Steven Kastelec
Game & Systems Designer
Brief Description
A alternate controller game where you play as a bat trying to fly through a cave using echo location.
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Made In
Unity
My Role
Programmer
Lead designer
Challenges
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Leading a team
While I feel comfortable saying I have led a couple of teams on prior projects, this one stands out because it was the first time I worked with people I didn't know and didn't know me. It was difficult in the beginning because people weren't comfortable with each other and weren't willing to share ideas. So to try and get things rolling, I would constantly put out ideas, both good and terrible, to show that they had nothing to fear.
That helped get the team going but they still needed some direction as people had certain strengths and weaknesses. I understood this and would pair people according to their strengths so they could learn off each other while still having a part to play in the games creation.
Alternate controller
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This game also provided the first time where I had to create my own controller for a game. while i worked with both traditional Xbox and Playstation controllers, making one specifically to fit the game was both challenging and a lot of fun. Early on we decided we wanted to create a flying simulator where you would have to flap wings for your movement. the problem was creating a controller that could simulate that movement. the solution was to create double thick cardboard wings that could hold a Wii remote and use the Wii remotes motion sensor to detect when the wings were being flapped. This helped us detect movement but also helped isolate which wing was being moved at a given time allowing for both left, right and upward motion.
Echo Location​
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This was a mechanic I was tasked to build for the game. while we liked the flying, the team still felt like there was something more needed for the game. the idea was to make it so players had to scream into a microphone in order to see further into the level. the problem was having to use voice as an input. This was a unique situation for me as i had never thought let along programmed a mechanic like this. i had to do a ton of research on microphones but learned how to use Unity's Audio source component and link it with a connected microphone. from there i created ways for the microphone to only pick up voice input rather than ambient noise by changing the threshold of the mic. i was then able to find the strength of the input and used that to update the size of a inverted sphere that would get bigger with more input and slowly shrink as no input was detected.
Showing the Echo location mechanic in real time
A look at the design of our wing