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MECHA vs MAGICA

Overview

Mecha vs. Magica is a published PvPvE Fortnite island built in UEFN and Verse during a seven-day game jam in April 2025.

Players join either the Mecha or Magica team and compete for score while fighting the opposing team and waves of kaiju enemies. The design combines competitive team combat with shared PvE pressure, boss encounters, and escalating enemy waves.

I served as Technical Director, Lead Gameplay Engineer, and AI Programmer for a 10-person interdisciplinary team. I established the project’s technical direction and implemented the core architecture for enemy behavior, combat damage, wave progression, scoring, player lifecycle, and multiplayer-safe match flow.


Role

Technical Director · Lead Gameplay Engineer · AI Programmer


Team

10-person interdisciplinary team


Timeline

April 2025 · Seven-day Fortnite game jam


Tech Stack

UEFN · Verse · Fortnite Creative Devices · Creature Spawners · Event-Driven Gameplay Architecture · Server-Authoritative Combat


Technical Challenge

The primary challenge was delivering a stable multiplayer experience within seven days while multiple disciplines worked on the island simultaneously.

Combat, enemies, scoring, UI, effects, player state, and round progression all needed to communicate without becoming one tightly coupled system. The game also had to remain functional as players joined, left, died, respawned, changed the state of enemy waves, and competed for score.

To support that workflow, I divided the gameplay into smaller Verse systems connected through shared events and clearly defined state transitions.


Event-Driven Gameplay Architecture

I implemented a Verse event bus that coordinated the island’s major gameplay systems, including:

  • Combat and damage events

  • PvPvE scoring

  • Enemy spawning and wave progression

  • Player joins, deaths, respawns, and departures

  • UI and gameplay feedback

  • VFX and audio triggers

  • Round-state transitions

  • Match and wave resets

This allowed each system to react to gameplay events without requiring direct knowledge of every other system.

For example, an enemy elimination could update the score, trigger feedback, advance the wave state, and notify the UI without placing all of that behavior inside the enemy itself. This separation made the project easier to integrate and debug while the team continued changing content during the game jam.


Enemy AI and Wave Scaling

I architected the enemy AI and wave-scaling systems on top of Fortnite’s creature spawners.

The behavior orchestration included:

  • Target selection

  • Chase behavior

  • Ranged attacks

  • Retreat behavior

  • Boss behavior

  • Enemy-wave progression

  • Difficulty and pressure scaling

  • Combat VFX and audio triggers

  • Wave cleanup and reset

These systems connected enemy behavior to the larger match state instead of treating each spawned creature as an isolated encounter.

The result was a coordinated PvE threat that could escalate throughout the match while remaining connected to player combat, team scoring, and round progression.


Multiplayer Combat

I designed the combat-damage flow around server-authoritative validation.

Damage results needed to remain consistent while PvP combat, enemy attacks, eliminations, respawns, scoring events, and boss encounters occurred simultaneously. Authoritative validation provided a dependable source of combat results for the rest of the gameplay systems.

This helped ensure that damage, eliminations, scoring, and match progression remained multiplayer-safe rather than relying on conflicting client-side results.


Player Lifecycle and Match Flow

I owned the gameplay handling for players joining, leaving, dying, and returning to the match.

This work included:

  • Player join and leave handling

  • Death and elimination events

  • Team-zone respawning

  • Spawn-distribution patterns

  • PvPvE scoring data

  • Round-state transitions

  • Wave and match resets

These systems allowed the match to continue through normal multiplayer interruptions without leaving players, enemies, scoring, or round progression in an invalid state.


Technical Direction

As Technical Director, I helped turn the game concept into an achievable seven-day production plan.

I established system boundaries, gameplay implementation patterns, and integration points that allowed the interdisciplinary team to work in parallel. My primary ownership covered the Verse gameplay architecture, enemy orchestration, combat validation, scoring, player lifecycle, and technical integration.

Mecha vs. Magica was a collaborative project rather than a solo production. My contribution was leading its technical direction and implementing the foundational gameplay systems that connected the team’s work into a complete island.


Impact

  • Directed a 10-person interdisciplinary team through a seven-day production sprint

  • Delivered a complete, playable, and published PvPvE Fortnite island

  • Architected AI, combat-damage, and wave-scaling systems

  • Implemented server-authoritative damage validation

  • Created a Verse event bus connecting combat, scoring, UI, enemies, and match flow

  • Built enemy orchestration on top of Fortnite creature spawners

  • Owned player join, leave, death, respawn, and team-zone handling

  • Demonstrated rapid technical leadership and multiplayer gameplay delivery under compressed production constraints


Media and Links

Playable Island: Mecha vs. Magica

Island Code: 9558-0381-0955

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