Gustav Lidén
I'm a game developer
specializing in technical design.
projects
Here are some of the projects I've worked on.
Cold west
Cold west is a survival city builder where you try to develop your small western frontier town. With a harsh winter on the horizon, you must stock up on food and materials to have a chance to survive.
Platform: PC
Engine: Unity
A 7-week school project
My roles
Cold west was an ambitious project that was going to need a lot of systems for the basics of the game to work. As the technical designer in the team I took the responsibilities of designing and developing the core systems like the grid- and building mechanics. I also worked on the AI and general programming and design.
Grid & build system
Probably the most important thing in a city builder game is the ability to build things.
The game has a grid where structures of different sizes can be built. Each structure has different sizes and can take up several grid tiles.
The biggest challenge was the ability to place down large buildings that took up several grid tiles. Another challenge was to have roads correct themselves with their neighbors.
I learned a lot from making a grid based building system from scratch and after tackling a few problems I think it turned out really well.
Related scripts
AI
Even if the AI itself doesn't have a direct effect on gameplay, it adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game.
The AI walks around town from building to building. It randomizes clothes and destinations and is affected by changes done to the town layout. The AI uses A* (star) pathfinding to find the best route to its destination and can only walk on roads and inside buildings.
Related scripts
Party? party!
Party? Party! is a local party game with up to four players. Three out of four players will need to work together to stop the fourth drunk player from making a mess and ultimately render the party a failure.
My roles
Platform: PC
Engine: Unreal Engine
A 5-week school project
AI implementation
There's not much of a party without people. Non-playable characters that populated the level was important for the game.
As I still was new to Unreal Engine I decided to work on a fairly simple AI system. This way I would have room to learn and experiment with an unfamiliar engine, pathfinding system and behavior trees.
The AI walked between randomized preset points in the world. An "AI Manager" would tell it if the point already was occupied by another person and try to find a new point to walk to.
Level design
I was also responsible for the level design.
Because it was a three vs one multiplayer game, a lot of balancing and strategies had to be kept in mind and worked around. For example, in some earlier iterations of the game, two players could trap the solo player in a room and therefor not progress.
Designing the level so that the player had to move around more and adding several entrances to rooms eliminated such problems.
Hrafninn
Hrafninn is a single-player 3D puzzle platformer where you play as Munin, one of Odin's ravens. Use your realm-switching ability to find the lost souls of fallen warriors and bring them back to Valhalla.
Platform: PC
Engine: Unreal Engine
A 4-week school project
My roles
AI / boss
The final level of the game introduced a boss that when it sees you, you can't use your abilities.
I and Johan Norr worked on the design and logic of the boss. I learned a lot when it comes to visual-scripting in Unreal Engine during this project.
Level design
I also worked on the level design on the final level. The design and layout of the level was very dependent on the boss and how it behaved. It was important to clearly distinguish what objects the player could hide behind and not.
About me
My name is Gustav Erik Lidén.
I've been studying game design and programming for about four years. Since a kid I've been fascinated and interested in video games, and it's potential as an interactive media.
I love to participate in game jams and work with artificial intelligence. I have many ideas on how to improve AI in video games and make them fit their worlds better.
Thank you for visiting, you can find my contact information below!
C#, C++, python & GML
Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot & Game Maker
GitHub, Perforce, Sourcetree
