Perfect Dark
Role: Technical Game Designer
Platform:
-
Xbox, PC, XCloud
Duration:
-
6 years, 2 months
Studio:
-
The Initiative (Xbox Game Studios)
Team size:
-
200+
Engine:
-
Unreal Engine 5.5 (UE5)
Additional Tools:
-
Logic Driver Pro SM
Examples of my work in the trailer
Core Responsibilities
-
Prototyped player weapons by building blueprints following an inheritance based class structure, state machines for logic, and animations and shared library data assets
-
Collaborated with the Gadget Team on gadget ideation, prototyping, documentation and systemic interactions
-
Supported Level Design's build scripted sequences and unscripted systemic interactions
-
Made blueprint actors to support adjacent weapon systems like weapon animations, projectiles, and weapon upgrades
-
Coordinated feature development across multiple co-dev studios in four time zones
Additional Responsibilities
-
Support in game cinematics and executing gameplay logic at designated points
-
Prototype Social Stealth System for [REDACTED] Gadget
-
Be a master of the Logic Driver Pro State-machine that controlled gadget and weapon logic, feedback, and animations
-
Implement diegetic UI elements on weapons and gadgets
-
Build several world objects that would react to being shot or manipulated by gadgets abilities
-
Iterated on combat loop by rewarding skillful actions (head shots, melee takedowns, counters, and environmental takedowns) to encourage kinetic and aggressive playstyles.
Examples of my work in the trailer
The following are examples of my work that can be seen in the games trailer. Due to NDA, I cannot use official names for the many games systems, but I have used place holders to describe what they are.
Gadgets
I worked on the scanning gameplay and the implementation of the AR UI elements on the gadget.
Prototype logic, animations and feedback of the gadget
-
The scanning loop logic set up in state machine
-
Diegetic AR UI that reacts to progress of the scanning loop and are attached and move with the gadget
-
Set up UI scripting, SFX, VFX, and force feedback on controller
Cinematics
Some of the IGCs I helped set up and supported during development
Set up and edit cinematics that play between gameplay sections and helped debug edge cases that would break the cinematics.
-
Examples of IGCs
-
Crawl Space
-
Mantle into Apartment
-
Computer Hack
-
Traversal Objects
This pipe is a modular and scalable object that lets the player climb up a vertical surface
Create traversal objects that would be scalable and tunable by other designers.
-
Climbable Pipes - allowed the players to move vertically along a surface
Weapons and Weapon Systems
Several clips of the different fire modes shooting unique projectiles that take out enemy NPCs in different ways
Prototype weapons logic, feedback, AR elements
-
Pistol
-
Prototypes pistol fire patterns and fire modes
-
Set up finite state machines to execute weapon logic, play feedback effects, and animation states
-
Edit Projectiles to behave differently according to fire mode
-
Taser Mode - Stun Rounds
-
Tracker Mode - Seeker Rounds
-
Penetrator Rounds - Shoot Through Surfaces
-
-
Reactive World Objects
The player shooting a fire extinguisher that explodes and stuns an enemy NPC, leaving them open for the player to take down
I prototyped and hardened several shootable environmental objects
-
Level Actors that respond to being shot and then AOE effects
-
Fire extinguisher
-
Explosive barrel
-