Affected: The Asylum
Affected: The Asylum is a cross-platform, multiplayer focussed VR horror game with survival and puzzle elements. The game is set in the UK in the mid-to-late 1900's and can be played fully offline in single player, or online with upto 3 friends.
While working on Affected: The Asylum at Fallen Planet Studios I owned and maintain significant portions of the C# codebase, ensuring performance, maintainability, and cross-platform compatibility across desktop, console, and mobile platforms (Steam VR / PSVR / Quest VR). I also profiled and reviewed the pipeline and tool versions on a regular basis to maintain a fully working project, with all the required patches and updates required throughout the project's lifecycle.
​​​​Please note: specific details are under NDA.
Gameplay Systems:
​To help facilitate the continued development of the game, I designed, implemented, and maintained a suite of complex and scalable gameplay systems and features, using C# and Unity, to form the technical foundation of the game. ​These include: (and are not limited to)
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VR interactables (levers, buttons, doors, guns, etc).
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Dynamic triggers giving output values based on player positions.
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A visual scripting style logic and puzzle system allowing designers to link the above interactables and triggers together into complex and expansive puzzles/levels, all without the designers having to use code or inspector events.
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A scene management system allowing scene references that are not reliant on strings for references, thus removing human errors when renaming or moving a scene in the project folders. This system also enabled multiple scenes to be linked into groups and checkpoints, before being passed over the network using a single ID value, optimising networked scene loading.
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And more...​​
Editor Tooling, Optimisation and Workflow:
To help facilitate continued use, development and maintenance of editor systems and tooling I implemented a strict project folder structure, and coding convention. This simple change brought in a scalable, multi-discipline workflow that enhance productivity and streamlined content creation across multiple disciplines including programming, art & design.
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With my strong experience and understanding of Unity, I investigated and resolved the complex technical challenge of how to simulate real-time dynamic lighting on graphically limited mobile hardware. By leveraging Unity's built in profiler, I located performance bottlenecks that come with using real time dynamic lighting, and created a custom lighting tool. This tool optimised dynamic lighting for use on standalone VR and mobile hardware. Using the tool, static baked lighting could be used as limited dynamic lighting, allowing runtime updates to the colour and intensity of individual lights. The lighting solution has all of the optimisation benefits of static baked lighting, while being dynamic at runtime.