ARC Radiers

I joined Embark Studios as an Animator and have been having a blast working working on this title for the past two years.

Although my title is Animator at Embark, the studio ethos is that we are all game makers.

As a result I've created a number of game mechanics that I've had the joy of taking all the way from initial concept, all the way through to in the game and balanced.

Programing, Animating and Designing the entire way. I've gained a huge appreciation for AngelScript and how flexible Unreals Gameplay Ability System is.

 

Join 'em - GMTK 2021 Game Jam

Join' em is a small puzzle game made by me and two friends (Vatyx & LMNT) for the GMTK Game jam 2021. Which had the theme "connections"

The premise of the game is that you need to connect, rotate and activate blocks using your keyboard and the corresponding block letters.

The complexity of the puzzles grows extremely quickly due to all degrees of freedom the player has, we were very fond of how a puzzle could be solved to many ways.

Was really fun to brainstorm and quickly make a game over the course of the weekend.

I primarily worked on the art for the game and worked collaboratively on design and level design.
It was fun to learn and practice a bit of lighting, rendering and shaders.

After the game jam we decided that we liked the core concept and it could easily be expanded into a relaxing but mentality taxing puzzle game.

We're all still working on this project in our spare time with the aim to release on Steam, Nintendo Switch and potentially Mobile.

 

Main focus areas before release are:

• New art style
• UX improvements
• Better level design to slowly expose mechanics over time
• Multiplayer
• Number of new themed worlds

 

 

GDC 2019 - Chaos

Had loads of fun working on this GDC Project, it was like making a vertical slice for a next gen destruction game.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Amazing film! Super inspired after watching it, loved Spider Gwen's ballet landing so much I had to do my own.

Retroblast - Visual upgrade

• Gave the game a much needed visual upgrade using post process effects
• Added damage state VFX (The number of fires actually grows as your overall life goes down)
• Reworked slowmo/reflex combat system

GDC 2017 - UE4 Animation and Physics

It's strange working on the engine development side of games, but as a bonus I get to test and help improve all the cool new tools people will be using in the future before everyone else!

I had a lot of fun bridging the programmer / end user gap when it came to these features, especially the control rig. I also learned a lot about what the future of Animation looks like within the games industry.

Retroblast - Game feel

• Made the character larger
• Added banking animations
• Added damage + damage recovery system
  (If you get hit once you get damaged,g et hit again during the recovery period you die)
• Improved camera "lookahead" player is now offset from screen center to help when flying fast towards enemies
• Added UI elements for kill count game time and total score
• Added pause and restart screen

Retro Blast - Player interaction

• Implemented a unique touch screen control system, swipe twice to boost, double tap to break.
• Added the ability to boost

Retro Blast - Design elements

I wanted to have 'simple' way to tell players what buttons activated which doors and instead of just manually creating every connection, I took the Tech Artist approach and created a small construction script that utilizes an array of corners that can be placed by the user to dynamically add a very low poly mesh. This means it is easy to move design elements around. Still very WIP but it's a good start.

Retro Blast - Game feel and Combat

 

• Added buttons for fire and boost.
• Switched the model out for something nicer.
• Added a camera interpolation system so you can "Look ahead" on the tiny phone screen
• Started crating a basic lock/ key mechanism with boxes that you can pick up.
• Set up my own P4 server (Which was easy thanks to the creator of this YouTube playlist.)