Declan Doller

AMAZEing

Specifications:

Engine: Unity
Platforms: Windows PC, WebGL, Android
Language: C#
Role: Programming/Design
Start: 23th August 2021 End: 20th September 2021

Overview:

AMAZEing is a physics based maze game. The player uses the rotation of the two inner boxes to control the movement of the marble, navigating to each of the gems and then finally the finish flag.

The player is able to choose the map size, the gem amount and generate new mazes acordingly.

Project Development:

This project was produced by three year first year programming students for for a Unit of study lasting a month.
During this period we learnt about GitHub and working within a group, personally this was also when I had learnt how to use the Unity Game Engine or any game engine.

Complications/solutions:

Maze Generation:

We were in need of a maze where every part has to be reachable. we ended up using a Depth-first-search algorithm more maze generation. if we had more time we would of looked into creating a more complex algorithm.

Moving skybox:

To add to the atomosphere of the space-y skyboxes we felt like the skybox should rotate around the game. We ended up doing this by using camera stacking, not rendereing the background on the main camera looking at the maze, and adding a secondary camera with a soul purpose to rotate and render only the background.

My Role

Apart from learning how to use the Unity game engine I was also tasked with:
Maze Generation: Using an algorithm to generate mazes based on set dimensions.
Connecting Sounds, Animations, Lighting: Connecting and making sure everything all working.
Script Cohesion & Game Logic: Due to the nature of being one of the first group projects, I was ensuring all the scripts that were created, are working together and creating the overall game loop.

Find the Game:

Project Files: HERE
WebGL Playable Version HERE

Quick Styx

Specifications:

Engine: Unity
Platforms: Windows PC, WebGL (not optimised, and reduced content)
Language: C#
Role: Programming/ some Design
Start: 4th October 2021 End: 1st December 2021

Overview:

Quick Styx is speed based game where the player collects spirit throughout the map gaining max speed, aiming to get to the end as fast as possible

Once the player has reached the end they can save their score to a locally stored leaderboard once saved the player can go back to the leaderboard view their previous times and select to compete a ghost version of that save

Project Development:

This project was produced by a team of ten year 1 students from multiple different disciplines (5 artists, 3 designers, 2 programmers) the project was developed in two months including pre-production, this was the first Student group project everyone but the programmers had worked on.
During this period we learnt how to utilize everyones field and strengths also to communicaote well within a team.

Complications/solutions:

Boat Boyancy:

We wanted to replicate the boyancy bouncing and torque that a water craft would have. Initially we had four spring-like forces one for each corner of the boat, but due to other problems that arose from that ended up with using one central spring just to keep it boyant.

Boat Teleporter/Seemless gameplay loop:

Aiming for a seemless, fully interactable gameplay loop we decided to use portals in order to transfer the vehicle from a limbo (Menu) state to river (in game) state. Some of the troubles that arose were maintaining the same angle when entering and exiting the portal, overall creating these portals challenged our understanding of matrix and vector math.

Boat Aerial:

Initally we were ambitious in wanting the player to have almost complete aerial control of the boat, but due too time constraints and the controls not being newcomer friendly we decided to use impulse rotations where the player would press a series of buttons and peform a set rotation.

Scrolling Leaderboard:

We almost made a scrolling leaderboard from scratch, whilst most of the functionality was there (scrolling, and loading apropriate date) when people wanted to add a tick box inorder to chose what ghosts they verse Unity had some problems when changing tickbox values via code and we had to resort to using Unitys Scroll View object.

My Role

UI Design and Navigation: The design of the multiple UIs ensuring that it was functional.
Score saving & ghost replays: Saving the needed information to locall files such as scores and player replays, also making sure the replays are being recorded, saved and loaded properly.
Script Cohesion & Game Logic: Ensuring all the scripts that were created are working together and creating the overall game loop.
Music and Sound FX: Thinking of and implementing all the sounds in the game making sure to play each sound when needed.
Leaderboard: Spent a decent amount of time creating the leaderboard for the game with all it's functionality.
Tiny aditions: Thinking of and implementing a bunch of tiny aditions such as a moving skybox and a minimap (not in final build)
Managing GitHub: Managing all pull and push requests from the team throughout majority of the project

Find the Game:

Project Files: HERE
WebGL Playable Version HERE

Kitchen Cannibal

Specifications:

Engine: Unity
Platforms: Oculus Quest 2
Language: C#
Role: Programming
Start: 14th June 2022 End: 6th July 2022

Overview:

Kitchen Cannible is a virtual reality cooking simulator, which uses humanoid flesh in replacement of meat

Player aims to satisfy enough incoming orders to keep the kitchen afloat, whilst trying to dispose of bodies and dodging health inspections when they arise

Project Development:

This project was produced by a team of nine year 2 students from multiple different disciplines (3 artists, 4 designers, 2 programmers) the project was developed for a month.
During this period we continued to learnt to work with new people and play to everyones fields and strengths.

My Role

Order and food processing system: creating the systems that creates orders at intervals and allows the food items to be processed and checking for complete orders

Find the Game:

Project Files: HERE
Itch.io page: HERE

Stream Town

Specifications:

Engine: Unity
Platforms: Windows
Language: C#
Role: Programming
Start: 17th july 2022 End: End of year project: 7th December 2022, contiual project.

Overview:

Stream Town is a Twitch based, town builder game, with the goal of expanding and progressing a virtual town.

The game is mainly played through Twitch text chat whilst viewing a streamer who has the game installed and streaming from their device.

Project Development:

Previously Stream town was a friends solo project, now a project of nine people (5 Artists, 2 Designers and 2 programmers).
Due to some industry experience of the lead programmer, the project has been structured in such a way to mimic the process of a game development company with our use of Jira, standups, GitHub and following set coding conventions that differed from my current conventions.

Complications/solutions:

Learning a new codebase:

I had never previously worked on a project that had already exsisted, having to learn and work through unknown code and conventions took some time.

Serialization:

Coming up with and implementing a saving and loading features keeping in mind potential additions and use cases for the future.

My Role

Saving and loading: Creating all the structures and systems needed for collecting required infromation, saving them to a file, then loading that file into the game.
Player inputs: Changing to unity's input system, making inputs events based and giving the streamer and selected viewers more control over the game.
Camera Controller and Controls : Mimicking a simple RTS style and control scheme.

Find the Game:

Playable on Twitch: HERE

Extra Work

For all work either incomplete or relatively small

Curve tools

Tools created utilizing a bezier curve