Product Release - Game Maker v10

The Sandbox - May 2024

As part of the Product Team as a Gameplay Product Owner, I designed and oversaw production of new key features for our game engine. This also involved meeting and assessing needs from different stakeholders, creators and community, designing the specs in coordination with the tech department, and supervising implementation. Leading a team of 15 people, we introduced several new features with immediate reception by creators.

Gameplay

With a now clearer view of the product and after my first succesful release, v10 focused on multiplayer aspects that could be improved or made more accesible. The game changer of this release was the introduction of the new Spawn Point and Team system, while we also worked on ranged behaviours with the introduction of the Raycast and Projectile. We also developed terrain spawning in real time.

Spawn Point

The Spawn Point is our first approach as we try to accomplish proper matchmaking. It allows, for the first time, to set up several spawn areas for players, and assign teams accordingly. This feature required the creation of a new Team system which allows sets of specific players to receive certain messages.

The Spawn Point can also customize the maximum amount of players per spawn location and set up custom equipment to, for example, make a blue team play against a red one.

Raycast and Projectile

We also focused on creating gameplay affecting range and precision. For this purpose we designed both the Projectile and the Raycast. We had to polish player input and timing, while working on the feel of the projected object and the raycast feedback respectively. One big challenge that we faced with the Projectile was accomodating physics-based objects on an engine that doesn’t normally update collisions in real time. We had to design specific tech solutions to make the object’s movement predicted without affecting performance.

Terrain updates in real time

The Gameplay team worked on a redesign and revamp of already existing systems inside the engine that could update the terrain in real time. The challenge was introducing terrain replication so that these updates could work in multiplayer experiences, as this was the main focus of the release. We introduced a way to remove and add blocks through messages in the server.

Consumables

We also introduced Consumables, a collectable mechanism that sends messages when an item is consumed through the inventory. It can be combined with our Buff and Debuff System to create potions, health aids and other in-game interactable items.