Storm Sailors

Storm Sailors is my first project during my time in the BTS. For the first time ever, we joined forces with the art class (us being the programmers/designers). The game is a single-player side-scroller arcade shooter. It takes you aboard the Tempesta, which can shoot cannon balls as far as the eye can see, and it is loaded with an ultimate attack that will devastate everyone in your path. It offers the player a broad selection of Power-Ups to destroy your enemies.

You will be facing many challenges in these skies. There will be pirates who will attack you from different directions. These can range from Bombers that will try to take you down with them to the Cruiser, who will be flying around and shooting you... but wait, let's not forget the Cruiser's bigger and meaner brother, the Heavy Cruiser. This bad boy will bring a nice challenge to the player since it's equipped with extra shielding that will make it harder to be taken down.

But we are not done yet; There will be distinct bosses waiting to take their turn to take you down. This game aims to make it both challenging and fun for the player.

My Role

During this project, my main focus was on design and audio. I made three tracks for the game; one of them can be heard on the trailer. I spent most of my time during this project testing the game and documenting all my ideas in the GDD, as well as coordinating with the lead programmer and the artist to make sure we were meeting schedule. I even got to do some visual effects to add up a lighting effect for the ultimate attack, as well as other effects included on the trailer.

You can take a look at the GDD down below

Check the GDD

Challenges

My main challenge during this project was my programming experience and that it was my first time using blueprints. I was not very confident with Unreal's Blueprint System which led me to spend a lot of hours reading documentation and researching online.

Learning Outcomes

Although I did not participate in the main scripting of the game, I took the lead on fixing bugs and testing the game. Which helps me a lot to understand Unreal's Blueprint System. It also reinforced my confidence when working with someone else's code.