Chimera

A 3D isometric action-focused roguelite about a long-forgotten experiment fighting to escape their embedded curse of imprisonment. Graft the limbs of defeated creatures to battle through an everchanging underground chamber.

Chimera has now been published and is available for purchase on Steam.

I worked with a team of 14 at Croc Pot Games to design and build out functionality for all systems from the ground up as the Programming Lead. I was responsible for delegating tasks to three other programmers while simultaneously implementing core functionality and overseeing source control throughout the project. The project took roughly 11 months to complete including the two patches we released after its initial release on August 8, 2024.

PLAYER combat system

I was responsible for many of the components that went into the player’s combat system including:

• Input handling compatible with multiple interfaces
• Player attack canceling and limb combos
• Player attack animation handling & blending
• Player attack hitbox timing
• Projectile object pooling
• Integrating VFX & SFX into attacks
• Limb-specific functionality such as the arm attacks seen here ->

room generation SYSTEM

I was responsible for the functionality of the procedurally generated dungeon rooms including:

• Generating plaques inside rooms that give the player the option to choose the creature they want to fight in the next room
• A flexible scriptable object pattern that allows for easily modifying rooms and their properties at runtime for easy debugging
• A tool for quickly progressing between rooms, spawning creatures, and changing various game states at runtime
• Developing the fade transition feature between rooms
• Scaling the creatures’ damage/health between rooms

FMOD AUDIO IMPLEMENTATION

Single-handedly learned and integrated FMOD’s API to overhaul Unity’s default audio system and setup all audio implementation including:

• Reactive parameterized music to health, pausing, and combat state
• An easily accessible way to play audio events within scripts
• Crossfade transitions between rooms and combat states
• Handling attenuation on enemy and environment SFX
• Handling differences between looping and one shot SFX
• Mixing almost all audio and setting up volume sliders

STEAMWORKS INTEGRATION

Single-handedly learned and integrated the Steamworks API into Unity so players could earn achievements for reaching milestones.

• Developed a flexible system for achievements to be added to (or removed from) a player’s Steam library
• Created a user interface for players to keep track of their progress of achievements and other data tracked in game
• Learned how to navigate the Steamworks platform to modify achievement data, upload builds, and much more

SHADERS N’ SUCH

I filled in as a technical artist on the team sometimes and I was able to successfully implement the following:

• A wall proximity shader to prevent the player being obstructed by foreground elements (and otherwise rendering a gray fill of the player silhouette on top)
• A dissolve shader on both the creatures and limb sprites to create a unique effect whenever creatures die or limbs are corrupted
• A red damage indication shader used to give a cue for when either the player or a creature takes damage
• Added a Fresnel effect onto creatures to help their emission stand out from the dark background elements