Encadré was my first multidisciplinary team video game project. Our team consisted of seven artists and three developers from UQAC. Together, we had fifteen weeks to create a complete game from scratch, producing all the necessary assets except for the sounds.
In this game, you play as a woman from the 1950s wandering through a boreal forest in northern Canada. During your exploration, you encounter an old fisherman who teaches you about the importance and diversity of birds. Between exploration and friendship, you work to achieve your photo album and win the regional photo contest…
I joined the Encadré project partway through after the previous programming team left. My first step was to familiarize myself with a partially formed team and a project that already had a validated prototype.
First, I worked on the player’s movement within the environment. Our goal was to ensure mobility while maintaining the relaxed feel of exploring nature. To achieve this, I implemented a fast walking mechanic complemented by a crouched movement. The crouched movement is slower than walking to enhance the player’s sense of stealth.
All movements are paired with animations created by the artists on our team, which I implemented to achieve the result shown here.
My favorite task was developing the artificial intelligence of the birds. The challenge was to create natural behavior without frustrating the player. I chose to combine hearing and sight to simulate the birds’ two primary detection mechanisms. Once a bird detects the player, it adopts a fleeing behavior if the player gets too close! The bird’s escape is then determined either by following a predefined path or by choosing a random destination from those available in the level. This behavior allows the player to influence the birds’ positions, thereby maximizing their chances of capturing stunning photos!
The player’s crouched movement generates less noise, enabling them to get closer to the bird without scaring it away.
For this task, I reused an Unreal Engine plugin I had coded previously to save as much time as possible. This allowed me to focus on implementing a controller navigation system and a diegetic user interface.
Reusing this plugin saved me a significant amount of time in the time-sensitive context of the project’s final phase. It also gave me the opportunity to update the plugin for potential future users.
Currently working from Canada.
