Chopped

Chopped was made in my second year at Sheridan College as part of Design Week with Tony Zhang, Derek Liao, Danish Mirza and Joseph. The challenge given to us was to create a game based on a verb/action in 4 days.

We initially considered using the verb trimming, but through prototyping, we found that chopping better represents the systems I had created. The final product ended up essentially being the popular mobile game Fruit Ninja but in 3D. I wouldn't give this project many points for creativity but I definitely learned a lot about programming in Unreal and the importance of prototyping as soon as possible.

Programming and Prototyping

As the sole programmer on this project, I had my work cut out for me. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to allow the player to slice a single object into multiple pieces. I began researching what Unity and Unreal had to offer regarding this issue and discovered that Unreal has a visual scripting node that provides this exact functionality. I then watched a live training video that Unreal Engine had made in UE4 to gain a comprehensive understanding of the node. By the next morning, I had completed our first prototype. 

Getting this first prototype done early was crucial, as it revealed a significant issue. The procedural mesh slicing couldn't be executed precisely because it only worked with simple collision, not complex collision. This meant that the area perceived as sliceable by the node was an imprecise representation rather than the exact geometry of the object in question. This was a massive problem at the time because initially, we wanted to make a relaxing game about trimming a bonsai tree that would require precise control over every slice. With this new information, I proposed the idea to shift to a more arcade-style game about chopping up vegetables as fast as you can. This complete shift in game genre meant that exact precision was not as important. This style of game would also suit the venue where the game would be played, which is a showcase floor, since players could compete against each other for high scores. By having multiple prototypes completed in the first couple of days, we were able to gather the information required to make the appropriate choice for our game's direction. 

Game Design

With our game's new direction came a new challenge, how do we make chopping vegetables fun? I decided to implement a scoring system that would reward the player for chopping up the vegetables, with more points awarded for smaller vegetables, such as mushrooms. This would make gameplay more engaging, as players would need to be more aware of the randomly spawning vegetables in order to achieve a high score, all the while avoiding bombs that deduct score.

Another big change that came with the switch was how much control the player would have. Originally, with the bonsai game, we aimed for players to have maximum control. This meant they could rotate and freely move the scissors around a 3D tree. With the new game, we quickly realized that simplifying the controls to only allow movement on a 2D plane aligned better with our new core pillar of a fast-paced, arcade-style game.

Project Management 

Since I handled all the in-engine work and most of the game design, it made sense for me to take on a leadership role as I had the most knowledge about the project. Familiar with my team's strengths, I assigned tasks accordingly and conducted regular check-ins to ensure that the work aligned with our overall vision. My team did an amazing job with the 3D art and UI, which allowed me to focus on my tasks.