Bionic League Tournament

Sole Programmer - 7 Developers - 6 Months Development Time - 15 Hour Weekly Work Time - Unrealscript/UDK

Description: Bionic League Tournament (BLT) is a first person shooter, multiplayer game built around a capture the flag variation. It supports up to eight players in a 4 versus 4 setting. 

The game takes place in another universe where corporations send their best robots for battle to see which one reigns supreme. Players assume the role of robots fighting for a corporation in an arena environment. Each team competes to control and maintain a single flag located within the arena. Controlling the flag and killing the other team's robots increases a team's score.

Team Composition:

  • 1 Programmer

  • 4 Level Designers

  • 2 Artists

Roles and Responsibilities

  • Implemented player controls 

  • Scripted custom jetpack mechanic, jetpack fuel system, and forward thrusters, which allowed for more verticality in gameplay

  • Scripted all game weapons and exposed variables for designer control and customization

  • Created custom capture the flag game mode

  • Responsible for ensuring network replication of all essential game features

  • Provided back-end and debugging support for Game Menus and HUD

  • General bug crushing for all game systems

Project Post Mortem

What Went Well

  • We scoped the game well and played to our team composition and communication was very strong among our team throughout the development process. We knew this would be incredibly important as our team did not have a producer. 
  • Because many of our core game mechanics were implemented early in development, we were able to put a larger effort on conveyance and HUD related tasks. This let us iterate on the HUD about three times during the course of production.
  • I was able to delegate when necessary and provide proper support when needed. 

What Went Wrong

  • Towards the end of the project, we realized some of our weapons were not the best fit with our game mechanics. Since we added verticality to gameplay with jetpacks, it became difficult to target and hit players in the air with certain weapons. This made players prefer AOE based weapons and weapons with faster projectiles, which in turn led to some weapons being undesired. 
  • We had a very difficult time finding playtesters. Because our game was designed around four versus four multiplayer, we needed to find eight people per play testing session. This was especially difficult without a producer to help organize playtesting sessions. Because of this, we often relied on internal playtesting feedback, which is likely the reason we didn't find issue with the bullet described above earlier.

What Was Learned

  • Never underestimate the time required to tackle networking replication problems. Many of the seemingly easiest tasks required the most amount of time when trying to replicate over the network. 
  • Don't be afraid to delegate tasks to people with cross disciplinary skills. 
  • Having a deep understanding of the software configuration for a game engine is essential.