Zolaris
Programmer
Sep 2020 - Mar 2021
Zolaris is an ongoing project by Owl Path Studio created by a team of 12 people. The game is made with Unreal engine and is a stealth shooter with a dark atmosphere.
On this project, I am the programmer in charge of creating the enemy AI and implementing other features. The AI for this game needed to be able to patrol around and look for the player as well as shoot at them when the player is spotted.
The AI also had to be able to interact with the abilities that the player has. When hit by the shocking grasp ability, the enemy freezes in place for several seconds and stops attacking. This ability can also kill the enemy if charged for long enough.
This is the behavior tree for the basic enemy.
These behaviors control how the enemy responds to player abilities.
This is a brief overview of how the basic AI functions. I set it up to patrol between fixed points and approach and attack the player when the enemy sees them.
This blueprint is what lets the enemy shoot at the player. This is only one of several behaviors that the enemy has and took roughly an hour to put together and test. This function needed to interact with the player health mechanic created by another programmer, so the player health is called before damage is applied.
Here are two other enemy variations that I created. The red enemy is a mage that shoots a fireball at the player instead of a gun. This fireball, unlike the gun, is a projectile that moves towards the player and follows them until it his the player or another surface. The green enemy is a boss character known as the Librarian. This boss is immune to the player's gun, as indicated by the shield around them. They also summon fireballs to attack the player. The only way to damage this boss is with a secondary ability known as Shocking Grasp.
Compatibility with features made by other programmers has been a struggle throughout the project, as I often retest the enemies to see if everything is working as intended.
I also create other features, such as the Etherealness ability featured here. I programmed this ability to disable specific objects in the environment so that the player can move through them. This also makes them invisible to normal enemies. I accessed the post processing effect and changed those values while the ability is active to make the player feel like they've stepped into another dimension. This feature took about 6 hours to research, implement, and test.