Prime Orbit | portfolio

Team Size: 5 (One Artist, three Level Designers, one Unity Programmer)

Role: Team Lead & Unity Programmer

Dev Time: 4 Months

Engine: Unity3D

Language: C#

After development, Prime Orbit was submitted as the capstone project of the Bachelors of Game Design degree program - it was well received.

Prime Orbit is available to download here.

The first two weeks of month one consisted of developing core mechanic proposals and then pitching them to the course instructors. After review, the most interesting mechanics were chosen by the instructors and subsequently added to a list of finalists. First pick priority was given to mechanic originators and their respective teams. Our team was rather fortunate by having four members' mechanics making the list (links below).

Trae Bailey - Germination
John Kester - Geometry Gauntlet
Daniel Schraad - Transform Matter
Kadan Sharpe - Into Xibalba

We evaluated the strengths and capabilities of our team; considering concrete deadlines and potential technical limitations (based on each member's experience with pending roles). Time for additional deliberation about the implied scope of prospective mechanics was allotted. As a team, we ultimately decided to work on the "Geometry Gauntlet" concept presented by John Kester. During the last two weeks of month one, we quickly developed a prototype for the core mechanic along with a few puzzle components.

At the beginning of month two, we really understood how we wanted to approach gameplay with the core mechanic. A developer "playground" was created as we explored many different types of components and puzzle concepts. Each week, we submitted a new playground in which testers could explore the different puzzle concepts our level designers had in mind as the core scripts were being developed. At the end of month two, we deployed our first build that featured an early take on the tutorial level.

Once month three began, we had a discussion about the look and feel of our game. I felt that it was time to at least start the greybox process so that we had a collective idea of what the game would look like by the end of month four. It was eventually decided that we would make each level into a city-like environment with multiple districts. This idea went through quite a bit of iteration after various discussions about scope and time constraints. We eventually decided that the playable space of each level would be one small section of the city. The non-playable level portions would go on to be populated with low-detail buildings and props to create the illusion of traversing a larger world.

It turned out that, with the exception of a few tasks, we had been feature complete since the creation of the second development showcase. As a result, we had more time to focus on polish and refining quite a bit of the interaction with the game on all fronts. We conducted playtests with friends and family to identify potential issues with our game and then fixed nearly all of them. We later deployed a major build that reflected the large amount of work completed at the end of month three.

The fourth and final month of development involved many visual passes and tying up loose ends after the code freeze in month three. Nearly every bug had been eradicated, gameplay interactions were working as intended, and the final bits of feedback were being addressed. There was one major issue involving a few of the team shared scripts which caused frame rates to drop considerably. I was able to resolve that issue in two days while the rest of the team worked on the remaining visual polish tasks as the project came to a close.

Overall, the project gave me valuable development experience in a team-oriented environment. I am proud and honored to have worked with such a proactive and persistent team. Perforce, Trello, Google Drive, and Dropbox were invaluable tools for us as we collaborated on Prime Orbit. We worked remotely for an average of 45 hours per week; meeting via Google Hangouts almost every single day. There were a few issues that caused us to (collectively) lose a large amount of dev time, but we managed to recover well and met the deadline with a strong submission.

Notable Accomplishments:

Lead team of Game Design students and implemented gameplay, and UI.
Contributed to and helped maintain the Game Design Documentation.
Prototyped initial concept then developed core gameplay and features.
Aided members in other roles by creating inspector-friendly scripts.
Conducted regression tests and accounted for development bottlenecks.
Found and eliminated source of major frame loss; improved FPS from ~30 FPS to ~55 FPS .

What I learned:

Major narrative choices (if any) should be decided as soon as possible. A dedicated individual or team should be in charge of curating and advocating the inclusion of narrative elements throughout the development process. A careful trade-off should be met by integrating story and gameplay so that the player has a rich, cohesive, and consistent experience.
As a leader, you should (as soon as possible) learn about your team along with their respective strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. This will help later in the development process when tasks need to be assigned and/or conflicts need to be resolved effectively.
Whenever possible, it is important to devote lots of time to researching, planning, and prototyping. This will allow for the refinement of ideas, mechanics, and systems whist also providing better future references later in development.
A vertical slice can serve as reference material to help achieve a more unified vision as the project progresses.
Make sure to write more refined or finalized code whenever possible. This will result in less time spent refactoring code.
Developing a puzzle game is very difficult. Know what you are getting into and extend the projected development time considerably.
Have a much fun during development as possible, it will usually be reflected in the finished game.