Mortal Kombat X Mobile
professional projects | | linkz: Tag Games Post
Skills Practiced: UnrealScript, Rigging, Mocap, VFX, Animation, Cinematics
Tools Used: Unreal Engine 3
Companies/Clients: Tag Games, Netherrealms Studios
Platforms: Android, iOS
This was a live ops engagement where Tag Games provided several DLC characters and technical support for the Mortal Kombat X Mobile game culminating in the 1.14 release of the game and event support for updates beyond that. Responsibilities were wide ranging and included importing character animations from mocap data, tweaking VFX in X-Ray Move cutscenes in the UE3 editor, writing UnrealScript to implement special character moves, creation of cinematics including camera movements, effect placement, audio timing, and music sting timing, without reference animations (using YouTube videos instead), linking up audio to footsteps, punches, swipes, whiffs, etc in UE3’s animation tools (and Netherrealms’ expanded toolsets), damage data input for the fighting game engine, architecting a four-armed rig alongside other engineers and technical artists to fit with existing character-to-character interaction animations, and more. My involvement with the project was around five months. Specific characters added where I worked directly on the character’s animations, VFX, and code:
- Shirai Ryu Takeda
- Punk Cassie Cage
- Aftershock Tremor
This was a particularly challenging project; while I learned an enormous amount, and am still incredibly proud of what I and the team accomplished, the amount of crunch on this project coupled with the drastic increase in responsibilities ultimately caused me to burn out. I took a year and a half out of game development after this, working in a RT3D software firm while I recovered.
