Timecube was a solo project developed in Unreal. A singleplayer sidescroller platformer where the player can create small platforms that last a brief time. The more platforms they have active, the shorter time each lasts. The player seeks out pieces of the Timecube to progress to the next level.

Features

Randomly generated levels: The levels are randomly generated from a range of prefabricated platforms, barriers and enemies. This allows for each playthrough to be different, but is designed to always be a level the player can complete. As the player progresses, fewer platforms and more obstacles are generated, making the player use their own more often, making timing a greater factor.

Challenges

As a solo project, there were many challenges for me, as I am not a programmer and have limited coding skills. I chose to use Unreal for this project to gain a better understanding of the engine and of blueprints.

AI– As part of the project, I produced a simple AI for enemies to pursue the player character on sight, however when they were put into the level, they stopped functioning. According to their behaviour trees, they were responding as expected, but they were not moving. I didn’t have time to solve this and so I made the enemies static kill zones.

Random generation– The random platform spawners were a challenge as I had to set them up to still fill the level with platforms and avoid large gaps or clusters. I solved this by having multiple zones for spawners to ensure they always spawned platforms in all areas of the map.