Hover Havoc
While on my university placement at Canalside Studios I was part of the team that created Hover Havoc in the Unity engine and released it onto Steam. During my time there I handled task management alongside programming many of the features in the game.
Features I added include:
- Level traps and features
- Player Powerups
- Local Multiplayer
- AI Opponents
- UI Implementation
- Developer tools/Command console
After around four months of development I spent around 3 weeks to refactor the entire game. This was to apply a lot of the techniques I had picked up during my time there making it run far more smoothly while also setting it up so new levels and mechanics could be added with ease. The first build required a lot of manual set up but after the rebuild a new level was as simple as creating a new scene, adding the level model and dragging in the GameManager prefab and it was playable.
The level I enjoyed working on the most was the Iceberg. It came about from spit balling level ideas and a map that crumbles over the duration of the match peaked my interest. I got one of the designers to create an Iceberg and cut the model into chunks which I added a script to that randomised triggering the effect of gravity on each piece with the random duration of each being related to how close to the centre of the model they were. We went from idea to playable demo within one day and I was really impressed by the team’s workflow.
The team managed to get the game through Greenlight, it was released in July 2016 and is currently available on Steam.