Ark Ascended – marc ioli

Overview

Dungeons and… Dinosaurs??

Ark Ascended is an action-adventure, survival game. Pulse Arcana brings Dungeons and Dragons-like customizable ability systems into the world of Ark.

I worked on this mod as a Game Designer in Unreal Engine 5. Creating fresh new ways for players to interact with the world space, dinosaurs, friends, and enemies. In addition to all that exciting ~dino magic~, the server owner can customize all 14 spells across 7 traditional D&D classes- Warrior, Warlock, Mage etc.

If you’d like to play the mod, simply search for ‘Pulse Arcana’ on PC, Playstation, or Xbox.

Design and development

The Ark Dev Kit is over 1.5 Terabytes, built entirely in Unreal Engine 5, and not all of the game’s systems are accessible in the Dev Kit. So a major part of the development workflow involved understanding the complex systems that the Ark Developers had in place. Like inventory, resources, health, etc.

What was especially tricky was designing spell and ability systems across players, dinosaurs, and their respective levels while also giving the server owner controls.

For example, the healing lotion spell involved navigating existing systems like resources or player health. And then creating new systems: new UI, updated player health, and custom VFX that work on yourself and the different character types. Healing for a dinosar scales (no pun intended 😉 differs from humans because most dinosaurs are larger than humans and have way more HP.

Below are some examples of the various spells and abilities I made. The two windows are to test multiplayer functionality.