J1N Games

Metalocalypse

Metalocalypse: Dethgame is an unreleased game for Konami and Cartoon Network.  This game revolves around the Cartoon Network “adult swim” IP “Metalocalypse” and is Developed by Frozen Codebase LLC.  I worked on this game for 9 months until being laid off.  The game was to be for Xbox 360 Live Arcade and the Playstation 3 Network.

This game was developed with the Vicious Engine.

My main responsibilities were:
-Enemy AI code
-Cinematics Scripting
-Gameplay Systems (Finishing Moves/Objects/Combat Systems)
-Music Mini Game Code (Guitar Hero Clone)
-Engine Code
-Design (Combat/Music Mini Game/Finishers/Enemy AI)
-System Code Xbox360 / PS3 (checkpoint saving, PS3 load/build,  Guitar Controls interface with Engine)

The game itself has two main parts, one is a Brawler where you take control of one of the “roadie” members of Dethklok the band in Metalocalypse, a “Klokateer”.  The other mode is where you play as the band Dethklok from Metalocalypse in a Music Mini Game much like Guitar Hero.

The Brawler Part:
My main responsibility on this part was the Enemy AI.  Here I created a system I called the “Gentlemen’s Rule” system where each enemy approaches the player and initiates combat in a 1 on 1 manner, instead of all enemies swarming the player and killing him instantly.  This way we focus on “Fun AI” instead of “Good AI”.  Each other enemy that is not engaged in combat in a 1 on 1 manner then instead waits in the background for their turn.  This is the “Gentlemen’s Rule” where the player will fight 1 person then move on to the next, without any of the other enemies interfering.  However on higher difficulties, enemies are also coded to take “Cheap Shots” at the player if his back is turned, or sometimes two or more attackers will approach the player.  For obstacle avoidance for my Enemy AI, I had them cast 3 rays out from their center sort of like a fork, so they could see what was ahead of them.  If they saw something in front of them (an obstacle) they would turn left or right (coin flip) and try to navigate around said object.  Enemies also interacted with each other, such as side stepping around each other, circle strafing the player if they are waiting their turn in the “Gentlemen’s Rule”, walking backwards away from the player when he has a weapon, and some different enemy types enemies dislike each other often hitting each other to get the person out of their way.

The other main part of the brawler part of the game was our Finisher System.  We had several combat finishers, environmental finishers, and weapon finishers.  Each was my responsibility, because the enemy and the player had to be in correct states.  The player could do certain cinematic “finisher” kills to the enemy in hand to hand combat, or with an environment object such as a “wall spike” or with a weapon such as a “chainsaw”.   Each of these parts was my responsibility to make sure they worked correctly.

The Music Mini Game:
I shared responsibility on the music mini game with another programmer, and our main goal was to create a good clone of “Guitar Hero” but not an exact copy to avoid copyright infringement.  This is the section of the game were you play as the band “Dethklok” from Metalocalypse the Cartoon Network show.  Here we had to show the brand of the IP the strongest and I was responsible for setting up certain cinematic moments in the music mini game when playing.  I was also responsible for the integration of guitar controllers for our engine.  Interestingly enough simply plugging in a guitar controller into the Xbox returns a simple “Guitar is plugged in” enumeration in c++, however for the PS3 no such guitar enumeration exists, only a product number and id number, which causes problems for things like the “Aerosmith Guitar Hero Controller” because that controller registers as the same product number/id number as a regular dualshock.   So we had to overcome certain issues like that.   I was also responsible for setting up the note-tracks for the music mini-game which was fed into our engine as a csv file.  I also implemented the local multiplayer for the music mini game.

Here is a preview from San Diego Comic Con of the game:
Destructoid: Full Preview of Metalocalypse!

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