5-Character Word Game

Description

For a recent software engineering challenge, I needed to recreate a well-known game where a player needs to guess a 5-character word. I decided to improve my attempt and learn how to better manage state in React using nextJS. A new word is chosen every reload and gets a maximum of 5 attempts to guess the word.

Features

  • A new word is selected upon every reload of the page.
  • Single input field which validates whether 5 characters have been entered. Excludes entering less, or more than 5 characters.
  • Submit button is disabled through state, until 5 characters are placed within the input field.
  • History of word attempts are listed above the input field with green, orange and red backgrounds to inform the player that the character is at the correct location in the word (green), the character exists in the word, but is not in the correct location (yellow), or the character does not exist in the word (red).
  • State keeps track of the number of attempts and whether the player has gone over the 5 attempts allowed. In which case they have lost.
  • Entering the correct 5 character word changes state to remove the input and confirms to the player that they have won.

Programming Languages

The game was made using typescript and React within next.js.

Credits

  • Developer: Shaun Guimond

The Last Laugh – 2024 Vancouver Game Jam

Project Summary

As a team of 6, we created a narrative, 2d side-scroller using the Godot game engine. As project lead of our team of beginners, my role was to ensure a feasible project scope based on a very tight deadline, to provide training and guidance when other members were stuck on difficult challenges, and to program the movement and animations of the playable characters and enemies.

Game Description

Welcome to Laugh Angeles. A world where a notorious comedian holds the last laugh. What remains is a desolate landscape of awkward silences and problematic statements.

You’ve taken it upon yourself to BOO! all the rats away. To do so, you will have to collect the tomato-ey sentiments of the despondent crowds and deliver them on stage to Ratt Rofe in a battle of comedic proportions.

Get ready to jump, sling and splat.

Good luck! The city’s happiness depends on your confidence.

Team Members

TeammatesBachelor of Computer Science Students
Shaun (@shaunguimond)Boosting Noobs Since 2024 Leader
Fred (@fsunstrum)Tomato Throwing Clutch Coder
Hedie (@mistysky04)Pixel Perfect Perspective Portraiture 
Helena (@hesoru)Bigger is Better Background Level Designer 
Rachelle (@chellexra)Witty Writer of One Liners
Annie (@ayqya)Git Good Asset Animator

FPS Drone Shooter

Project Summary

The project’s focus was to learn the principal elements of developing a first-person shooter in Unreal Engine 5. It focused on learning how to implement character movement, combat elements, enemy AI, environment design and managing game modes.

The project was aided by a tutorial purchased from GameDev. To gain the most out of the tutorial, I started by doing each step of the tutorial before watching how the problem was solved. This allowed me to find my own solution and then to learn their solution to many challenges.

Project Goals

  • Character Movement
    • Adding character controls and movement.
    • implementing animation blueprints.
    • Implementing animation state machines.
    • Added a flashlight to be used in darker areas.
  • The Drone (Enemy)
    • Implementing patrolling for the drones.
    • Implemented rotation and location blueprints for chasing the player character.
    • Added patrolling.
    • Created drone attack and death.
  • Combat
    • Implemented basic game functions such as:
      • Health
      • Ammo
    • Added automatic, burst and single fire options for the weapon.
  • Environment
    • Created a dark-night city-scape environment.
    • Added lighting to assets to create streetlights.
    • Added fire particles and detritus to elevate the mood of the environment.
  • Game Mode
    • Created states for each element of the player session.
    • Displayed a health bar that increases and decreases as required.
    • Displayed the player character’s current ammo.
    • Display the remaining drones in a level.

Obstacle Assault – Learning Unreal Engine Part 2

This is part two of the Unreal 5.0 C++ Developer: Learn C++ and Make Video Games tutorial on GameDev.

I made the obstacle course my own, using the created C++ blueprint to make moving and rotating obstacles. The entire course goes from the starting island to a secondary island where the goal is to reach the castle at the top.

Reaching the castle allows you to gain a “Win” and restart from the beginning. The simple goal I added on my own is to make it where the player is required to reach the end (castle), without falling from the islands as many consecutive times as possible. Falling from the islands causes the player to lose all win counts and to restart from zero.

Warehouse Wreckage – Learning Unreal Engine Part 1

This is part one of the Unreal 5.0 C++ Developer: Learn C++ and Make Video Games tutorial on GameDev.

For this course, I simply familiarized myself with blueprints, creating assets and using some minor logic to start the player with twenty cannon balls. Once the player runs out of ammo, the level reloads. This was all done in Blueprints to learn some of the basics of programming in a visual format.

Textures were added to the warehouse to make it more interesting, and ray tracing was used to simplify the process.