Gameplay

Environment

The environment was split into three main sections. The starting section, The interim section and the final section, where the player would attempt to make an S.O.S. call for help in order to be rescued and winning the game.

Section 1

After the player spawns in, They get they're initial task, Go outside and get a core sample using the ice coring machine, Which eventually falls on the player during the storm. They must then use the tools in they're surroundings in order to make they're way through the sections. After the player finds the ice hooks they are able to climb up the ice face connecting sections 1 and 2.

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‍Section 2

At this point the player is at the top of the cliff and must figure out a way over traversing the vast gap between sections 2 and 3. They notice a power line that they are able to use there ice hooks to zipline across and over the water safely.

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‍Section 3

This is the final section of the games environment. In this section the player must enter the building where they will find battery's to power the electronics and thus being able to send out a signal to the outside world and completing the game.

Player interactions

The player interaction was handed by sending a raycast out from the players camera and getting information from the blocked actor. The main piece of information fetched was weather the actor had the “Interactable“ tag assigned to it. If it did then it would set the UI element to appear on screen giving the player feedback that what they are looking at can be interacted with. The blueprint that handled all this functionality was the “Interaction“ component that was placed on the player so that its more modular and easier to work with multiple people using source control.

After that there is a check for weather the player is pressing the 'E' key. If the player is pressing the key then we try cast to a few different types of blueprints that have interactable functionality such as pickups and the telegraph at the end. Each different type of blueprint had different functions that where called from the interaction blueprint that each did different things.

Climbing

The climbing mechanic is fairly simplistic and if I was going to go further with the game there is minor things I would have done differently to make it more sophisticated and adaptable. The way it works at its core is that it is just playing a animation of the player climbing that has root motion, this means that the player itself is pulled upwards with the animation and results in a climbing effect. One thing to note is that the movement mode of the player must be set set to flying or none so that the gravity and movement isn't getting in the way of the root motion.

A look at this animation graph

Note that there is three different stages of the climbing animation, this is so that there is an enter climbing animation, a looping animation in the middle and then a climbing completed animation.