DISASTER GOLF
Game Development Senior Capstone Project
9 Months | Aug. 2021 - May 2022
Launched Jan. 23, 2024
Summary
Disaster Golf is a fast paced golf game where players use meteors and other disasters as clubs. I was one of 30 members on the team and acted as an engineer with a focus on UI and Tools.
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My biggest strength in this project was my ability to rapidly adapt to new tasks. I was frequently moved between departments to relieve code-based blockers that manifested during development.
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Working in the UI team, I touched nearly every UI element and ensured reliability and usability. I also took up reworking the tutorial levels when that task became lost in limbo.
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I was tasked with creating tools for our team's Level Designers. Creating an easy to use asset browser, the Level Designers quickly built new levels and doubled our level count.
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Compartmentalizing Data
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Working with UI team, data kept needing to be repeated and edited, so compartmentalizing data became vital.
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After details like a Disaster's name and icon were compartmentalized, they could be edited in one place. It was easy to update UI to read and load this new format.
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This streamlined the pipeline for adding and maintaining information shown through the UI and was used in almost every area of the game's interface.
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Level Tools
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I entered this project with no experience creating tools but researching tutorials and documentation, I delivered these tools in two weeks.
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I developed two tools for the Level Designers, the Object Spawner and Object Modifier.
- The Object Spawner scanned assets folders with keywords to sort all complete assets. They found it easy to navigate and never used an incorrect asset by accident.
- The Object Modifier was an interface to modify to objects. It organized Unity's functionality into a form the Level Designers found easier to use.
- These tools allowed our Level Designers to rapidly build levels, doubling our level count.
UI Development
- I was one of 4 engineers on the UI team.
- I often completed my tasks with spare time so I lent my assistance to others on the UI team by either debugging or by taking backlog tasks.
- With multiple programmers working on UI, I had to learn to quickly read other's code and ensure my own code was readable.
- When I was allowed to restructure the level select screen, I compartmentalized it so it'd be easier to expand. This proved profitable as more levels were added after I left the project.
Hover to grow video
Tutorial Layout
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Our game's first tutorials performed awfully in playtesting but their rework was stuck in the backlog, so I took on that task.
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The main constraint was that levels couldn't undergo any major layout changes so I had to get creative with the existing assets.
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Some changes included reversing the level direction, importing systems from other levels, and changing the tutorial order.
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In playtesting and public reception, the reworked tutorials were received much more fondly, and we saw players engaging with the systems more than before.
Hippos
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I worked with the Hazards team to implement the hippos!
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I worked closely with the designers on the hazards team to ensure that what I made fit their desired specifications laid out in documentation.
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Aside from following directions, I also offered additional features that revealed themselves during the implementation that the designers utilized.
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This was the first time I worked directly with a game designer. It took some adjusting to adapt to the difference in language but I was delivered these wonderful hippos.
