AI Playtesting is a student pitched project focused on exploring the use of a reinforcement learning agent to playtest combat card games. We chose the popular card game Slay the Spire to build a reinforcement learning agent for. Within Slay the Spire, we have implemented a single boss fight (The Guardian) which our AI learns to master. If our AI works well, our goal is to design and implement a tool for designers to modify cards, train AI and get data to help improve game design decisions. For example our system can help answer a question like: if the damage on a card is increased, how much would it increase the win rate?

Head here for a detailed documentation including all of the implementation details and different techniques we attempted during the course of this project. Here is a trailer video of the project.

My work on this project included:

• Development and maintanance of the reinforcement learning agent.
• Gameplay implementation of the python version of Slay the Spire game.
• Creating data visualizations for game designers to draw inferences from data genereted by the AI Playtester.

Giant Combat was a student pitched discovery project that explored melee combat with a large scale enemy in virtual reality. Our objective was to make this interaction feel comfortable, realistic and cool. At the end of the project we had two prototypes, one of which is shown in the video above, which were characterized by their player movement mechanism (dash mechanic as seen in the video above/swinging using grappling hooks). I was one of two programmers on this project.

My work on this project included:

• Gameplay programming for the grappling hooks, boss assembling from rocks, punching interaction with smaller creatures (birds).
• Navigation and pathfinding for the smaller creatures (birds).
• Developed a playtesting tool that allowed us to capture game state data during playtesting and replay it later to get a closer look into exactly what our playtesters were doing.

This game was developed during the Feb 2020 Global Game Jam hosted in Pittsburgh. My team consisted of 2 programmers (including me), one designer and one artist. The theme for the game jam was 'repair'. We came up with a multiplayer (2 player) game where each person starts out as a ghost and has to collect body parts to become a human again. Player's can impeded each other's progress by picking up a sword or a gun which allows them to cut off body parts from the opponent. The player who becomes human first wins. To do this, however, players need to collect the head. Collecting the head in turn requires other body parts (chest, legs, hands) to have already been collected. We ended up winning the award for Technical Excellence because of the game's well functioning complex mechanics.

My work on this project included:

• System design of the body and their special abilities after being picked up. (Hands allow picking up of gun/sword, Legs allow jumping, Chest gives armor).
• Iterating and making the platforming aspect of the game feel good.
• Implementing the shooting/slashing mechanic of the gun/sword.

This game was a 2-week project for round 5 of the course Building Virtual Worlds at CMU ETC. This highly entertaining, asymmetric multiplayer game involved 1 player (giant demon) in VR and 4 players (maze runners) on PC. The maze runners compete with each other to reach the center of the maze before the maze melts! The demon needs to prevent any maze runner from reaching the center of the maze by casting deadly magic that slows down the runners. If no runner can reach the center before the maze melts, the demon wins. Otherwise, the maze runner who reaches the center of the maze first win.

My work on this project included:

• Gameplay programming involving separate interface, interactions and controls for the VR and PC player.
• Networking, which was implemented using a host-client system through UNet.
• Chat and a communication system between PC players.

This game was completed in 2 weeks for round 4 of the course Building Virtual Worlds at CMU ETC. A story driven experience, it followed a boy on a quest to bring about the season of spring in his world. The objective of the quest is to find the first blooming flower of spring which was the trigger for spring to start.

My work on this project included:

• Snow shaders where the extent of snow on a surface can be controlled during runtime.
• Programming interactions between the snowboy, player and items in the world.
• Shader for creating a melting ice effect.

This game was completed in 1 week for round 3 of the course Building Virtual Worlds at CMU ETC. It involved 4 players who control 2 pairs of portals and coordinate to defeat a boss at the center of the table. The boss fires fireballs which can be reflected back through portals in order to deal damage. If players allow too many fireballs to escape, they lose. The boss fight is divided into multiple phases of increasing difficulty which are triggered as the boss loses health.

My work on this project included:

• Creating a behavior tree for the triggering boss phases and unique logic in each.
• Input management from the unique Jam-O-Drum hardware.
• Portal logic to relocate fireballs.

This game was completed in 2 weeks for round 3 of the course Building Virtual Worlds at CMU ETC. It was a VR experience in which players could use grappling hooks to swing from trees. The leaves (particle system) in this world was controlled using a tracker attached to a fan in the real world that revolved around a player to simulate the feeling of real air. This technique was a way of reducing motion sickness that players felt due to the nature of their motion in virtual reality, and it proved to be quite effective. I used learnings from this project later in the semester long project of Giant Combat which involved very similar movement mechanics in virtual reality.

My work on this project included:

• Programming the hook interactions and swing motion.
• Rim light shader to highlight the trees which can be hooked from the current position.
• Using position data from tracker to adjust the direction of leaves blowing(particle system).

This game was completed in 2 weeks for round 3 of the course Building Virtual Worlds at CMU ETC. It was built for the Magicleap headset and involved smashing scorpions on a virtual table using a hammer in order to protect Ilkley (creature in the center). The hammer could also be converted into a circular blade to slash flying enemies. The haptic feedback on the handheld controller as well as the satisfying feeling of smashing/slashing virtual bugs made this game very fun.

My work on this project included:

• Programming trajectories of flying enemies which follow a descending helic path.
• Surface detection for the augmented reality world.
• Behavior tree for Ilkley, the creature in the center, who chooses between multiple possible dialogues depending on the game state.

Verita is a multiplayer turn based game derived from chess. There new pieces with unique moves as well as a talent system featuring 6 unique spells. Players need to choose three of these spells before the game starts. A detailed explanation of this game can be found in the video above.
For the networking part of this game, I used the Photon Networking plugin for Unity. This allowed me to use a high level networking API to manage the networking part of the game. The game allows players to choose the server location before starting to minimize latency.
The game had many unique interactions as a result of the different board pieces and spells. Playtesting a lot was crucial to finding the bugs in these interactions and resolving them.

Learnings from this project:

• Networking using Photon’s high level API.
• Efficient system design to manage a large number of unique interactions.
• Iterative process of building the game, playtesting, deploying on playstore, getting feedback, releasing patches to fix changes.

Precipitation is a survival game in which the player needs to control a jet going around a spherical planet while avoiding meteors and collecting golden balls. There are power-ups scattered throughout the planet that give special abilities to the jet.
This game was my first project using the Unreal engine. The sphere (planet) in the center had simulated gravity which exerted force on the jet towards the center of the sphere. The challenging part was to always keep the jet’s forward vector tangential to the curvature of the sphere.
The jet’s model in this game was my attempt to learn Blender in order to quickly make a functional model for my game.

Learning from this project:

• Experience with the Unreal engine and C++.
• 3D Math required to keep the jet’s forward vector tangential to the surface of the sphere.
• Gravity simulation for the planet which exerted force on the meteors and the jet.