Aether Hook

Aether Hook is a physics-based grappling hook prototype with the objective of exploring floating islands and finding new upgrades for the hook. Originally a personal project, I used the freedom of choice for my Final Year Project to give myself the opportunity to completely remake the game from scratch as I was unhappy with my older implementation. The version shown in the video was made in 3 months.

Implemented Features:

Physics-based swinging using vector maths.
'Reeling in' the hook to give the player additional height and momentum.
The ability to swing from and drag physics objects, calculating torques to have the object move realistically.
A seamless portal to catch players when they fall, dropping them back to checkpoints in the level.
Ledge mantling to forgive players who barely didn't make a distance.
Mid-air jumps to give players more control in the air, easily editable at runtime.
Various challenges related to the hook, such as objects / areas that cannot be grappled, 'buttons' that must be grappled (can be assigned to work in a sequence), or areas that can be grappled but not stood on by the player.
An adaptive crosshair to indicate whether a shot will land, fail, or activate something.

All possible features were made using actor components to be as modular as possible, with exposed variables to allow for easy editing of values to give any developers further control.

Project Goals:

Create a fun, physics-based movement prototype.
Create each element in a way that is 'designer-friendly', so it can be passed off to anyone else that might work on the project. Each feature should be as modular as possible, with as little room for error from anyone that might make mistakes.
Optimise the project as much as possible. Whilst this will never be perfect (having been made in Unreal Engine 5's Blueprints and not in C++), I kept this in mind with each and every feature I made and feel I achieved this with nearly every aspect.