Matthew M Langer
  Game and Level Designer
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  • Professional Work
    • The Callisto Protocol
    • Days Gone - Main Game
    • Days Gone - Dead Don't Ride DLC
    • UntitledArenaGame
  • Older Work
    • Solo Projects >
      • Face-Off at the Frozen Throne
      • Spaceport Defense
      • Crystal Mines: Thesis Artifact
      • Phantasmagoria: Gears of War Level
    • Team Projects >
      • From The Ashes
      • Identity
      • Skyscrappers
      • Ethereality
    • Scripting >
      • Blueprint Scripting: A.I. Instructor in From The Ashes
      • Entity Scripting: Boss Battle in Crystal Mines
      • Entity Scripting: Custom Gibs in Crystal Mines
      • Entity Scripting: Melee and Ranged Combat in Crystal Mines
      • Kismet Scripting: Contextual Interaction in Phantasmagoria
      • Kismet Scripting: Stun Gun in Phantasmagoria
      • Lua Scripting: Bat A.I. in Ethereality
  • Resume

Kismet Scripting: Stun Gun 

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Design Goal: Remove the player's ability to eliminate enemies through combat and replace it with a weapon that can only give the player a moment's reprieve by temporarily stunning enemies.
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Description: For my psychological horror level, "Phantasmagoria", I wanted to ensure that the mechanics of the level were in harmony with the desired player experience.  Therefore, I set out to create a stun gun that would give players enough power to win the level, but not enough to feel confident in enemy encounters.
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Custom Event that causes any given enemies to replace taking damage with a stun effect.
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Design Challenge: Because the Take Damage event is triggered after the source code reacts to the damage, lethal damage will automatically kill the enemy before I have a chance in Kismet to heal it up.  Therefore, any enemies that cannot survive a single shot of the stun gun cannot be paralyzed.  This meant that I had to remove my previous plans of including wretches in my level.  This highlights just one of many practical compromises that had to be made to my initial vision while implementing it.