Role: Systems Programmer, Repository Manager
Platform: PC
Software: Unreal, Trello
Project Description: The Cursed Men and The Stolen Princess is a 2.5D RPG made in Unreal using Blueprints. This game is unique in that it focuses on language-learning by teaching players Spanish.
This was a Production Studio project, meaning it was a student-run project pitched for other students to work on in a class. Different students get onboarded across semesters, and I was onboarded as a programmer during the project's first semester running.
Since I usually work on gameplay and player controls, I wanted to focus on different aspects of the project this time around. I created the dialogue system and set up the quest system. The data for both of these are held in data tables and spreadsheets, allowing designers to fill information easily. I was also the most experienced on the team with repository management, so I set up the repo using GitHub and held a meeting with all of the programmers to instruct them on how to use it.
The dialogue system is supposed to contain both English and Spanish words. I created a data table listing all of the necessary information that allows for NPCs to speak in both languages. I also set up a Google Spreadsheet that designers can fill out for the dialogue and then download it as a .csv to import into Unreal. Then the .csv could be imported into Unreal as a data table. After that was set up, I made the dialogue system so that each word can be clicked to translate between English and Spanish. If there is a word or phrase that the player doesn't know, they play a multiple choice minigame to guess the correct translation.
Code Snippet: The dialogue code parses the data from the data table by separating the words and phrases into separate data in arrays.
Code Snippet: If the player clicks a Spanish dialogue word/phrase, the game checks to see if it has been learned or not. If not, the multiple choice starts and it randomly chooses other words and phrases in that dialogue line for the options.
The quest tool was set up at the very end of the semester. It contained tons of data that the designers could fill out and it provided a general sense of what would go into the quests and how in-depth they would be. It was all set up so that the designers and the programmers could plug in the information and make it work in later semesters after I signed off of the project.
I kept in frequent contact with the rest of the team through weekly standups to update our progress, online work sessions to work with the other programmers, and occasional hangout/party days. Whenever someone started to fall behind, we tried to help them in order to stay on schedule. Overall, there was a better sense of teamwork and unity here than in all of my other projects.
