Master's thesis capstone game made in Unreal Engine 5
Team of 18 over 8 months
Worked with industry standard workflows and software like Scrum, Perforce, Jira, and Smartbear Collaborator
Created workflows to assist other members of team
"Conductor" system that allows enemies to communicate and sync attacks
Animation playback system that syncs animations to background track
Solo developed rapid gameplay prototype that influenced game direction
Punk Rock Exorcist is my Master's Thesis Capstone Project. Play as Ramona, a teenaged exorcist fighting to save the world from demons in a rhythm action game. This has been my biggest project, both in terms of length and team size. It's an eight month project being made by a team of 18. It's taught me a lot about what goes into game development and how to better work in a large group, as well as how to deal with setbacks and conflict. It's also been a great experience in learning how to use industry standard software like Unreal Engine, Perforce, Jira, and Smartbear Collaborator.
One area of development I've focused on in Punk Rock Exorcist is making pipelines and systems to make things easier for artists and designers. I've created a system to let artists easily import and play 2D effects in the game world, systems to help level designers build enemy encounters, and methods to let technical designers easily define, trigger, and respond to attacks. I've also worked closely with our technical lead and the rest of the programming team to determine how to best design the architecture of the game, both to make everything work smoothly and be easier for others to work with.
My work isn't all "behind-the-scenes," however. I've developed are a conductor system that syncs enemy attacks to the beat and ensures the player isn't overwhelmed by attacks. I've also made a system that controls when animations are played and the speed they're played at in order to sync them with the background music.
In my earlier paragraph, I mentioned that this project taught me how to deal with setbacks. One of our major setbacks was, a few months in, we decided that the design of our game wasn't up to par, and we would have to completely rework our main mechanic. I was tasked with designing and solo developing (using existing art, and animations from asset packs) a prototype for the new direction of the game in a week. My prototype was well received, and influenced the design of the game going forward.