Lead Engineer / Network Engineer
Sept 20' - May 21'
Made game network stable from it being non-networked as we entered production, Managed three other programmers while maintaining our netcode stability and overall handling large chunks of gameplay implementation. Handled Steamworks webpage and uploading game using SteamTools.
Overview
"JunkPunk” is an action packed, punk inspired, junk and wire robotic combat game. Build your robot to suit your play style, and compete in the arena, where robots rip each other apart piece by piece in hack-slash-and-shoot brawl.
Team
Our team started as a team of five, with a every domain having one person assigned with the exception of two designers.
- Lead Producer: Riley Dickerson
- Lead Artist: Brooke Pendleton
- Lead Programmer + Networking Programmer: Jake Rose (me)
- Lead Level Designer / Product Owner: Tyler Lamon
- Lead Systems + QA Designer: Max Weintraub
After making it through to next semester, we were able to recruit these amazing people to join Eggs w/ Legs. Here are the great team members we were lucky to acquire.
- Assistant Producer: Wolfgang Westdorp
- 3D Prop/Enviorment Artist: Patrick Tennant
- 3D Prop/Character Artist: Olga Kachura
- Combat Programmer: Connor Ramsden
- UX/VFX Programmer: Dante Xystus
- Generalist/Physics Programmer: Bradley Chamberlin
- Narrative Designer: Zachary Neiheiser
- Sound Designer: Filippo Scarfo
Screenshots
Project History
Junkpunk was created as our Capstone project at Champlain College.
Here is the video we presented after three hard months of work by everyone on the team. The game is judged based on both the current state of the game/build, as well as the viability/probability of success in scaling up to a larger team! Half the teams are then selected to move forward and sbsorb the other teams. Our team moved forward.
Onboarding
I knew that if our game made it through, we were going to scale up a lot. Due to this, I put a lot of extra time into our Technical Plan and Risk Analysis, which I have included here. I put a lot of time into making sure all the programmers knew enough of the foundational systems that they could start up the project and get going quickly!
Networking Added Late
We were also told as a requirement for us to move forward, our game needed to be networked. This was mainly due to the pandemic and the difficulty of testing this in person. Over the winter break I worked tirelessly to get our networking operational to a point I felt confident we could move forward with the new members of the team joining once break was over. This was successful.
We then took the team and divided up our roles to give proper ownership to all members and give them their respective domain.