Video Game Engineering

 

Sky Shepherd

Sky Shepherd is an upcoming single-player game where you play as the lone survivor of a post-civilization sky people. Using your glider and instrument, lead a herd of mysterious creatures to safety and explore this strange world.

Personal Reflection:

• Shy Shepherd was the brainchild of me and my good friend Utkarsh Rao Viswavasu
• The game is in development in Unreal Engine 4, with a 19-person team, and over the course of two semesters (about 8 months)
• The game was also featured on the Unreal Launcher’s “Featured Projects” page
• The Entertainment Arts and Engineering program at the University of Utah gets to send a single team to compete in the Intel University Game Showcase, and Sky Shepherd was chosen for 2019
• My personal contributions
  • I implemented the movement controls
  • I’m working on a complex camera AI system that can accommodate the needs of such a cinematic game.
  • I manage our team’s source control (Perforce)
  • I set up an automated build workflow which syncs, when there are changes it builds the game, if it succeeds it resubmits the updated binaries, and if it fails it emails the engineering team with the build log
  • As a vision-holder, I oversee the game’s general direction alongside Utkarsh Rao Viswavasu 

 

Zoom Zoom Newton

Zoom Zoom Newton is a mobile game where you play as a cat (Newton) on an interstellar pinball-style adventure! Tap to create gravity wells and navigate Newton through hyperspace to find his way home. Coming soon to Google Play this winter 2018.

Personal Reflection:

• Created in Unity, I had the opportunity to become very familiar with the engine
• Implementing animations and particle effects helped me understand how animation state machines work, and exposed me to object pooling
• Working with analytics, I gained exposure to gathering user information
• Working alongside my Games User Research class, I gained insights into how games are tested, how to ask the right questions, and the ethics of games testing
• Iteratively programming a camera system helped me make a connection between research gathered and actual design implementations (you don’t want to make your player’s motion sick)
• Programming the UI was an interesting challenge, since it had to be readable and scale with different screens and integrate with analytics smoothly
• Working on an 8 person team helped me understand small group working dynamics and helped me understand the importance of staying agile

 

(Bass)teroids

Flexible side-scrolling shooter that generates gameplay experience from user-selected music. Six person team, built in Unreal Engine 4 using blueprints and C++. I programmed everything except the music visualizer. This included player movement, shooting, animation implementation, and effects/sound implementation.

 

Destructo-Spin

Top-down Angry Bird’s-like game in the Entertainment Arts and Engineering lab. Sole engineer on a 5 person team, programming collisions, animation system, and implementation of visual effects. Built entirely in Python using PyGame.