Kenechukwu Umelo
Technical Gameplay Designer
*Due to confidential information, I cannot give full details or show any visuals of the game.
In April 2023, the company spun up an idea for a fun multiplayer party game which went immediately into development throughout 2023. I was unfortunately laid off in December 2023 but was proud of the contributions and progress that I made to this project. I will be able to display more once the game is released.
Engine/Tools:
Unity, HurricaneVR, Normcore
Language:
C#
Platform:
??
Role:
Programmer
(Content/AI System Design)
Time of Development:
9 Months (Apr 2023 - Dec 2023)
Core Ownerships
Minigames
Towards my end at King Crow Studios, I spent the remaining months designing and implementing minigames. I was able to rapid prototype five minigames from concept to completion. I reiterated these minigames based on internal feedback. I ensured well-optimized scripts before allowing the lead designer, to spruce up the minigames with polish, art and sound.
Stationary NPC Creation System
I implemented a system to add stationary AI NPCs to fill the game world to feel more ambient and eventful. I am happy to say this was my proudest accomplishment while working on this title.
The design goal I had for this was to cut down AI development time since adding animations, and customizing hair type and outfit for each stationed NPC manually would be tedious for the team.
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I developed a Stationary NPC Creation system that gave the development team the only task of just dropping NPCs in the scene without filling any empty references.
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The creation system for NPCs included:
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Random hair types (based on gender)
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Busy/Idle Animations
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Outfit selection.
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I used polymorphism to extend the system script towards other types of grouped asset NPCs.
Quality Assurance and General Bug Fixes
I participated in the weekly play-testing with the team. I was able to help track down any game-breaking bugs and noted them down for bug tickets to be made in Jira. I was able to fix a diverse amount of issues that popped up after the playtest sessions such as minigame critical bugs, stopped NPC movement, NPC system issues, visual UI disappearances, and hosting server errors.
Other Important Mentions
When I wasn't working on core gameplay mechanics or minigames, I took on other things that the game needed:
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Sound logic for the player settings and objects
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Adjusting SFX and Proximity Chat volumes.
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Implemented an SFX script for UI interactions and object collisions.
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Added ambient 3D sounds for the game environment.
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Normcore's multiplayer logic
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Added Normcore Collision components to GameObjects for transform positions to update on objects for all players in a server.
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Created creative solutions to hack Normcore's microphone logic to give users the ability to switch microphone inputs but the feature ultimately got cut due to inconsistencies with Audio Output.
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Player identification in multiplayer setting
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To improve the player experience, I added an icon indication script that allows players to track other players on the server. This was done to separate them from actual moving NPCs in the scene.
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Post Mortem
I enjoyed every aspect and time of this project as I continued developing mechanics and minigames for the players to encounter. I discovered my passion for a more technical design role in the games industry as I enjoyed designing the flow for minigames before quickly prototyping it to match the initial concept. From that point forward I dedicated more time to crafting core gameplay loops and small systems on my own projects after work hours.