10th grade

10th grade science fair

Better UI

My 10th-grade project was an extension of my 9th-grade project. I added some more features to the website and added some quality-of-life features. For example: In order to register a device in my 9th grade project, you had to type the information into a webhook into the URL, which isnt easy or fast. The website was meant to be easy for teachers to learn and use, so that wouldn't slide. In my 10th grade project, I added a form where you can easily register a device, and I added an X next to the registered devices so that you can quickly delete them if needed. I also added another form that lets you search for a specific device depending on how many of the parameters you fill out. It could either be a broad or specific search.

10th grade school project "Change the Game"

Game trailer

10th grade school project "Change the Game"

In 10th grade, I had a school project called Change the Game, where we had to get into groups of around 15 people and develop a video game over the course of 9 weeks. I was part of the small team of developers programming the game, while the rest of the group created the art, characters, and other assets for us to use. This was my first time participating in a massive coding project with a large team of people.

Unfortunately, the game website is restricted where only people within Plano ISD can access it

The game

Our team decided to focus on quality and visual graphics more than the actual gameplay. We still had a game, but there was less to do than the other groups. We decided to do this because it would make our game stand out a lot from the other games visually, drawing more people to our booth on presentation day. Also, all the other teams were focusing on deep gameplay, so we decided to make something requiring less focus. My main job was to make the game look pretty, make the dialogue system, and make the character/movement system.

Screenshot of Unity editor window

Octopath Traveler II gameplay

Is it 2D or 3D?

We decided to go for a 2.5D game. It combines the 2d camera and sidescrolling from a 2D game and the 3D visuals from a 3D game. We took a lot of inspiration from a game series called Octopath Traveller. We decided to use the High Definition Rendering Pipeline that Unity offers, so that we could take advantage of all the graphics features Unity has to offer, with the most prominent in our game being the volumetric fog.

Graphical techniques

I had to use many techniques in order to make the most out of Unity's HD render pipeline. One of the most obvious things when you first get into the game is the color grading. I had to use my knowledge from photography to change the lift, gamma, gain, white balance, saturation, etc., in order to get the warm, fantasy feeling. Without the post-processing, the scene is a bland, neutral color.

I also needed to mess around with the shaders because Unity handles 2D sprites much differently than how we wanted the engine to. Light wouldn't fall onto the sprites realistically, and they wouldn't cast shadows. I had to find custom shaders online in order to make our characters blend into the game without looking like they were poorly photoshopped in. I also needed to make shaders for the fire torches aswell.

Simply changing the color grading wouldn't have made it feel atmospheric enough. I also added volumetric fog everywhere in the forest. I also added dust particles that spawn and float around when you walk around, adding to the vibe. I also added a noticeable bloom and depth of field effect to give it a sort of dreamy feel.

Optimizing the game was one of the hardest parts of developing the game. We had so many shaders, particles, and post-processing going on that it was going to be hard to run the game on laptops on presentation day. In order to optimize the game, I had to tweak the LODs of the game objects and utilize occlusion culling. On top of this, I also added a settings menu in the main menu of the game with graphics and resolution settings, so that if some of our computers needed lower graphics or could handle higher graphics, we could change it on a computer-by-computer basis instead of having to go into the code. After all of that, all of our computers were able to run the game with good graphics.

Scene with post processing and fog volume (top) and scene with no processing (bellow)

Occlusion culling visualization window (bellow)

Screenshot gallery

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