I created Mars Maze as my final project for a game programming class. Mars Maze was built up from my desire to make a puzzle game using random generation. I was also interested in doing a sci-fi game. These two ideas came together in the form of a first-person maze game where the player attempts to navigate a mars colony controlled by a hostile, haywire construction AI.

It took some time to determine what method I wanted to use for random generation. I went through many iterations in my notebook and two in actual code. I settled on randomly generating a layout for a maze and spawning the structure in world as the player starts the game. I designed with the idea of having different room types that would make up the structure. Each type of room will introduce a new feature into the maze. Currently, there are normal rooms, turret rooms, and a control room. The intention was to experiment by adding new types of rooms into the construction that will affect how players can navigate the maze. This is one area where the game could be easily expanded. Other areas that need expansion would be AI behavior and variety, which I have more experience with now thanks to other projects. Another gameplay element that would increase the fun of my game would be item interaction to build upon puzzle elements. Overall, for the scope of this project I am proud with the product and I have a solid framework to build upon the game.

This was my first time using UE4 (4.18) for a larger project and my introduction to many of the engine's features. I started the project in C++ but switched over to blueprints for faster prototyping given the little timeframe that we had. I really enjoyed my first foray into visual scripting and was surprised at how robust blueprints were. I think I would still like to go back and rewrite some systems in C++ to get more experience with that side. Additionally, each tool from the UE4 set that I used came with its own learning curve. Through the project, I gained familiarity with particles systems, landscapes, audio, UMG, camera animation, the material editor, character movement, and behavior trees. In the end, I was left with a positive impression of UE4 workflow and capabilities and am looking forward to both improving this project and working on others using this engine.

• Art Asset Attribution
  • Eric Matyas (https://soundimage.org/)
  • Sound Effects and Turret Texture
  • Zander Noriega (https://opengameart.org/users/zander-noriega)
  • Music
  • More https://opengameart.org sound effects