For DNA, my main role was to fill the game world with monsters the player character would confront; more specifically, I was a gameplay programmer and technical designer focusing on enemy behaviors and our main “player corruption ability” mechanic. To do this, I spearheaded designing a component-based system with my team, implementing different properties we could attach to game objects to change their mechanics and add behaviors; Godot’s node tree structure complimented this framework naturally. 

For example, the “health” component — one of the main components I was responsible for — handled an object’s current health points, invulnerability frames, and its living/death state. I made heavy usage of Godot’s signals to allow other objects to “listen” to changes in HP or its living state; these were used to update the player’s HUD, create VFX when taking damage or healing, handle certain enemy interactions, and check when the player dies, to name a few examples.

Another unique component I created was something subtle in gameplay, but important mechanically; I created a “shadow” component. Because DNA is a two-dimensional game, but required the illusion of depth and distance from the ground for some behaviors, I made a component that would offset the object’s sprite vertically and draw an elliptical shadow underneath it that changed based on distance from the ground. Its size, transparency, color, and offset can be changed and updated in-editor since I employed Godot’s incredibly handy “@tool” to see changes in real time. The player character and enemies now visibly “jump” and “fly” with clear signifiers.