Cervus Blade

April 2022 - July 2023

Role: Combat Designer, Engineer

Cervus Blade is a PC third-person "Soulslike" action game developed in Unreal Engine 4 as a thesis project at USC. Cervus Blade is created by a core team of 7 and is showcased at the 2023 USC Game Expo. Players will play as a swordswoman, Zara, exploring and cleansing a corrupted deer-worshipping village. We successfully released the game on Steam, receiving 20,000+ downloads and 88% positive reviews.

Steam page

Summary:

Collaborated with other designers to design, implement, and iterate on the combat system under a shared creative vision, developing a consistent and immersive combat experience.

Designed and implemented 5+ diverse enemies using Unreal Engine's behavior tree, blueprint controller, and animation state machine to support the combat system by incentivizing unique actions from players.

Conceptualized and created the summon system with 5 unique upgrades throughout the game and integrated it into the combat system to introduce a sense of progression in combat.

Enhanced the combat experience and elevated the overall quality of combat interactions by implementing and tuning player animation state machine, behavior trees, camera effects, animation priorities, and visual effects.

Prototyped enemy behaviors, mechanics, and player attacks to grasp a clearer vision of design ideas and aid iteration.

Built 10+ tools and features including enemy spawner, interactive objects, save/load system, custom behavior tree tasks, localization, and a debugger to foster an efficient design iteration and implementation process.

Designing Enemies

Designed and created 5 enemy types including their behavior trees, animation state machine, blueprints, and controllers.
- Designed the group behavior of melee enemies with a dynamic strafe state to allow them to react to environments and each other.
- Designed the mage enemy to encourage good positioning from players through easily avoidable attacks that temporarily limit their spaces.
- Designed enemies to use a line-of-sight ability for more realistic behaviors.
- Designed a counter mechanic for elite enemies (applied to some other enemies) to increase the challenge and push players for a change of pace.
Collaborated with the other designer to create the boss with specific design goals.
- Created the boss in two phases with different aggressiveness to also disrupt the pace of combat.

Melee Group Behavior

Mage Behavior

Boss Behavior

Melee Group Behavior

1/5

Enemy Behavior Showcase

Designing Summon System

Designed and built the summon system to deliver a unique feature that is closely connected with the combat system.
Identified issues based on playtest data and iterated on the summon system to solve these issues (simplified control and more rewards).
Designed and created various types of summon upgrades and incorporated them into the game's progression.
- Light attacks summon regular melee villagers
- Counterattacks summon armed villagers specialized in pierce attacks
- Heavy attacks and the last attack of the light attack combo summon the Elite enemy with a massive horizontal sweep
- Block summons a shield to reduce stamina lost on blocking hits and increase the stun damage dealt to the attacker on a perfect block.
Designed summon activation period (Bloodthirst State) with a clear vision that distinguishes itself from regular combat and disrupts the pace of combat to allow for a window of pure aggression.
Built and distinguished the Bloodthirst State by modifying players' attack and hit reaction priorities, post-processing, and sword trails.

Summon Villagers from Light Attacks

Summon Armed Villagers from Counterattacks

Summon New Weapon Through The Mage's Upgrade

Summon Villagers from Light Attacks

1/4

Individual Summon Showcase

Bloodthirst State Showcase

Combat Design Iterations

Worked closely with two other designers to nail down the experience goal and pace of the game and create the combat system that consists of a light attack combo, charged attack, parry, summon ability, and dodge roll.
- We want players to feel agile, take initiative, and maintain aggressive in fast-paced combat.
Identified root problems in the combat system and iterated on the combat system to solve them.
- mismatched pace between players and enemies makes them want to spam light attacks only.
- complex summon system lacks rewards and requires simplification.
- successful parry requires extreme mastery of timing the attacks, discouraging players from using it.
Iteration 1:
- Created a stun meter with execution as a reward to incentivize players to use different actions with each dealing a different amount of stun damage.
- Allowed charge attack to transition from any light attack instead of from only the third light attack.
Iteration 2:
- Simplified the summon system to be more connected to the rest of combat: incorporated it into the execution and changed it from an active ability to a passive ability
- Split parry into quick parry and charged parry to give players choices in determining their pace of combat.
Iteration 3:
- Replaced charge attack with heavy attack as charge attack is simply too slow for the pace of our combat system.
- Replaced parry actions to block and perfect block that deals stun damage to give players a more consistent defensive ability and reduce scope.
- Implemented perfect dodge and a follow-up counterattack as the reward for successful perfect dodges.
- Separated summon activation from executions and created an individual gauge to activate the summon ability to give players more control over this system. (Details about the summon system below)

Initial Combat System

Initial Combat Test

Initial Charge Attack

Initial Parry

Initial Combat Test

1/3

Summon System Iteration

Initial Summon Ability

Updated Summon Ability

Initial Summon Ability

1/2

Third Iteration

Third Iteration: Blocking

Third Iteration: Counterattack

Third Iteration: Summon Ability

Third Iteration: Blocking

1/3

Final Combat System Showcase

Enhancing Combat Experience

Adjusted the character's 3Cs and animation transition times and utilized camera effects, sound effects, visual effects, and hit-stops to enhance the "juice" of combat and accurately match the pace of combat.
Implemented corresponding hit reactions and synced animations (executions) to further enhance combat experience through enemies.
Tuned enemies' attack anticipation frames to make their attacks telegraphical.
Implemented visual and sound cues to counterattacks to help players distinguish them from the other regular attacks.
Balanced the game's difficulty by tuning character upgrade curves, enemy damage/health, the number of enemies, and the types of enemies to deliver an engaging and adequately challenging experience.

Character's Charge and Execution

Enemy's Counter Indicator

Adjusting Position and Rotation Offsets for Sync Animation

Character's Charge and Execution

1/3

Work Showcase

Boss Execution

Building Tools and Implementing Features

Built tools such as spawners, a debugger, animation events, and various curves to support level design, enemy placement, and balancing.
Engineered systems and features including save/load system, localization, interactable, checkpoints, bullet objects, and controller support with dynamic UI display.
Set up different logic as anim notifies and anim notify states inside animations to work more effectively with our fast-paced action game.