RyanHerwig

Runes Vs. Robots

Runes Vs. Robots is a 3D Tower Defense game, where the player builds the path that the enemies follow. As the player is tasked also create the track with towers, they need to balance the quality of their defense and the length of the track on a very thin line, as both require the same resource. All hope is not lost, as the player has one last trump card. They can use mana to cast spells to turn the tide in their favor. Whether you choose to short circuit the robots, give them false orders, or simply destroy them, it is all in the hands of the player.

This game was produced remotely by a revolving team which never exceeded more than 10 members at any given moment. Due to the nature of the team, all members - especially leaders - had to adapt to an ever changing team list, learned how to work with dozens of different people, and required strong communication skills.
Built in Unity.

Role

Team Lead / Producer / Programmer

What Did I Contribute?

Team Lead / Lead Programmer

As a team lead, one of my core principles was to ensure the team's goals were met, which included the improvement in each member's respective disciplines. Additionally, I led the meetings, where the team discussed the next course of action, gave progress reports, and gave constructive criticism. Due to the revolving team, I was also responsible for screening potential new members, making sure the team was balanced and that they were a good fit for the team.
Before I was team lead, I was the programming lead, where I delegated tasks to the person I thought it fit the best. Additionally, I kept the quality to a certain standard and gave feedback to people to improve their code.

Producer

As the producer, one of my responsibilities were to keep the team organized and on task. To accomplish this, I used Mirio and Trello for brainstorming and task delegation respectively. Additionally, I prepared an excel document that held when tasks should be done alongside numerous documents outlining what was expected for the task.

Game Loop

While Lead Programmer, my first goal was to create an efficient and bug-free environment for the game. To accomplish this, I created an organized loop that controlled all other aspects of the game. With this, it removed numerous potential bugs, such as a list being read while a different area was writting into it. To make the game as efficient as possible, I utilized object pooling to spawn the enemies, which made the game only spawn as many enemies as it needed and to reuse enemies that were no longer active. With this system, the game did not need to expend resources to repetively create and destroy enemy objects.

Tower Behavior

Another task I had as Lead Programmer was creating all of the towers, and later their upgrades, that we had during that time. The main aspect of this task was creating a system that allowed the player to place towers, but restricting tower placement in certain areas, such as in water or on top of another tower. Another key task was the tower targetting system. To allow the player to have complete control of the game and to allow more micro strategies, I developed a numerous targeting strategies and allowed the player to choose, and change at any time, which strategy each individual tower will follow.

Sound System

Unsatisfied with the performance of the default sound system, I took it upon myself to create a new sound system that was more efficient and easier to use. To make the system more efficient, I used object pooling for all of the sounds. Additionally, due to the same sound clip needing to be played, usually over-lapping, the system created a new instance of the same audio file when the sound needed to be overlapped. The system came with various changeable options, such as where the sound should be played, if it should be looped, if the sound should be played in a 3D setting, and so much more.

Sound System Custom Inspector

To make the sound system easier to use, I created a custom inspector for the audio files. This inspector contained every possible option for the sound to have, which included some options that were usually hidden. To not overwhelm the user, I created a toggle to show the advanced sound options, so that anyone could easily create a new sound file for the game, but a person who is disciplined in sound could also use the advanced sound options.

Runes Vs. Robots

Role

What Did I Contribute?

Team Lead / Lead Programmer

Producer

Game Loop

Tower Behavior

Sound System

Sound System Custom Inspector

Links

Itch.io

More Games

Contact me

Github

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