Pizzapocalypse
Technical Designer
Pizzapocalypse is a third person platformer where the player uses their pizza to platform off and dash to in-order to deliver this pizza.
In this 16 week project I created and contributed to the camera system, controls, character, progress tracking, in-world feedback and bug fixing for team members. The game itsself turned out amazing, getting nominated for the Dutch Game Awards Student category and at BUAS internally winning best Year 2 game in all categories.
In this 16 week project I created and contributed to the camera system, controls, character, progress tracking, in-world feedback and bug fixing for team members. The game itsself turned out amazing, getting nominated for the Dutch Game Awards Student category and at BUAS internally winning best Year 2 game in all categories.
Contributions
Research
Throughout the project I did research on topics I needed to design. I used a combination of existing models and usual problem solving research. One example of an existing model is the usage of the Zubek model on the left, breaking down the main reference game. This allowed for an overview of the whole gameplay experience and leave multiple smaller topics we could research in more depth.
Team support
As my camera tool was finished I was able to move onto supporting my level designers to use it. I created documentation both on implementation (in-case programming wished to improve it) and documentation for how to implement it. Besides this I went over the tool with my level designer and regurally checked their progress in the level to check if my help was needed.
World interactions
At the end of the project there was little planned work left to do, so I reviewed my 3Cs work and concluded that the world could use some feedback. Together with the other 3Cs designers we added more feedback, small things like animating the pizza to warp when stomping it, the character stretching out. I added in-world interactions, solving for the fact we had to move static meshes based on collision. Ultimately it is small details like this that player are amazed by.
Bug fixing
As the only technical designer on the team I was in a good position to handling QA and bug fixing. During the project I fixed many bugs for my peers, whether it was the way parasoles gave a jump boost or objects now working in synce when loaded at different times. Besides technical bug fixes I also helped a lot with playtesting the limits of our level for our level designers allowing for such a refined level within scope.
Award winning team
During the 8 weeks after ideation we buildt a great team and game, getting Game of Year 2 in all categories by BUAS, getting nominated by the Dutch Game Awards for best student game of the year and entering the Finalists of best student game by The Game Development World Championship. This project showed what good interdisciplinary communication fosters great games, I worked closely with the level designers, character artists and fellow 3Cs/System designers to make this happen.