Parkour Systems Polish
The entire hook of Terrible Lizards is its fluid parkour movement. Players sprint, jump, vault, slide, etc., and every transition has to feel seamless, with no momentum lost between moves.
When I joined the team, I was assigned to script the slide so it chained seamlessly into the rest of the movement. As the system stood, if a player held sprint and slid, it forced them back into a walking state, killing their momentum. My lead designer wanted players to hold sprint, slide, and keep sprinting without re-engaging the sprint input.
I traced through the existing player parkour Blueprint to find where the movement states broke, then implemented a fix that let the slide flow directly back into a sprint. The result was a seamless slide-to-sprint transition, a mechanic that becomes crucial when players slide under fast-closing doors or escape the Jurassic monsters hunting them down.
Epilogue Narrative Sequence
Terrible Lizards' final story beat required the opposite of the high-octane parkour from the rest of the game. In the Epilogue, the player staggers out of the caves beneath Dalton’s Dinos on an injured leg, so I scripted out the player’s crouch, jump, and sprint, removing the moveset they’d relied on all game so they’d feel the character’s state directly instead of being told about it.
The camera had to carry the same battered-but-triumphant tone. My first pass drove it from a hand-authored camera using float curves, but it read as unrealistic and risked motion sickness over a long, slow walk. So, I pivoted to make the effect much more subtle and drove the camera from a dedicated character animation built with the animation team instead. This fixed the comfort issue, landing much closer to my lead designer’s vision.
From there I wired the dialogue triggers to fire on the right beats, and with a calming but victorious track from the sound team, the epilogue delivered exactly the emotional payoff it needed.
Slide Mechanic (Before & After Transition Fix)
Epilogue Sequence. Sound recommended.
Role
Junior Programmer
Description
Terrible Lizards is a horror parkour game set against the backdrop of an old Route 66 attraction… with something dark and sinister lurking below. To escape, you’ll need to move fast, navigate challenging terrain, and uncover what Dalton’s Dinos is really hiding. You’d better start running.
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