Hello!

As part of my university course I have been working on a trap and a puzzle to be used in a dungeon crawler style game.

Trap

My initial thought for a trap is something that falls from the ceiling to damage the player, this can then be tailored to suit nearly any kind of map. Anything underground could have rocks and dirt, an ice cave could have falling icicles and a rocky cave could have stalactites.

The first thing for me to consider is how to convey that this trap has been triggered and that something is about to fall on the player, for this I took inspiration from the MMO’s Final Fantasy XIV and Wildstar.

These games both make heavy use of telegraphs as it is extremely important for the player to be aware of the mechanics during difficult encounters, these telegraphs are very visual and show the player exactly which parts of the area will be affected.

I have decided to use this approach and create a circular telegraph to be projected onto the ground as the player triggers the trap, over time this will fill up red and once its filled the rock will reach the ground damaging anything beneath it.

The GIF below shows my work to emulate the telegraph.

Rather than create the effect of the telegraph filling up with a timeline I have instead chosen to use an interp function in the trap blueprint. This will allow me to easily set the speed for tweaking and testing, however I may look at switching to a timeline later on if it proves to be the better option.

The next aspect to think about is the falling boulder, for now I have created a simple rock shape in 3ds max to use. Because of the speed of the falling boulder the player will not be able to see it properly, this means the boulder can be very simple and low poly. I have also added a sound effect and a particle effect for when the boulder hits to give the player some visual feedback that this trap is dangerous. These are currently just stock effects and sounds, but I can look into finding some more unique assets later that may make the trap feel more polished.

Below is a GIF showing the finished trap prototype, all of this can be tweaked and modified easily enough if I find I need to later on.

Puzzle

 The puzzle is fairly straight forward, the player has to activate a number of platforms in the correct order to create a path. The platforms are activated using a bank of switches, with each switch corresponding to a platform. However when ever you activate a platform it will also activate any platform near it, meaning the player will have to plan a solution carefuly.

This puzzle can be scaled up and down by adding and removing the amount of platforms involved, or perhaps even extending the line into a grid of platforms.

My thoughts for introducing the player to this puzzle would involve using single platforms early on to reinforce the idea that these switches will activate platforms.

The Gif below shows the puzzle prototype in action, I have also taken care to lock the switches when any of the platforms are in motion to prevent potential bugs that may occur from too many switches being thrown at once.

Thanks for reading my post! If you have any feedback on ways I can improve these projects then i would love to hear.

Thanks again!