Nadir W

Santa Siege - 2022

Nadir Whitelaw -

In the game, You play as Santa piloting a helicopter shaped like an angry reindeer. Your mission is to blow up the barracks to reclaim your presents which were confiscated by the army, And deliver them to the village to save christmas.

Inspired by games such as Desert Strike and Mario - We created funny and cute top-down shooter in 2 weeks for christmas.

You can play the game here: https://unfitparent.itch.io/santa-siege

Below are some breakdowns on the work I did for the Jam, The majority of the game was developed by myself, as the other team members were inexperienced, However, Credits for the trooper character model go to https://www.artstation.com/andykerrart

Note. Some asset packs and game rips were used, As this is a free game, It does not violate any copyright.

(VFX) Effects Showcase - Created the 'Star Explosion' effect in Niagara referencing Mario Oddesey. You can also see the weapons system where the player can fire a missile at Toad.

(VFX) Helicopter FX - Edited an asset pack (Splashbursts) so that the impact angle could be controlled, As well as some visual adjustments (Color/Sprite shape etc) so it looks like a Christmas Tree impact explosion. This is connected to the Helicopter weapons system, so the impact is aligned to the direction of the missile.

(Tool) Twinkle Mesh - Lets designers select a mesh and will apply a twinkling effect to it by distributing particles over its surface

(Tool) Snow Generator - Using Geometry scripting, Designers can select a mesh and simulate snow accumulation on its surface.

(Environment) Ice World landscape - Built the landscape materials (Snow, IceWall and Ice Lake), as well as a custom blending function. Also created custom materials for Rocks/Ice Cubes/Crystals, Roads.

(Animation) The character artist provided a skinned mesh with a custom skeleton. To get it running in the game, I did the following:

  • Retargeted the AccuRIG skeleton to the Unreal Skeleton
  • Created Anim Montages and Blendspaces from the animations provided in the Animation Start Pack
  • Created the Character class which was driven by the AI controller
  • Created AnimBP, Behaviour Tree and added gameplay events into the Troop Blueprint such as setting faction color, weapons etc.

Overall, I learnt a lot about Character Animation in Unreal, And configured the character, animation blueprints and added AI/gameplay systems to the project.