Alec Wolf | Something Fishy

Team Size: Solo Duration: 5+ Weeks(Ongoing)
Updated September 2021

A 3D low poly casual game where you run around on islands floating in the sky catching fish, trading with a turtle for bait, and catching more fish.

This project was developed in Unreal Engine 4 using C++ for all elements except for UI, materials, and particles, which used Blueprints. The term game is used loosely for this project, as it’s mostly an environment for me to experiment with AI and procedural generation techniques that interest me with a vague game loop.

My Work

Flocking Behavior

Flock – An actor that works as a management container for the boids in the world, creating boids and managing shared information including behavior weights and movement limits.

Boid – An actor inside the flock, with the three basic steering behaviors described by Craig Reynolds as well as five additional steering behaviors.

Separation – Steer to avoid crowding local flock mates.

Alignment – Steer toward the average heading of local flock mates.

Cohesion – Steer to move toward the average position of local flock mates.

Target – Steer toward closest target, if in perception range.

AvoidObstacle – Steer away from local obstacles.

AvoidPlayer – Steer away from player, if in observable range.

Bounds – Steer away from area bounds.

Centralize – Steer toward center of area.

CellGrid – Simple container to optimize neighbor calculation by storing boids in a grid and only comparing to calculate neighbors with boids in adjacent cells.

Bait Targets

BaitManager – An actor managing information and spawning pertaining to bait in the game world.

Bait – A simple actor spawned by BaitManager which acts as a target for boids. Emits simple GPU particles to represent scent and bite particles. Shrinks after each bite until value reaches zero, destroying actor.

Custom Player Pawn

PlayerPawn – A custom pawn actor controlling the player’s camera, capsule collision mesh, HUD, and line trace for interaction.

PawnMovementComponent – Custom movement component, processing player input for pawn movement.

World Layout

Designed the base layout of the test island with prop positioning and lighting.

Art Assets

Created the bait model, as well as all of the UI assets and sign art.

UI

Created all UI, including value tracking and animation.

Procedural Island Mesh Prototype (not currently in build)

Prototype for procedural algorithm to generate island meshes to be used in place of the current flat box for variation and platforming. Created with THREE.js library for WebGL.

Try Here

Additional Model Sources

Acorn Bringer ‐ https://www.acornbringer.com/

Pulsar Bytes ‐ https://www.pulsarbytes.com/

Just Create ‐ https://www.artstation.com/olehlila

Project Nature ‐ https://www.artstation.com/nilsarenz