Gameplay Programmer
Summary
As a night watchman in an amusement park, you protect the rides from aggressive animals using mystical weapons, provided by a fortune wheel.
These weapons include options such as a French Fries Assault Rifle or a Lollipop Shotgun.
Project Specifics
Team size: 7 people
Project Time: SEP 2023 - JAN 2024
​Roles: Game Programmer, Vision Keeper, Project Manager
​Tools: Unity, Rider, Google Sheets/Docs
Prototype
I started to prototype things like the weapons, the inventory and the save and load system because we focused on a high level of replay ability (weapons can be different from run to run and are like collectibles) and with that we can preserve player progress.
Physics
Knockback is example of the difference of all the weapons. With scriptable objects I hold all the information of the different weapons and so all the weapons feel way more unique.
Animation
I animated everything from a shutter in the main menu with animation curves to the recoil of the weapons to have a high level of polish and make the game feel juicy and have a high and responsive feedback for the player.
Save and load
I made it behave like a "string of pearls", where the game saves when important tasks are completed.
This worked pretty good in this scenario because every fight is distinct from each other and saving every fight makes sense for the player, because this is the most important task they can complete.
Flyweight
Observer
Singleton
Programming Pattern
It's important to me to improve in every way I can, and programming patterns helped me get to the next step.
I used observers for things like controls to call methods only when needed instead of checking every frame.
Singleton for my player and manager to get more flexibility.
Flyweight to handle the unique weapon logic where I needed stats for each weapon, so I stored them as scriptable objects.
Me
My teamwork
It was great, our communication was one of the best things about us.
We always made sure that everyone knew what was going on, who was working on what, and that everyone got help when they needed it.
I found that I had a good sense of time management and project management in general, helping me getting things done and keeping over scope away.
About the Project
"Work cannot be added without eventually splitting the desired result."
~ me
​
I was a vision keeper, project manager, and programmer which was a lot of work.
To get it all done, I had to focus on the big picture of the project and only spend time on details when the time was right.