n-Space

Platform: iOS, Android, Amazon Devices

Engine/Framework: Unity4

WWE2K Mobile ended up as the #2 Premium App on the iOS Store, with a rating of 4/5 stars on iOS and Android alike, with over 6,000 reviews and counting!

I was responsible for the core gameplay of WWE2K, which included controls, AI logic, and character tuning of stats/animations. I also worked on the entrances and cut-scenes of the game.

AI Logic

I made (ugly!)  prototypes of what the logic of our AI would look like using tools like Visio.

Then, I made something in photoshop to prototype what the tool for our AI system could look like. It ended up looking pretty close to the final thing. Here’s an example of the logic for an AI to Irish-Whip a player.

Our AI trees became many actions that looked like these, with different priorities and weights depending on what kind of superstar/wrestler was. If it was a submission-expert like Daniel Bryan, he would excel at pulling off different submission moves and wanting to use those a bit more frequently than the lumbering giants like the Undertaker, who preferred slapping around opponents with his giant, heavy strikes.

Different superstars had different stats as well to sync with their AI actions. Speedsters would more frequently run to the ropes and jump off of turnbuckles when the opportunity would present itself, and grapplers would wait for their chance to counter an attack, etc

Game Bones / IK System

Turns out people come in different sizes, so all animations won’t necessarily look great on the bigger or smaller guys in our game. We tackled this issue by using an IK system, but even then, updating the IK bones on each wrestler would be a huge time sink.

With no tech artist on the team, I ended up scripting a tool that would let me modify IK points on all of the wrestlers/superstars in our game at the same time (about 20), instead of having to pop open every prefab and adjust accordingly. It generally did these things:

  • Add a transform point on each wrestler (the red ball, dubbed a Game-Bone) with a unique name (R Knee, Forehead, etc), and transform point
  • Remove a point if we don’t want it anymore
  • Apply any new game-bones to all superstars/wrestlers in the game
  • Generally, scaling handled placing each bone in the proper spot. For all superstars, but this also allowed us to go into each superstar and modify the placement of a game-bone if we see cases where it could be modified better
 

Systems Design

Signature/Finishers

Finishers and Signature moves are the highlights of WWE, so we really wanted to show them off with gesture-based gameplay. The general idea is that the player builds up meter, then gets a prompt of a certain gesture to trigger the Signature/Finisher.

Outside of the meter, different superstars have different conditions to get the Signature/Finisher prompt to appear. Some superstars start when the opponent is laid out on the ground, others when the opponent is standing. There's other conditions in other WWE games, but we wanted to simplify it to just those two. We made sure this was easy to do, letting the player drag the opponent back up, or grapple moves that always result in a knockdown if successful.

    Note: the move-name graphic is from the video.

    When a Signature/Finisher is triggered, we snap to a cinematic camera for a better view. The transition was originally pretty harsh, so we added flashes of light to wipe the screen that look like cell phone flashes. Now that we're set up with a better angle, we wanted to keep players engaged with the Signature/Finisher - so we set up the equivalent of a mobile button masher with a swipe-masher. Each move has the swipe in a different direction, generally in the direction that the character's kinetic force is going to go in. If the player gets enough swipes in that fills up the arrow, then the UI lights on fire and a sweet guitar rift plays, letting you know that you got maximum power out of the move (no joke).

    The IK System came in handy here, lining up the animations for every character-match-up. 

    Other gameplay things:

    • Submission system
    • Grapple system
    • Strikes / power move systems
    • Ground-state systems
    • Taunts with Signature/Finisher system
    • Tutorials

    CUT-SCENES

    Using a timeline-tool that could modify gameobjects, I  worked on the cut-scenes/entrances, doing things like camera-work and placing where and when our FX/object spawning/camera cuts would go off. This also includes the cinematic cameras in Signatures & Finishers. 

    Here's JOOOOOHN CEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENA