Mining Astronaut
Download Mining Astronaut
What I Did
- Designed & Implemented Core Gameplay
- Designed & Implemented Core Mechanics
- Programmed all Game Mechanics using Unreal Engine’s Blueprint System
- Mining Design & Implementation
- Cable/Rope Design & Implementation
- Shop Design & Implementation
- Progression Design & Implementation
- Combat Design & Implementation
- Enemy Behavior Design & Implementation
- UI Design & Implementation
- Task Assignment & Tracking
- Documentation Creation & Maintenance
- Playtesting
- VFX Creation & Implementation with Unreal Engine
- Found & Implemented all Art Assests
- Implemented Sounds with Unreal Engine
Game Summary
Mining Astronaut is a 3D top-down roguelike where you play as an astronaut mining asteroids for a mining company. The player is able to upgrade themselves with money obtained by selling ore gathered from asteroids. Players will need to keep a close eye on their oxygen because once that runs out, its game over. Collect enough ore to meet your quota then head off to the next mining site with a brand new quota to meet. And watch out for pesky space spiders, who’ll latch onto your tether and try to sever it.
Mining Astronaut was a solo project I worked on for six weeks, with the core idea being destructible mining and the cable limitation. This was my first time using Unreal Engine. I learned many base line aspects of Unreal like their blueprint system. The visual scripting element was new to me, but after some time with it, I was able to pick it up. The limitations that I had with my knowledge of Unreal and the new way of coding created an interesting environment for my project idea to bloom. All assets were obtained online or from the Unreal Engine market. I designed, programmed, and implemented all features of the game.
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Problem Solving
One of the biggest problems I ran into at the start was how to make the cable. My first thought was to use the Rope Component and dive into that, however from my testing the Rope Component is great for visuals but not great for demanding physics. So I had to create my own rope. I used cylinders for visuals and anchor points for a long segmented string of Physics Constraints. With a ton of testing, I was able to get the rope to act like a cable. Then with a whole lot of trial and error, I was able to attach the rope to the space ship and the player, connecting them and their physics.
Another big hurdle was the modular destruction of the large asteroids scattered across the space. I used the Fracture Tool to break up scaled up rocks then tired using those pieces, the Geometry Collection, in order to create the destruction. That did not work how I was envisioning. I was unable to keep everything together while also being able to access specific parts of the Geometry Collection for ore spawning. So I had to take the Geometry Collection and turn it into Meshes. Using these Meshes I was able to set up the desired large asteroid destruction method. The small flying around asteroids are Geometry Collection because their destruction is only one time.