Shrimp Fried Rice
Prove cannibalism isn’t so bad after all by cooking your siblings to create fabulous delicacies! Break the limit and set high scores, and unlock new cosmetics in Shrimp Fried Rice!
Roles: Creative Director - Lead Programmer
Timeframe: Ongoing since August 2024 - Currently in Pre-Alpha
Team Size: 7 people
Scope: Mobile game with an infinite game mode, and cosmetic items
Controlling the wok.
To support our branching narrative, I employed an Event System centered around “dependencies”, mimicking a Job System in Game Engines. Dependencies can be an affiliation levels to people or political parties, a certain day, a certain song being performed, or a prior event. An event needs a dependency of ‘0’ to be considered possible.
I made it a point to support our narrative designers by making it easier to input Dialogue.
To achieve this, I made Dialogue a Struct to allow the use Data Tables - meaning we can input Dialogue into one place and easily search through using Unique Name IDs.
In total, there are 4 Sets driving the system - Possible Set, Locked Set, Dead Set and Archive Set.
The possible set stores all events with no dependencies, meaning it’s ready to go.
The locked set stores all events with existing dependencies, meaning it’s waiting.
The dead set are killed off events - typically choice driven dialogue or Quest Line heads
The archive set is our Data Table of all possible dialogue in the game.
Focus on using events in code.
With the above premises - I was able to create a system that focus around Locking, Unlocked, and Killing Events.
Leading the project.
Although most my time was spent programming, we need a team leader. It was decided I would lead due to prior experience.
Immediately there were issues - I was spread too thin with classes. So we split the project hierarchy to have Leads which created tasks and tracked progress, while reporting to me their overall status.
I learned a lot about trusting others to have more control.