Attack on Titan Esque Game

A fast-paced action game demo with fully realized mechanisms of the Omni-directional Mobility Gear inspired by Attack on Titan (AoT).

Motivation

I wanted a controllable non-simplified version of the AoT movement gears that allows for the maximum amount of self-expression so that the scenes from the anime can be re-creatable through the player's own intentional inputs (rather than through pre-defined action or quick time events).

Personally, this is one of my proudest projects, and it really fulfilled my dream of skillfully swinging through the air stylishly. My only regrets with this project are the subpar character controller that limits the kinds of terrain it can run on, non-physical ropes, and just the lack of levels and enemies.

Project Goal/Scope

The goal was to make a game with accurate controls of the vertical mobility gear of Attack on Titan while also making sure stunts as seen in the anime can be plausibly recreated. To summarize:

No cutscenes or quick-time events
No pre-determined paths or cheats to keep the player suspended in the air
Making sure the player is responsible for all maneuvers

Although, this also means the game is rather hard to get familiar with, thus raising the bar of entry. However, since this is a personal project and less of something I openly share with everyone, it'll be a guilty pleasure I'll admit to enjoying.

Project Info

Role: Programmer
Team Size: 1 person
Time frame: 6 weeks (March 2022 - June 2022)
Tools: Unreal Engine, Blueprint (Unreal Visual Scripting), SuperGrid (Material Asset), Mixamo (animation assets)

Omni-directional Mobility Gear Functions

The game's design funnily enough started from its control scheme. There were 2 parts of the vertical movement gear and each of their functions can be listed below:

The gas propeller
- Actuation in the air to push a human with no way to move mid-air (WASD, Spacebar, and Shift keys for vertical propel)
- Emergency acceleration (Double Tap movement keys)
The rope and anchor for aerial suspension
- Shooting and attachment of anchor onto surface (Left/Right Mouse Click)
- Rope length adjustment
  - Reeling in to pull the user to the anchor point (Mouse thumb button 1)
  - Max length extension (Mouse thumb button 2)
  - Instant reeling (Swipe of a scrollwheel)

Although I would ideally want both ropes and anchors to be able to have their lengths individually adjusted for more control, it would require the fingers to shift away from their natural positions and make certain movements awkward. Also since it could be placed in an intuitively awkward position (like how the left anchor is shot using the left mouse button and the same for the right), settling for the rope length for both sides to be controlled by the same button is good enough.

The "rope" interaction is based on Hooke's law about the placed anchor point. When the player exceeds its natural length, the player starts getting pulled into the anchor point, and the further the player, the stronger the force. There is also a maximum extension length where if the player surpasses it, the player's outwards velocity against the anchor point (done through Project on to Vector function) is immediately stopped. The physical rope seen was just a visual effect using Unreal's cable component.

Something I would've liked added was physical ropes that interact with the colliders, but simply using physics constraints would make the system unstable and unpredictable, and it would also limit the adjustable properties of the rope by a lot. If given the time I would've looked up research papers on rope physics. I would've also included a damping function too but I wasn't aware of the full mechanics of the spring-damper model at the time.

Editing animations in runtime to enhance "game feel"

I love myself some pleasing animation, so I thought to myself "Why stop at just implementing simple mechanics?"

There are 2 parts to this equation:

Tilting the torso according to input

To make input more responsive, some additive poses were implemented to express intention for the player avatar and as a signal that their input was received before the acceleration slowly beings.

The player character would also use this tilting functionality to face perpendicular while tilting towards the anchor point while swinging to add to the realism of swinging through waist-mounted grapple hooks. The player character will also face different directions depending on which of the left or right hooks is nearer to a surface

Spinning to redirect lost momentum and elevate swinging motions