Silens
Technical Combat & Gameplay Designer
Project Summary
Role: Game Designer & Technical Combat Designer
Team Size: 3
Genre: Third Person Hack 'n Slash
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Duration: November 2024 - Present
Status: WIP
Overview
Silens is a third-person Hack n' Slash action prototype built in Unreal Engine 5 and currently in development. Drawing inspiration from Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, the project focuses on feel-first systems: a montage-driven combo kit, hit-stop and camera feedback, soft-lock orientation, dodge/parry windows, and a Rage meter. Traversal is equally expressive with a custom locomotion system as well as wall-running and a grappling. All authored through Animation Blueprint state machines with layered upper/lower-body slots. Enemies run on a Behavior Tree + EQS framework with attack tokens, strafing/reposition logic, and clear telegraphs for fair challenge.
Silens prioritizes modularity, rapid iteration, and designer-friendly tuning via reusable Blueprints, data assets, and in-engine debug tools—forming a strong foundation to grow into a full combat based game slice.
My Role
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Worked closely with the rest of the team while designing, implementing, and iterating on the combat system to ensure a shared creative vision that would accommodate an immersive combat experience.
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Designed and implemented different enemy types using Unreal Engine's behaviour tree, blueprint AI controller and animations to support the combat system by incentivizing the use of different combos and abilities from players.
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Conceptualized and created the Rage system, used to deal extra damage, heal and perform devastating finishers. (WIP)
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Improved the combat experience and enhanced the overall quality of combat interactions by finely tuning player animation, attacks transitions, block and dodge priorities as well as camera effects and VFX.
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Prototyped and implemented enemy behaviours, mechanics, and their reaction to player's attacks to find the fine balance between challenging and fun.
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Built many tools and features including a Traversal system, save/load system and custom behaviour tree tasks.
Crafting Combat
Silens' combat builds on the foundation of classic Hack & Slash games such as Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden. The main goal was to create a satisfying combat loop that encouraged exciting and varied gameplay.
Goals, Challenges & Iterations
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The main goal going into this project was to have the combat be at the core of the game loop. The features we wanted to have were:
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The complete control the player must feel over the character' actions
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A spectacular and powerful style
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Challenging encounters
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Skill play rewards
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Aggressive fast-paced combat
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The Combat went through 3 main iterations so far:
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At first we had fewer combos and combo types, this proved to make the combat more repetitive .
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In the second iteration I added an extra stance to make the combat more varied. This improved the situation but brought its own set of problems, most of all every stance still felt flat when being played. On the other hand, the switch, in real time, between stances proved satisfying and engaging.
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This brought me to the third iteration, where we went back to having only one stance but with enhanced abilities and a larger, more varied set of combos and attacks to choose from. (Stances change will be back on iteration 4)
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Designing The Player
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Carefully iterated and crafted the character's 3Cs to ensure a smooth and satisfying experience.
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Designed and implemented combos. From basic primary and secondary attack to combine the two and having combos starting and extending from both. Later on I added Pause Combos as well as a crowd control attack, a stinger attack and a jump attack to quickly close the space between the player and an enemy.
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Designed and implemented a gravity based airborne combat.
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Utilised camera effects and transitions, SFX, VFX and hit-stops to enhance the game feel and match the fast paced combat.
Player Movement
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Carefully designed and implemented the player locomotion system using Unreal Engine’s Animation Blueprint state machines, ensuring responsive and fluid transitions between movement states.
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Created a modular locomotion setup combining idle, jog, sprint, and smooth stopping states, all controlled via clean transitions and animation notifies, ensuring seamless transitions for realistic and responsive movement.
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Incorporated multiple entry and exit points to account for rapid directional changes and sprint toggles, enhancing responsiveness and player control.
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Implemented a dedicated jump state machine managing transitions between jumping, landing (both stationary and while moving), and advanced traversal states like wall running. Ensured these seamlessly integrate into the overall movement flow without any animation snapping or jitter.
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Each transition was fine-tuned with custom blend times and conditional checks to prioritize visual coherence while still feeling snappy. All logic was designed with iteration in mind—allowing for fast testing and adjustment of timings, transitions, and input responsiveness throughout development.
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Built comprehensive logic within the Animation Blueprint to dynamically update character state variables every frame, including velocity, acceleration, movement direction, and airborne states.
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Established clear checks within the animation blueprint to determine the player's state, including whether the character is airborne, falling, flying, blocking, or able to double jump, enabling precise control and smooth animation blending.
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Utilized Blueprint logic for initialization, ensuring efficient validation and references to character and character movement components, to safeguard against runtime errors and simplify debugging.
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Included detailed debug functionalities, such as print strings for failed character casts, facilitating rapid troubleshooting during development.
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Crafted precise animation blend times and conditions to balance snappy, responsive controls with fluid, natural movement aesthetics.
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Integrated layered animations using cached poses and control rigs for seamless blending of upper-body and lower-body movements, allowing precise control and realistic animation interactions, especially beneficial for combining different animation montages.
Crafting Combat (Player)
I set up different logic to run as anim notifies and anim notify states or windows inside animation montages. This allowed me to adapt more effectively with the pace of the game and iterate quickly.
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Integrated a comprehensive weapon collision notify system, customizable directly from animation montages to specify damage values, damage types, enemy responses, invincibility penetration, blocking, parrying, and interruption capabilities, as well as camera shakes and force feedback for better impact feedback.
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Established rotational adjustments at the start of each attack montage, facilitating immediate and smooth player orientation towards targets, enhanced by soft targeting to fully align the player with enemies during combat.
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Included customizable notify states for dodging and parrying, enabling fluid, interruption-based gameplay for increased combat responsiveness.
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Developed attack buffer systems within montages to smoothly chain combos via primary and secondary attack inputs, improving input responsiveness and combo fluidity.
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Utilized additional animation notifies to dynamically control camera boom length, offset for cinematic close-ups, gravity adjustments for airborne combat, and time dilation for impactful slow-motion effects.
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Implemented consistent animation reset states across montages to reliably reset player status and combo sequences, maintaining clarity and predictability in combat interactions.
Traversal: Wall Running
Designed and implemented an advanced wall-running traversal system using Unreal Engine's Blueprint scripting, to achieve dynamic and responsive player movement.
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Established comprehensive logic for wall detection using capsule and sphere traces, accurately determining wall proximity, angle, and possibility of wall running, ensuring consistent interactions.
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Implemented detailed wall-running mechanics, dynamically adjusting player gravity, capsule constraints, rotation, camera tilt and offset to deliver a smooth and immersive traversal experience.
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Created intuitive controls and smooth transition logic, allowing seamless entry and exit from wall-running states, including conditions for wall jumps, double jumps, and automatic rotation alignment towards the wall surface.
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Integrated precise control rotation and camera adjustments during wall running, utilizing interpolation for smooth transitions and clear player feedback.
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Developed logic to handle wall-running termination conditions, including ground checks, obstacle detection, and direction checks, ensuring realistic and satisfying gameplay interactions.
Traversal: Grapple
Designed and implemented a dynamic grapple system, providing players with intuitive and responsive traversal across expansive environments.
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Built a modular grapple mechanic using custom Blueprint Components and an efficient enumeration system to manage states clearly.
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Developed logic for dynamically detecting grapple points within the environment through sphere overlap checks, enabling seamless target selection and rapid traversal.
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Implemented detailed grapple-hook projectile logic, including spawning, attachment to the cable component, and accurate physics-based movement toward the grapple target.
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Integrated player character animations through Animation Montages during grapple traversal.
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Ensured smooth transitions between grapple states with detailed logic handling player launch velocities, rotation towards grapple points, and state resets, maintaining fluid gameplay continuity.
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Provided visual feedback through dynamically updating widgets and visibility toggles, clearly communicating grapple state and available targets to the player.
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Implemented precise grapple hook projectile movement logic, updating its position via a timer event, checking the distance to the target, and smoothly interpolating the hook until reaching the grapple target. Included logic to stop the projectile upon reaching its target by invalidating timers, playing corresponding audio feedback, and updating velocity and cable components for seamless visual feedback.
Crafting Combat (Enemies)
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Designed and developed enemy AI systems using Unreal Engine’s behaviour trees, EQS, and Blueprint components, resulting in dynamic and engaging enemy encounters.
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Created a modular AI system using a common parent Blueprint (Enemy Base), enabling rapid creation and iteration of multiple enemy types.
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Implemented advanced enemy behaviours through Behaviour Trees, managing distinct states such as attacking, strafing, and repositioning, ensuring coherent and tactical enemy actions.
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Integrated an Environment Query System (EQS) for enemy positioning behaviour, dynamically moving enemies around the player relative to the camera's direction, so to maintain them always visible.
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Designed distinct melee and ranged enemy types, with ranged enemies leveraging EQS for strategic positioning to encourage player mobility and engagement.
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Enhanced enemy readability by integrating clear visual and audio cues to telegraph attacks, promoting player interaction through parries and well-timed dodges.
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Implemented a token system for enemy attacks, effectively managing difficulty and pacing of enemy engagements. This helped with iteration and balancing.
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Developed a responsive enemy rotation system triggered upon receiving damage, smoothly orienting enemies towards the player for consistent and satisfying reactions.
Designing Rage System
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Designed and implemented the Rage Bar with features closely connected with the combat system. Most of this system is still a WIP and will expand in the coming months.
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The Rage bar controls:
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Healing
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Damage increase
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Special Moves (WIP)
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Finishers (WIP)
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Much more!!!
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