Fiadh[Unnanounced]

Role: Senior Gameplay/Systems Engineer

Development Time: Jan 2024 - Nov 2024

Splash Page

Logline:

Fiadh is a 2D Metroidvania where you embark on a perilous journey to survive a catastrophic storm. As the world changes around you, use powerful abilities learned from nature to solve puzzles and summit the mountain.

Technical Challenges:

• Creating a 2D Character Controller for sloped terrain

• Leading technical development, operations, and managing a junior developer

• Restarting the project once brought on and building on the previous learnings

Contributions:

• Lead the design and architecture of core gameplay systems such as the player controller, abilities, scene management, version control, code guidelines, and saving/loading.

• Created tools and features, supported by documentation, to help art and design implement them in engine asynchronously.

• Mentored our intern to a full time developer, providing guidance, debugging techniques, and code reviews as he worked in parallel on abilities and level features.

• Optimized processes such as build creation for playtests and hooked up integrations into Discord to see project and build notifications.

• Collaborated with our other leads to keep the timeline and feature list in order and on track.

Lessons Learned:

This was not the first time I came into a project and started it over fresh either from a prototype or vertical slice. It was the first time though that I had a developer working under me. This opportunity allowed me to grow into the senior developer role as I balanced scheduling, mentoring, designing, reviewing, and developing.

Using my past experience I started by planning out how the player would operate, what each scene would need to be playable, and how the game architecture should be structured. I learned that documentation is instrumental when communicating high level design structure and enforcing it.

With a system as complex as a player controller, for example, I made sure to document the intention of the player’s states, sensors, and controllers which allowed our junior developer to work on the player in parallel with me on different player abilities.
The last lesson to mention here is that it can be difficult as a lead to make decisions when presented with multiple options, especially in code. Taking a step back and evaluating our high level goals, time budget, and estimated feature list can help clarify that decision. This way I was able to keep clean structure while factoring in for time where necessary, especially on prototype features that needed playtesting more than anything else.

Whisker Waters [Shipped]

Role: Lead Gameplay/Systems Engineer

Development Time: June 2021 - August 2023

Wishlist: Steam

Logline:

An adventure RPG where you can customize your cat, explore the world, and test your skills against a wide variety of fish.

Technical Challenges:

• Creating a multi-hour rpg with a core team of 5 members, additional contractors, and interns.

• Adapting to large changes in the project scope and design.

• Meeting and completing technical milestones on a multi-year project.

Contributions:

• Implemented core gameplay such as fish with varying stats, fishing in a 3D world, character controller, and adventuring tools.

• Developed tools to create all the different fish in the game in a scalable and efficient way so they can exist and be fished directly in the world.

• Negotiated and estimated cost of technical features, working with the entire team to ensure we met our milestones and design goals.

• Worked with our other engineer to decide ownership and parallelize development of major features that could communicate and integrate together.

• Created AI behavior trees and state machines to control enemy and fish behavior.

Lessons Learned:

This was the longest game I’ve ever worked on in both time and scope. This is also the first time I worked on a team with a publisher. While we met all of our milestones, the design of the game changed several times throughout development. From a technical side I tried to keep gameplay systems organized and adaptable from the start. The patterns I used and systems I made were tested by the major changes. The ability system for example was reused over again every time the tools and fishing games were redesigned. Systems like the character controller and the core fishing experience were changed several times for example. This helped me learn where I needed to separate states, systems, and components. The final lessons I learned related to optimization and bug finding. Using the Unity game engine I managed garbage collection especially for the fish through object pooling. A lot of optimization went into the fish to make their in world behaviors work as well as for the different fishing styles.

Bloom: Roots of Renewal [Shipped]

Role: Combat Systems Programmer/Designer

Development Time: June 2020 - August 2020

Download: Steam

Download: Itch.io

Logline:

A 1st person, DOOM inspired, shooter where you collect wands and spells to fight enemies and platform across 3 levels.

Technical Challenges:

• Developed fully remote with over 50 developers using the Pod system.

• The first 3D game for the studio.

• A transition to completely remote work for all studio members due to Covid19.

Contributions:

• Developed modular spells to quickly prototype and add effects while spells were being designed and finalized

• Utilized unity events to chain spell effects together and exposed timings for audio and SFX.

• Communicated with designers and programmers across several pods to implement spell abilities such as slowdown and damage.

• Tuned combat by running regular playtesting each sprint, collecting player feedback for areas of uncertainty, and constant discussions with enemy and level design teams.

Lessons Learned:

I originally over developed spells as we were planning to have more spells implemented. I tried to make the system as modular as possible and use Unity’s particle system to integrate the VFX with the implementation. This allowed artists to edit the form and function of spells and take advantage of the particle system’s modules. If I were to do it again I would have spent less time on a modular system and made each spell unique for the sake of time which could be spent polishing them.

IO [Shipped]

Role: Tools & Enemy Programmer/Enemy & Level Designer

Development Time: Jan 2020 - Apr 2020

Download: Itch.io

Logline:

A 2D action platformer where you can throw and then teleport to your sword. Master your timing and platforming as you fight your way through the abyss.

Technical Challenges:

• Developed fully remote with over 50 developers using the Pod system.

Contributions:

• Developed a tool for the animatics team to put their art into after assessing their needs for both art, timing, and music.

• Handled scripting for enemies with arcing projectiles that would always target the player’s position accurately.

• Designed and iterated on one of the game’s levels, playtesting and iterating on it for several weeks up to its release.

Lessons Learned:

While I had worked remotely for freelance I wanted to join this project to get experience with a larger team. I was the first remote developer and took advantage of the communication tools in place to keep others updated on my tasks. I was able to work with several different teams and disciplines as well which helped me understand the needs of our animatics team so I could make a tool that was easy to use and effective for them.

As I was the first remote developer on the team I was also able to give my thoughts and input to the studio leads. Emphasis on communication and reaching out helped me feel like part of the team even when I was not there in person.

Scrappy Pappies [Shipped]

Role: Gameplay Programmer/Artist

GO Insurance [Completed]

Role: Gameplay Programmer

Development Time: May 2019 - July 2019

Logline: I am under NDA so please refer to the Exis Website.

Technical Challenges:

• Programmed the gameplay on a 1 month timeline with a small 4 person team.

• Handed optimization for mobile devices.

Contributions:

• Handled gameplay and functionality programming while using mobile optimized practices.

Lessons Learned:

This was my first experience taking on a freelance job and I learned a lot about communication. Working on a tight deadline with a small team I owned an entire portion of the project. It was a lot of responsibility but I learned about Unity’s optimization considerations which have been helpful for many future projects.