What is this?

A record of the contributions I made to Bubblemancer during Global Game Jam 2025.

Pitch Document

The theme for Global Game Jam 2025 was "Bubble." Each team member created a pitch document for a game idea, and my concept, Bubblemancer, was selected as the project we developed.

My contrubutions

This includes all the elements I implemented or refined to ensure a more cohesive experience.

Minion AI

The objective of the game is to destroy nodes to rescue your trapped fish companions. Players can summon bubble minions, which automatically detect and pathfind toward the nearest node to destroy it. If no nodes are nearby, the minions will follow the player until the level is completed.

Other AI

There are two additional AI-controlled entities: fish friends that follow the player and urchins that attack the bubble minions. Both use the same underlying AI system, differing only in their target behavior. I also included the logic for how the AI determines the closest target to itself.

Coral Spikes

One of the main obstacles for bubble minions is the Coral Spikes scattered throughout the levels. The minion AI does not detect these obstacles, causing them to collide and pop upon contact. However, when a bubble minion pops, it also destroys the coral, clearing paths to new areas at the cost of losing minions.

Player Controller

One of our team members implemented a line trace from the Bubblemancer to the mouse-clicked location to determine line of sight. However, we encountered a bug where the mouse cursor would teleport or disappear when hovering over certain objects. This issue arose because both the "get location under mouse" function and the Bubblemancer’s line trace used the same trace channel. I resolved this by reworking the code and creating a separate trace channel to independently track the mouse position and the Bubblemancer’s line of sight.