Hello! The second project that I have refined for my GAM 495 Capstone Programming course at Southern New Hampshire University is a 2.5D side scroller game. This game is an endless running game that will load in random levels from an array of 10 possibilities at random requiring the player to actively react to the course ahead of them while being pressured forward by an unstoppable wall that kills the player on impact. This projects purpose was to develop a game within Unreal Engine but focusing on utilizing C++ and Visual Studio for the gameplay features and elements. Throughout my time spent in courses prior, I learned skills and knowledge applicable to game development with the coding language of C++ and this project will act to show case my foundation in the coding language and how I have applied it towards my game.

Tools:  Unreal Engine 4, Microsoft Visual Studio, C++

Skills: Game Engine Mastery, C++ Programming, Troubleshooting and Critical Thinking

Through the short gameplay clip, the game is a side scroller where the object is to run away from the wall that eliminates the player on contact while avoiding the spikes spawned throughout the level. The first component that was focused on in this games creation was the level generation that would be truly random. In order to obtain that we created a parent level blueprint that we then made 10 duplications of and edited them all uniquely.

As you can see there are 10 differently designed levels that utilize that same layout and format where two collision boxes exist. One acts an overlap trigger and the other as a spawn location for the next level. On player overlap of the first trigger box the next level would spawn in. Below you will find the code used to create this effect.

The last element that was of a major focus was the elimination of the player upon wall collision or spike collision. We created an OnOverlap event that was connected to restarting the level on player death. 

With all of that completed we had the foundation of our game created. There are some elements that can be improved upon further and explored such as the kill wall movement being faster or reducing the player movement speed so that they do not out run the wall but outside of the ease of life changes we have the structure of the game created. 

As specified in the beginning this project was to act as a showcase for displaying my familiarity and foundational knowledge and skills with Unreal Engine and the coding language of C++. Also this game was to act as a different genre from my previous projects to show flexibility in project diversity as well. 

This project was created recently, about a few weeks ago and from the amount of time spent creating and polishing it, I can say that I feel that it is a solid representation of my current skills with the coding language of C++. Throughout my time spent in the courses and projects, I believe that the area I can most improve upon is my coding abilities so I took to creating this project and game as a challenge to show what my current level is. While working within Microsoft visual studio, it was very easy for me to realize my shortcomings with my coding expertise as there were times where I was having to refer back to textbooks, tutorials, and help forums in order to find the proper approach on reaching my goals with this game. From this project, I learned to not be complacent with my current set of knowledge and skills. Just because I completed some previous course work related to coding and C++ does not mean that all of that information will stick. From this project I learned that in order to always be relevant in this industry I need to actively be using an improving my skills in all regards of game development so that I can be actively looked at for employment in the video game industry. Throughout this project I ran into quite a few issues, mainly around getting my code to work properly for generating levels upon the player triggering an event. I spent a lot of time researching and asking questions on forums and ultimately that put me on the right track with using an array to store the levels and then using a function to call the levels randomly. 

From all of my previous courses and projects I knew that clean code with good transparent comments was vital especially when working with a game that is created in Unreal Engine but also Microsoft visual studio. So while creating all of the code related to the game, I made a conscious effort to add comments and ensure best practices were kept with the code format.

The reason why I chose this project to be included in my ePortfolio was because I believed that it most accurately showed my current skill level with the coding language but also because it showed my wide range of skill in game development as well. My previous ePortfolio artifact focused on Unreal Engine blueprints so I felt that it was of equal importance to show the other side of game development which is coding. From my code I hope that it showcases my organization skills and also that while my knowledge is currently limited I still can actively apply it to game development situations and projects. To sum it all together both my side scroller game and the shooter game artifacts that will be included in my ePortfolio will be used to show my proficiency and comfortability with Unreal Engine but also that I have a solid foundation in the knowledge and skills necessary for game development.