Engineering Management

One of the primary goals was to have a game within a year which I accomplished by staying on top of scope negotiation, feasibility discussions, risk identification, task estimation and resource allocation within my department.

I also made sure that each member of the engineering team would get the opportunity to work on core gameplay, and have their achievements visible to the reast of the project members.

Initial Architecture Planning

During pre-production, I took point on planning the initial architecture for the game using UML - the primary purpose was to get a better sense of what the scope was and how to best divide the workload among members of the engineering team. The UML diagrams I set up were mostly guidelines as I wanted my teammates to have as much autonomy as possible.

Defining Done-ness

Defining what “done” meant for tasks was important for maintaining quality and managing expectations. This includes things like:

1. Setting up automated tests
2. Writing API documentation
3. Writing README files for tools
4. Early alignment check with the design team
5. QA testing

Build Automation

I set up a Jenkins build server that was responsible for running our automated tests, preparing builds, deploying the builds to our company SharePoint, and sending notifications over Slack.

Re-usable Code Libraries

I set up several code libraries that are accessible to Dusk Wave Arts employees via the Unity Package Manager. Here are some of my favorites:

• Bootstrapper - an extensible utility for easily and explicitly setting up the order of initialization for any system. Internally, it’s an abstraction of [RuntimeInitializeOnLoadMethod].
• Spatial Query - allows us to set up “zones” and be able to track visitors in each zone with ease. Also includes helper functions for field of vision and line of sight checks.
• Service Locator - a simple service locator implementation, super handy!
• Update Manager - a service that allows us to easily manage the pause states and update timing of groups/categories of objects.

Some Hands-on Work

Here are some of the features I worked on directly:

• The Brewcannon’s cylinder
  • Animation utility for controlling the way the cannon’s cylinder rotates.
  • The number chambers on the cannon change as the cannon is upgraded, and the color of each chamber changes depending on what gets loaded into them.
• FTUE stuff, tutorials.
• A Python script for procedurally generating input prompt glyphs.
• Build profiles where each profile contains a custom set of Script Define Symbols and can be selected via CLI.

Mission Preview Screen

I implemented this screen that gives the player a preview of a mission's level layout and allows the player to place pins to plan the route they will take for a mission. This screen also allows them to determine the spawning position of their squad pre-"hack" certain elements in the level (like doors and consoles) to make their route easier as their squad traverses the level.

Tutorial System

I implemented a configurable tutorial system that allows any designer or programmer to script a sequence of changes to objects in the game without having to touch code. The sequence is represented in a behavior tree with custom nodes built on top of Behavior Designer so that anyone editing the tutorial can make changes to the sequence of tutorial events with ease.

Enemy Reinforcements

Spawns waves of enemies periodically. I created configuration files that will allow a designer to set spawning intervals and to set up “spawn wave archetypes” that will determine the kind of enemies that would spawn with each wave, as well as a level setup tool to determine the spawn location of enemy reinforcements.

Squad Spawning Locations and Individual Positioning

A tool that will allow a designer to hand-place the spawning position of each squad member when a player’s squad is spawned at the start of a mission. It includes gizmos/handles that a designer can just drag from within a scene to change the position and placement of each spawn position.

Scene Setup Debugging and Balancing Tools

A visual debugging tool that I made to help designers balance/optimize enemy placement, the amount and placement of defensive cover in the scene, as well as a scoring mechanism for how vulnerable a player’s squad member will be in each defensive cover location.

Runtime Gizmo Renderer

A way for our programmers to render gizmos in builds. Normally, Unity only renders gizmos in the editor, but I wrote an API that serves as a replacement for Unity’s Gizmos API that renders lines and wireframe shapes using Vectrosity.