FROM_TOP_MOVEDOWN

    • 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.

    • ​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​

    • Lines 22-26: We're using a tween here to smoothly transition the player to face the target rotation

    • 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

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UPDATING PRESSURE PLATES
 

  • In the dark forest level, the level design team is implementing pressure plates that are used for activating / deactivating doors, platforms, or columns as part of the puzzles in the game.
     

  • This task specifically was to update the system to check which object is on top of the pressure plate, then only activate if a proper object is on top. Before this change, a player could activate a pressure plate with physics if a object with enough mass was placed on top of the pressure plate.

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BEFORE

 

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AFTER

 

In the above example, you can see the platform turns Blue. This means the Pressure Plate has been successfully activated. The object on top is a standard Unity 3D Square, with a rigidbody.

For this to feel like a proper pressure plate, we should still see the pressure plate be pressed, but it should not activate with an invalid object. After the updated changes, the right reflects the correct behavior when an invalid object is on top.

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To accomplish this, we needed a modified version of our compoundTriggerVolumes. CompoundTriggerVolumes in this project are designed work similar to normal Triggers, but with unique shapes such as if you needed an 'L' shape Trigger.

The below code is from the compoundTriggerVolumeClass, here we can do specific checks if the player is inside the volume, but no other objects such as a pushBlock or a monster.

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To add functionality to this class, I created a child class that would inherit the compoundTriggerVolume logic, but add additional logic for other objects.

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  1. A hashset to contain unique objects in the TriggerVolume

  2. CheckForObjectOverlap(), which can be used for a one time check for new objects or current objects, which will update the hashSet​

  3. IsValidObjectInVolume() as a public function to return if there are valid Objects in the volume

  4. Updated OnTriggerEnter and OnTriggerExit methods to call the base class method, and add / remove valid objects from the hashSet when they enter the trigger volume.

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Now that there is an updated TriggerVolume class that we can use to determine if valid Objects are within the volume, I needed to update the pressurePlate to use this new functionality. 
 

  • Essentially, in FixedUpdate(), each frame we check to see if the plate's position is below it's original height (meaning physics has pressed the plate down).

  • lines 30-31 will now check if the plate is not pressed, and use our new method in the TriggerVolume to determine if a valid object is in the volume. If we pass these checks, then the original PressurePlate logic can proceed

  • Line 37 is checking the inverse, if the plate is pressed but there is no valid object in the volume, then we can unlock the plate and presume it should not be activated.

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