Development Time: 14 weeks at 50%
Engine: TGE (Inhouse engine)
Editor: Unity
Genre: 2.5D Platformer
Target Platform: PC

Amen to Mayhem was the third project I worked on, and it was built on top of a graphics framework that the school provided to us. This time around we weren’t using Unity for anything other than creating the level layouts, so all the gameplay and underlying systems had to be created by me and the other programmers in my group.

ANIMATION BLENDING

I handled most of the code that concerned 3D meshes and textures, having to dig into the codebase of the homebrew graphics framework that we had been given, for which documentation was lacking to say the least.

What I am most happy with is having implemented animation blending which gave our game that extra smooth feeling.

OUTLINE SHADER & DISTANCE FOG

I also wrote various shaders that with input from our artists helped boost the game’s artstyle and atmosphere.

One was a screen space outline shader that used the depth buffer to detect differences in depth and normals.

The other was a combination of a depth fog and a color gradient that colored the fog based on its height in the level.

EDITOR EXPORT & LEVEL LOADING

Graphics aside, a lot of my time went to working on the export and import of level data from Unity 3D into our game.

This meant that I was very involved with the pipeline for art assets and levels.

WHAT I LEARNED

• The importance of a solid pipeline and tools to simplify workflow and make the development process more effective.
• Learned a lot about the rendering pipeline, how normalmapping and lighting works.
• Worked very closely with artists and level designers to make their job easier and realize their vision of the game.