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DOOMED

A first-person boomer shooter inspired by DOOM

My Role

Project Lead on a team of four, and then once more on a new team of six

Contributions

Combat • Stylization • Onboarding • Abilities • Project management

Timespan

2 months during Gameplay Engineering, followed by 3.5 months during Playful Tech

Tech Stack

UE5 • GitLab • Git LFS • Canva • People

Context

DOOMED has been developed by a couple student teams during previous Gameplay Engineering semesters (GPE).

When GPE stopped existing, I contacted the Product Owner to advocate for continuing the project in the university's new Playful Tech studio. My initiative directly resulted in the project being kept alive.

At the start of my Playful Tech semester, I was asked to represent and pitch this project to a class of over 100 students. I was automatically assigned this project while every other student had to endure a vote.

Stylization Before & After

I redesigned the HUD because it was conveying unnecessary information while simultaneously missing essential information such as keybinds and cooldowns.

I iterated on the lighting & fog to make sure upcoming landmarks were barely visible to guide players and to reduce their cognitive load.

I created stylized shaders to give the game its own identity, and I restricted assets to three material types. This ensured that our assets, which are from different publishers, followed the same visual style.

Abilities

I improved on the game's gradual learning by having players discover runes to unlock abilities throughout the game. I paired each ability with a weapon, reducing the number of inputs players had to learn from four to one.

I made these abilities cost ammo instead of mana, because the mana system overcomplicated the game in a way that wasn't fun.

Other Combat Contributions

Melee • Expected reload behaviour • Emergent projectiles • Weapon swapping accessibility • Balancing

Project Management

As Project Lead, I defined the project's goals. I turned these goals in to issues, which I distributed across the team based on their strengths and their interests.

I kept the Product Owner informed about these goals, but also the project's progress, potential and important decisions by making exciting Canva presentations.

I viewed my role partly as a motivator. There wasn't a moment where I wasn't enthusiastic about the game, even during times where not everything went as planned, because I understand how my attitude influences both my teammates and the Product Owner.

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TETRIS AIRCONSOLE

A multiplayer Tetris® game designed to be played in cars

My Role

Game Developer on a team of nine, working closely with the Creative Director and Lead Developer

Contributions

Multiplayer stability • Lightning animation • UI, UX & interactions • Analytics

Timespan

The first 1.5 months of my internship

Tech Stack

Cocos Engine • TypeScript • AirConsole API • GameAnalytics API • Github • Figma • Jira • Slack

Context

Tetris AirConsole was developed by Wanted Game Studio for AirConsole's in-car gaming platform, where players use their phones as controllers while the game runs on a shared screen. I worked on this project during my internship at Wanted Game Studio.

Multiplayer Stability

I identified and resolved multiplayer edge cases when players joined or disconnected mid-session to prevent multiplayer sessions from becoming unnecessarily confusing or frustrating.

Lightning Animation

I implemented the logic behind a lightning effect that visually connects the line a player clears to the destination of the garbage they send. I iterated on it to make sure that the effect remained immediately readable without being too distracting.

I also proposed and implemented the same animation for levelling up in the Marathon mode, as I found that there was previously no visual feedback when the player reached a new level.

UI, UX & Interactions

I added landscape support, which improved the game's usability.

I implemented transitions and animations for both the controller and game screen. I made sure they adapted to any screen ratio so the game stayed consistent.

I built a prototype to test haptic feedback patterns on my own initiative. The Creative Director used my prototype to determine which actions should trigger which feedback. I then implemented those actions for both Android and iOS. These patterns ended up being a great improvement for input responsiveness.

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ENGAMINE

A graphics engine focused on high performance

My Role

Solo Developer

My Work

Rendering pipeline • Vertex & fragment shaders • Camera system • Game object system • Lighting

Timespan

4 weeks during my Gameplay Engineering semester

Tech Stack

C++ • Vulkan • Github

Context

During my gameplay engineering semester, we had a 4-week solo project where we were tasked to work on anything we wanted, such as a very cool game system or a shader. I was a teeny tiny bit ambitieus, and used this time to create a game engine.

The GIF shows me excited with my first cube.

Rendering Pipeline

Vertex buffer -> Input assembler -> Vertex shdaer -> Rasterization -> Fragment shader -> Color blending -> Frame Buffer (final render)

The advantage of Vulkan, is it allows for a flexible "Swapchain". It allows the GPU to render the next frame before having to wait for the display to be ready. If designed well, your engine will be 10000 gazzilions faster than something like OpenGL. If designed like ass, your engine will be 10000 gazzillions slower.

Lighting

Implemented point lights, directional lights and ambient light. The light underneath the well was shining through it because the normals of the floor were flipped. Shout-out to

Game Object System

Built a game object system similar to that of Unity, where each game object has its own list of components. This is useful for oganizing entities and behaviour.

My engine has 1 quintillion FPS

Amine El Hammdaoui

Technical Gameplay Designer

DOOMED

TETRIS AIRCONSOLE

ENGAMINE

Other Projects