Canceled Live Service Game - P2 Technical Designer

Studio: Bend Studio

Contributions

Acted as a main expert on player ability architecture, creating the original prototyped system and making it intuitive for use by other designers to interface with.
Coded and oversaw over 30 different ability prototypes, seeing 15 achieve active development and refinement.
Led meeting breakdowns of specific technical system proposals in order to garner feedback and unify direction across disciplines
Integrated throwing behavior code with animation blend tree for the player character, integrating player actions with player movement and environment traversal
Was a founding member on Bend’s live service accessibility team, implementing a color adaptive VFX system to accommodate for color blindness without loosing out on VFX/UI messaging

Part of my responsibility while working on Achromatic was designing and prototyping the main visual mechanic of the game.

I created a lighting shader/camera setup that would divide the world in half between a monochrome and colored version.

The default view of the world would be projected in monochrome, and while in this state certain details and/or objects could be hidden.

Objects that were given a white mask would act as a source of "light" in the game and would reveal a world of color to the player. Certain objects (like the horse monster) could be made to only be releaced in this color mode.

An intial version of this "light" was a player flashlight that we put in the center of the screen, but later we moved this be an external light source in the environment

(The shader implementation of the light system.)

The Visual Mechanic

(A Walkthrough of the player being chased by the horse creature, with the player only being able to see them through light sources in the environment.)

Cinematic Outline Tool

While developing for Achromatic, I was also in charge of making the pipeline between level design and art as smooth as possible.

To do this I developed a Cinematic Outline Tool that the level designers could use to plan out animated moments in the game.

These outlines, once placed by the level designers and given a description would then automatically compile themselves into a list that the art team could then use and make tasks off of.

Non-Euclidean Level Design

The main level design challenge in designing for Achromatic was trying to figure out how to create levels for an environment that was supposed to wrap in on itself.

Taking reference from similar games such as Anti-Chamber, I developed a simple system of teleporting the player with uniform hallways. By requiring the player to go through hallways that block line of sight to both the starting and exiting room, we are able to swap rooms in and out. This creates a "non-Euclidean" effect for the player allowing us to surprise them with an adapting environment.

The above image illustrates how we can swap out rooms as the player moves through the environment.

This can be used to for both puzzle design purposes and to lead the player directly into new areas/levels of the game

Achromatic - Lead Technical Game Designer

First Person Horror Game

Team Size: 16

Engine: Unity

Contributions

Operated as the Technical Design Lead, coordinating game direction with programming team.
Developed light-based visual rendering shader as a core gameplay mechanic.
Utilized Unity's ShaderLab and Cinemachine cameras to enhance cinematic moments.
Created teleportation hallways for non-euclidean level design.
Iterated on blockouts for prototype levels and horror sequences.

Pythagorus Skateboarding

The skateboarding in Snailboarder relies on the player being "glued" to the ground while riding about. Unless the player voluntarily jumps or and performs a trick while on a ramp, the player will stay attached to the ground in order to make movement with the skateboard feel more fluid and line up with other skating game movement systems. When moving up and down ramps, the their is an initial raycast between each side of the player's board and the ramp/ground the player is on.

Using the acquired ray points, the appropriate angle of the board is acquired and adjusts the angle of the player to allow for the smooth adjustment of the board over a variety of curved and angled surfaces.

When performing tricks, all tricks derive from either an Ollie (a jump) or when gaining air from a ramp.

From that, different tricks are able to be performed based on button combinations that will trigger different animations taken from inspiration off of actual skateboarding tricks.

Some environment pieces are set to "automatically" make the player perform a trick so long as the enter from the correct side of the object and Ollie. Such environment pieces include the trick bar at the center of the park and any ramp that provides the player with significant air time.

Snailboarder - Lead Technical Game Designer and Producer

3rd Person Skateboarding Sim

Team Size: 11

Engine: Unity

Contributions

Created skateboard movement system that allowed for registering of custom skateboard tricks
Implemented Score Combo Systems that multiplied trick scores based on the number of
Designed and implemented cutscene system making use of cinamachine and shaderLab.
Helped establish guidelines within design documentation to illustrate rules for skateboarding gameplay
Iterated on gameplay controls with controller layout

The Challenge

Developing for ICU patient's represented a strong design challenge, as we would be developing for a player who would likely be in some form of stupor from being sedated and intubated. In addition, depending on their reason for being in the ICU they may also find themselves physically impaired as well.

To achieve this, I developed a single activity game that had the player sauté a pan of food over a burner. The burner(s) would move around thus requiring the patient to maintain their position over the burner to cook the food in as little time as possible.

First VDD of Sautéing Activity

Testing the game revealed that while making the game simple was definitly a good idea for ICU patients, the game in it's current state was still too complicated for most ICU patients.

As a result of this feedback, I decided to remove the wheels from the burners and have them be stationary. The burners would then alternate which one was active.

Second Iteration of Sautéing Game

Having four different corners to manage between ultimately ended up being still too difficult for some patients, and our physical device was unable to properly accommodate for forwards and backwards momentum.

As such, the final kitchen design features four burners in a neat horizontal row that best accommodates a simple left right X-axis for ICU patients.

Final Kitchen Layout

The Challenge

Developing a game for ICU patients presented a challenge in the fact that not all ICU patients where going to have access to full physical movement. As such, structuring the world in a static way for an able-bodied person might result in the game being unplayable depending on the patient.

To resolve this issue, two steps where needed. The first step was to identify how far the patient could actually move their arms. Some patients could in theory have total motor movement, but it was also likely that some patients would have mild to sever motor impairment.

The calibration scene would grab what the patent selects as the middle of the screen as well as the farthest they could reach up, down, left, and right.

Using the gathered calibration data, we were able to always place the player's cursor (pan) within reach of all necessary gameplay elements.

This was achieved by extending the distance of the cursor whenever the player was moving their arm in a direction that they struggled with and retracting in directions they excelled in.

This way, no matter the physical aptitude of the patient, they were always able to play the game.

The end result of this system us a tool that will allow the controller to adapt for any patient regardless of who is playing or what game it is.

Your Kitchen - Unity Developer and Technical Game Designer

Medical Therapy Cooking Sim

Team Size: 6

Engine: Unity

Contributions

Spearheaded rapid prototyping and development of therapy-oriented digital game activities for ICU patients
Created an adaptive physical adjustment system, reducing user errors by 60% to broaden ICU patient engagement.
Planned and implemented a networked interface between patients and family members to allow for joint engagement with therapy game activities
Led project organization using agile development within a start-up environment
Collaborated with medical experts to craft user-friendly UI interfaces accessible to diverse patients

Multiplayer Mobile Networking

The main Idea I had when making this project was figuring out how I wanted to represent the connection between the player's phone and the game space.

I wanted to obfuscate the controls of the player, so rather than being able to simply move in any direction at a time, the player instead had to pick a direction by powering certain buttons would enable that movement.

A given button might require two or three different puzzles to power and each puzzle had a different outcome that could power a different direction, so by trying to go in one direction you would have to power down a different direction

Tying movement to a puzzle interface drastically slows down gameplay and the decision making time frame of players. Levels that required the player to make it over tight turns faired worst as players had no functional way to correct for overshooting which would often result in much frustrated back and forth movement.

An experiment to try in the future would be to give the player access to full movement, but then obfuscate other gameplay actions, giving the player more options at a time but still keeping the puzzle aspect to their controls.

This experiment with Networked puzzle interfaces was a good learning experience when it came to setting up networked projects in Unity. By the end of the prototype I was able to host multiple players from three separate devices in one game, with each individual screen showing their own separate controls panel.

Stealth Mobile - Technical Designer

Multiplayer Puzzle Platformer

Team Size: 1

Engine: Unity

Contributions

Spearheaded rapid prototyping and development of therapy-oriented digital game activities for ICU patients
Created an adaptive physical adjustment system, reducing user errors by 60% to broaden ICU patient engagement.
Planned and implemented a networked interface between patients and family members to allow for joint engagement with therapy game activities
Led project organization using agile development within a start-up environment
Collaborated with medical experts to craft user-friendly UI interfaces accessible to diverse patients

Resume

About

Benjamin Operhall

My Projects

Achromatic

SnailBoarder

Your Kitchen

Stealth Mobile