What Makes Smooth Gameplay in Mega Dimension Ripper 9000

How the player character affects gameplay

In any game, the player character is one of the most important parts of the experience. We knew that having clunky movement or obtuse controls would severely hamper the gaming experience, so we started our development with this in mind.  

Our engine of choice, Unreal Engine 5, comes with a player character built in that we used for initial testing, but we quickly found that the movement quite what we were looking for. Our main goal with movement was to make it feel snappy and responsive, so we started by tweaking the physics of the player character.  

To make movement feel good, we increased the braking force to allow for stopping on a dime and turning around as fast as possible. This is greatly helpful in our game where enemies are approaching from all directions. We also boosted the amount the player can move while in the air. This change made it so jumping over and around enemies was much easier.  

The next major change in the character's movement was implementing a dash. Our dash works as a quick burst of speed in whichever direction you are looking, allowing you to quickly escape from enemies or run to your teammate’s aid. The dash also gives the character temporary invincibility, which enables the player to dash through enemies as an escape option. Combining the jump and dash together makes for more fluid movement and makes traversal quicker and easier. Frequent use of the dash is very important for higher difficulties.  

As for our controls, we knew that keeping them simple would make the game easier to pick up for the first time. This ease of access was one of the main concerns when designing a party game. To facilitate this, all major gameplay actions have multiple bindings, with one being on the face buttons and one being on the shoulders/triggers. With this, players can choose how they prefer to interact with the game and not be forced into on design. We also chose to forgo having to press a button to shoot, instead making you automatically shoot whenever you are looking in a direction. This helped keep aiming at the top of the player’s minds and not worry them with holding a button down for entire levels. 

-Nick Maier