Tech Art | Emily Hogue

Whispers from the Treetops

Unreal Engine Blueprint Programming

Game Mechanics

Whispers from the Treetops is a 2D platformer solo project. Many of the game mechanics focus on smooth and accurate movements. Along with a run and jump, you can glide and wall jump.

Below are some of the character blueprints used in the game that have been constantly refined and tweaked for optimal game feel.

Jump and Glide

The jump contains a majority of the player character's mechanics.

The basic jump.

The wall jump launches the character in the opposite direction of the wall.

Pressing space after jumping allows you to glide by lowering the gravity.

Releasing space stops you from gliding.

Tapping space lets you do short hops rather than a longer jump.

Stamina

Gliding is how the player can quickly move horizontally, but to prevent it being over powered, there is a stamina limit. Stamina is drained while gliding and instantly recovered when landing.

Previously, the stamina would trickle back, but this was found to slow down gameplay. It forced you to wait instead of being able to smoothly jump from platform to platform, so it was cut.

Wall Slide

The wall slide alongside the wall jump allows you to quickly move vertically and position yourself better for a glide.

This mechanic works by creating a vector in front of the player that detects if you are touching a wall while falling. If you are, your velocity is lowered, slowing your descent and giving you the opportunity to wall jump.

See more work in the Projects tab

Dialogue Effects

Using materials, rich text boxes, and data tables, I created some custom dialogue effects for the Kilonova. This includes a purple font for when the Kilonova is refering to Sol (top left), and a more intense, shaking effect to add more dramatic effect (top right).

To the right is an example of one of the materials I created for the shaking text effect. I created 3 variations with different values and applied each to a different letter to give the illusion of randomness.