Warden’s Ascent

Gameplay Programmer

Project: Warden’s Ascent

Dauntless Picture

Role Overview

Joined the programming team during the early stages of development, contributing to the technical design and implementation of core gameplay and progression systems.

My responsibilities centered around campaign progression architecture, traversal mechanics, combat extensibility using Gameplay Ability System (GAS), and backend synchronization systems. The role required cross-disciplinary collaboration with design, backend, and production teams to ensure gameplay systems were modular, scalable, and data-driven.

Campaign Progression Systems

Owned and implemented several systems responsible for tracking player progression throughout the single-player campaign.

Responsibilities

Designed data structures to represent campaign states and progression checkpoints
Implemented persistent progression tracking across sessions
Built logic to handle branching campaign level ordering
Integrated reward distribution logic based on campaign completion state
Ensured synchronization with backend systems when campaign parameters changed

Technical Focus

Clean separation between progression logic and presentation
Save-state integrity and validation
Backend-aware architecture to avoid desync between server-configured campaign order and client state
Extensible data-driven configuration to allow designers to modify campaign flows without requiring code changes

This system became foundational for how player state and reward logic were managed across the project.

Traversal System — Climbing Mechanic

Designed and implemented a climbing system for playable characters.

System Goals

Enable vertical exploration
Allow designers to define climbable surfaces flexibly
Maintain consistency with character movement systems
Integrate smoothly with animation and collision systems

Technical Implementation

Extended Unreal’s character movement framework
Implemented custom movement states
Created configurable parameters for designers (speed, stamina cost, traversal limits)
Integrated animation state transitions with gameplay state

The system was designed to be modular, enabling level designers to construct traversal-heavy environments without requiring engineering intervention.

Combat Extensibility — Gameplay Ability System (GAS)

Implemented a combat customization system leveraging Unreal Engine’s Gameplay Ability System.

Objectives

Allow designers to modify combat behavior for both Campaign and PvP modes
Support scalable addition of abilities and effects
Ensure deterministic execution across networked sessions

Contributions

Implemented custom abilities and gameplay effects
Extended attribute handling logic
Structured ability activation rules for multiple game modes
Created configuration layers to differentiate Campaign vs PvP balancing

This system allowed combat tuning without deep code changes and provided a flexible foundation for content iteration.