I worked on both the design and implementation of most of the gameplay and networking elements of Underlord. This included lobbying, as well as networked character controllers, and enemy AI.

The lobbying was decently simple it leveraged Unreals online subsystem tool and was linked to steams online sdk to allow for cross network matchmaking.

The characters feature 5 different character controllers, 4 that were each built off of a base adventurer class that implemented classic top town action controls with customized functionality, and one that ran more akin to a board game with level building functionality as well as deck building elements. All of these were networked and made to run smoothly and quickly across networks.

The AI leveraged behavior trees for their logic and with generalized tasks much of the ai shared basic logic without having to rewrite it. This allowed for more time to include specialized abilities for different creatures. For example the “lich”, it had shared movement logic and specialized logic for when to retreat and spawn “ghoul” enemies to keep melee based characters away, as well as a targeted aoe that was used to focus ranged characters.

Though this project was never completed and there is a lot I wish I could still work on, I am happy at the opportunity this project gave me to deepen my skills. This was my second encounter with network based gameplay and thanks to my experience with Who’s Next I was able to skip a lot of the fundamentals and dive deeper into the techniques that are leveraged to create seamless and quick gameplay.