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Project BBEG Blog #3: Transitioning to Unreal Engine 5 and Scream Jam
In late September, Odd Gryphon Entertainment collectively decided to transition BBEG's development from Unity to Unreal Engine 5. The...
Dan Hartman
Nov 17, 20232 min read


Project BBEG Blog #2: Dungeon Generation refinement & Artifacts system implementation challenges
We're getting closer and closer to a playable prototype of Project BBEG. Today I'll be sharing some progress made on dungeon generation...
Dan Hartman
May 18, 20233 min read


Project BBEG Blog #1: Prototyping player mechanics & applying lessons learned to a new project
Recently, the Planetary Planter team and I got back together to start work on a new game, a roguelite with the working title BBEG (Big...
Dan Hartman
Apr 7, 20233 min read


Behavior Trees and Arkham Guard AI
For my final project in my Advanced AI class, I decided to recreate my own version of the Batman Arkham games guard AI utilizing behavior...
Dan Hartman
May 5, 20222 min read


Planetary Planter Devblog #4 - Postmortem
Planetary Planter is a casual third person farming and exploration game where the player can explore a peaceful alien world, farm...
Dan Hartman
May 4, 20222 min read


Planetary Planter Dev Blog #3: Pivoting
We're down to the last full sprint of development on Planetary Planter. Systems are complete, the last bits of art, animation and sound...
Dan Hartman
Apr 23, 20223 min read


Learning Unreal Engine 4: Active Time Battle System
I've learned a lot of things during my time at Champlain. Unfortunately, Unreal Engine 4 was not one of them, despite how prevalent it is...
Dan Hartman
Apr 11, 20222 min read


Using Influence Maps for an escort AI
The primary usage of influence maps is to provide AI characters with information about their surroundings. For this implementation of...
Dan Hartman
Apr 10, 20221 min read


Experimenting with Parkour mechanics in Unity 3D
There comes a point in time with every feature that I need to stop working on it and move on to other things - one such feature recently...
Dan Hartman
Mar 10, 20223 min read
Planetary Planter Devblog #2: How do we keep the player's attention?
Planetary Planter is my college capstone game, where I am in charge of gameplay programming. It is an exploration focused farming game...
Dan Hartman
Mar 8, 20222 min read


Flow Field pathfinding
To implement flow field pathfinding into my current AI framework, I started fresh in a new scene and made a class called FlowFieldGrid....
Dan Hartman
Mar 6, 20222 min read


Planetary Planter Devlog #1: Movement
As gameplay programmer on Planetary Planter, a 3D exploration and farming game, the movement system was entrusted to me. Since we've been...
Dan Hartman
Feb 27, 20222 min read


2D Flocking with Obstacle Avoidance
I created a flocking algorithm and incorporated my previous obstacle avoidance code into it as a type of steering. I had to modify how my...
Dan Hartman
Feb 20, 20221 min read


Reverse Engineering "The World Ends With You" Touch Controls
A few months ago I played The World Ends With You (I'll be referring it as TWEWY) out of a recommendation from a friend. Its one of the...
Dan Hartman
Feb 12, 20223 min read
2D Obstacle Avoidance
The solution I decided to go with was taking the contact normal of the center ray's collision with the obstacle and rotate in the general...
Dan Hartman
Feb 3, 20221 min read
Pathfinding in 2D Platformers
Pathfinding in 2D platformers, or even platformers in general, is oftentimes very basic. Many 2D platformer enemies that move don’t even...
Dan Hartman
Dec 15, 20203 min read
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