StarGrazer
StarGrazer is a shoot-em-up game that focuses on cinematic spectacle and stylish flair. The game tells the story of a lone bounty hunter whose mission is to destroy the leaders of an enemy planet all by themselves. StarGrazer’s main challenge is defeating bosses and avoiding the enemies’ bullets along with other bizarre attacks thrown their way.
StarGrazer was created for UCF’s Game Design Workshop class with a team of 11 people.
My Role: Programmer
Implemented the Cinemachine Unity package to create transitions between different styles of gameplay
Devised a system for enemy spawning and enemy/player interaction
Communicated with team members to complete programming objectives
A Learning Experience
Out of all the projects I worked on over the course of my undergraduate experience, I would say this one was the largest learning experience. This is by far the largest team I had worked with on a game before, and the interactions and workflow learning curve were critical for me to learn. It truly drove home the importance of team coordination and cooperation is, and how even one person holding up the pipeline can cause the entire project to stall. Throughout this project, I learned the importance of making one’s voice heard when working on a project, knowing what is feasible and what is unrealistic, and making sure concerns and issues are known.
On the technical side of things, my technical ability and coding at the start of the project is almost embarrassing to look at now. I think this is largely in part to working through a lot of issues myself, but also having two other competent coders working along side me. I was also taking Game Tools and Plugins at the time, and learned more in that class than I did in 75% of my other undergraduate classes combined. After a few months on the projects, I wish I could have restarted it with all the knowledge I had gained so I could tackle things differently.
