Rings of Hell
An active turn based RPG set in wrestle inspired Hell
The Project
Rings of Hell was built in Unreal Engine 4.25 as my capstone project for UCF's Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA) in which I was in the Technical Designer Track. I worked on a core team of about 15 other students all of which were on the project from the beginning from the various tracks at FIEA. Our team grew in size over the two semesters we worked on it as classmates left their teams and joined ours. Additionally we worked with individuals outside the program and within who did temporary freelance. I was one of the original team members and the project started in December 2020 and ended in July 2021. Rings of Hell was originally pitched by Co-Art Lead Yamiset Trujillo and Level Designer Jazmine Perez but was voted on by the entire team. During the development I got to touch a lot of systems in the game. These include the quest system, dialogue system, and a lot of the combat systems. Additionally, I did a lot of the UI coding and created the Animation State Machines used in combat.
Combat
The initial pitch for Rings of Hell included the use of an Active Turn Battle system (ATB system). This system has it so that instead of fixed turn order it is constantly changing as each fighter has an individual meter that fills up based on their Speed stat. Once their ATB meter is full they get to take their turn. Early in the development cycle though there were questions of how much of a scope issue an ATB system could be. Feeling that the ATB system was integral to our game's identity since our narrative conceit was to frame the combat as wrestling. Even though it is a performance, it is a high adrenaline spectacle then our combat should not be slowed down by the stuttering of a normal turn order. With the go ahead of the Leads and the open time on that initial development sprint I was able to make the full prototype within a couple of hours. From their the team had built on the prototype with only a few changes for optimization.
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Other combat systems I worked on directly during Rings of Hell's development cycle included the player controls, status conditions, the combat Animation
State Machine, as well defining a fighter through the template method and loading them into combat. These systems were much more collaborative efforts though. Working closely with the Programmers and the other Tech Designer was my favorite thing about this project. We were often dealing with difficult bugs and complicated systems and getting to tackle them together made the work fun.
User Interface
With our game being an RPG we had a lot of UI to work through. While working on the dialogue system I helped to develop its UI as well as creating the HUD for our exploration levels and the quest menu. In combat I touched almost every piece of UI and authored the majority of their scripts. My UI work saw me collaborating a lot with Co-Art Lead Gianfranco Villanova Bravo and Tech Artist Abigail Morrison to nail out the designs. In combat we wanted to play with world space UI a lot and we iterated the most on our UI there wanting to make sure it was uncluttered but conveyed all the necessary information. I also worked on several areas of the exploration UI, handling the HUD, Quest Menu, Shop Menus, and working on the Dialogue UI.
Dialogue System and Tutorial
When working to make our dialogue system it was built using Unreal's Behavior trees. In this way we were able to continually add onto the dialogue by creating new Tasks and Decorators. In this way we were to give a lot of power to our dialogue system using a blackboard to give it a lot of power in what it can effect. When it came for me and the programmer Austin Relis to make the tutorial this adaptability proved to our advantage. We were also able to leverage Event Dispatchers to handle the triggering of the tutorial dialogue. I was also responsible for actually writing the dialogue for the tutorial beyond just coding it's systems. Doing so was
a great project to endeavor on as I had to balance the voices of the characters with the clarity of the games rules that needed to be conveyed.
Wrestle Satan and Combat Content
Rings of Hell's ultimate boss is Wrestle Satan. Along the way the player would have faced down a handful of enemies, collected unique gear and attacks. All of this was content that I worked with the Design Lead, Dillon Lynch, and the other Tech Designer Pedro Bautista to generate. I personally proposed upwards of 50 attacks, about 20 usable items, and 8 enemies. While working I started realizing that this would become a lot to balance so I created a balancing spreadsheet to help facilitate this. Ultimately Dillon had final say on what content went into the game as well taking on most of the balancing towards the end of the project. The three of us worked together to really hammer out what makes Wrestle Satan as our final boss unique. I wanted something dynamic and challenging since I don't like making bosses that are just a lot of Health to whittle down. Seeing as Wrestle Satan was going to be a primarily solo enemy I knew that she would already be down balance wise as the player with two fighters and therefore would most likely get more turns. Since Wrestle Satan is the champion of Wrestle Hell, a realm of her own making I saw her as a character with an unchallenged ego. Therefore I wanted her to cheat as soon as the player got a crack in that ego. If she enforces the rules then there is no one to stop her. Once she starts cheating on occasion when she takes her turn she will actually do two attacks back to back.
Want to Play
