Summary

Nine O’Clock is an exhilarating game that immerses players in a thrilling experience of grinding along rails as a dedicated worker. Prepare to begin on a small yet captivating journey where precision and skill are key. Set in a beautiful steampunk/industrial-like environment, Nine O’Clock provides an unparalleled opportunity for discovery. Brace yourself for the challenge of conquering intricate rail routes, overcoming obstacles, and mastering the art of grinding.

Contributions and Leadership in the Project

In my role within the project, I was entrusted with creating a user-friendly character controller and an impeccable grinding system that fully engrosses players in the experience. By successfully executing this crucial task, I ensured a deeply engaging and immersive gameplay experience.

Nine O’Clock stands as an important moment in my career, representing my first concrete game developed with Unreal Engine. Throughout the project, my comprehensive understanding of the project’s vision enabled me to exercise strong leadership and communication skills. By providing guidance and support, I nurtured a sense of unity and cohesion among team members, enhancing overall productivity and cohesion resulting in the game resounding success. Moreover, this endeavor served as a valuable learning experience, affirming my ability to adapt swiftly to new work environments.

Character controller

The character controller itself was nothing special, particularly as it primarily interacted with the grinding aspect of the game. We aimed to keep the pawn actor relatively straightforward, focusing on basic functionalities like player movement and jumping. To interact with levers in the game without the need for an extensive melee system, I implemented a hitbox that moved around the player based on the player’s control axis. This hitbox would cast to detect collisions with levers exclusively.

Grinding system

For the implementation of our grinding mechanic, we incorporated the Ultimate Grind System Asset. This package utilizes interfaces and an actor component to facilitate grinding on a detected spline.

The workflow involves tracing a box under the player to verify if a spline is hit. If successful, an interface within the spline hit is executed, setting its references inside variables in the player’s component. When a spline is successfully hit, the player’s pawn snaps onto the referenced spline and follows it at a predetermined speed. As we initiated the project with the constraints of this asset, some adjustments were necessary, including: