2025
PC - Unreal Engine 5
TRONK!
Out maneuver and plan your ricochet shots in order to stay alive for as long as possible to beat your highscore!
Role: Sole Developer
About The Project
TRONK! is a Wii Play - Tanks! inspired game that adds to the original gameplay with a new theme and faster paced game mechanics.
This project was developed for the IGB400 unit for the Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments at QUT.
Summary of work and contributions
Developed AI behaviour trees for enemy tanks
Designed and developed core gameplay mechanics
Created models and textures
Designed and iterated UI components
Conducted playtesting
Team
Zan Hazlan - Programmer, Designer
Project Outcomes
This project was a new experience for me as it was the first time for me to develop a game solo using Unreal Engine 5.
The goal of the project was to fill in a gap in my current portfolio and skillset. The idea for the project came about to give me more experience working in Unreal as well as having a go at developing more complex AI.
Through this project I was able to gain knowledge on developing AI behaviour trees, lighting, materials and even 3d Modelling.
Gameplay Video
My Process
Early Development
Early development started with brainstorming ideas on what to develop to fill in a gap in my portfolio. Some areas I wanted to improve on was AI development and using Unreal engine. While my capstone project was already Unreal Engine I felt my experience with the engine was insufficient as I was confined to my own role in the team. With a solo project, I could get experience with more aspects of Unreal engine. One aspect was the AI behaviour trees as my capstone project didn't utilise them.
In the end, I had chosen to make a Wii Play! - Tanks! inspired game that had a TRON inspired theme. I figured the AI of basic enemy tanks would be simple to develop, they move, track the player and shoot. I chose the theme as I believed it was simple enough for a programmer such as me to be able to make the game look polished and responsive.
AI development
Early in development, I had focused most of my time working on the AI for the tanks. I followed guides online on how to utilise the EQS system within behaviour trees to create the navigation for the enemy tanks. The initial implementation of this was simple. If the player is out of range, the enemy will move towards the player. Once in range, it will pick from a few nodes placed around the player to navigate to and start firing. While this was an acceptable version of the enemy AI, I found that it had its flaws once I had completed the project. If the player didnt move, the enemy's wouldn't.
Further Development
Further development actually had less of a focus on AI development. Since the game had to be playable, I had to spend time developing the core systems for the game. This included the respawn mechanics for the players and enemies, score tracking and timer. As I had never been tasked with some of these features for my capstone project, I was a little unfamiliar with developing them. Luckily, I found that these were all simple things to develop.
Another aspect of the game I had been working on at this point was the UI. I had created many iterations of the UI to get one that I was happy with. I wanted it to feel loud while keeping some of the techno vibe that TRONK! has.
It was around this time I had experimented with a dash mechanic as I wanted the game to be more fast paced compared to the games it takes inspiration from. However, during playtests, many players had difficulty controlling it and it ended up being a worse experience for them. So I brainstormed more ways to make the gameplay more engaging. I came up with the idea to have the player be capable of a beam attack as the game relied on ricochet shots as one of its core principles.
Late Development and Reflection
During late development, my time was spent mostly on the post processing, main menu and the level design. The final polish of the game as I wanted to demonstrate my skills in adding juice to the game. Learning about how to do post processing in Unreal Engine helped to make TRONK! look like an arcade screen and allowed me to make visual affects when players take damage.
For the main menu, a playtesters suggested I make it an arcade since the game is partially inspired by arcade games. I thought this was a great idea and learned how to do basic 3d modelling in blender to create the arcade booths seen on the main menu. I also used this skill to make the shapes used in the main level.
Overall, I believe creating TRONK! was a good introduction to how to develop games in Unreal Engine as I was able to have a glimps of all aspects of development.
