The mashers were developed as a prefab actor incorporating the mashers themselves, the glyphs on the ground, post process volumes and light cones, as well as various pain volumes and blocking volumes to deal damage and provide collision geometry. Seen above, the prefab I created also incorporated a black-box kismet subsequence capable of easily controlling all the masher’s basic functions.
This screenshot shows part of the logic that controls the mashers (the interior of the kismet subsequence seen in the previous shot). The logic is heavily gated to ensure the mashers can’t break or do something unexpected.
This is an example of one of the many attack patterns I scripted for this boss fight. I assigned each masher an index number (1-24). By passing a specific index as an integer variable into a switch, I could make specific mashers attack the player. This tech in combination with some simple math allowed me to quickly create much more elaborate and natural attacks.
This block of kismet plays randomly selected VO lines if the player shoots Zeta Prime’s bubble shield. The logic is gated so these lines don’t stomp on other gameplay critical dialog. It also filters the lines based on which character the player has selected.
This block of kismet controls one of the trains that comes speeding through the arena. Initially, it moves into the arena, stops and transforms open to deploy soldiers into the space before leaving. After that, the train speeds through in random intervals, obliterating any unfortunate Transformers that step in it’s path.