This year was comprised of three modules:​Comprehensive Creative Technologies Project - The Dissertation Module - Most of my time went into developing this. - A measured discussion on XR Technologies and their application in rehabilitating patients with physical impairments of the upper extremities Take a look at the final outputs here: Commercial Games Development - A module in which we explored the game developent pipeline, from idea conception to being ready to ship. - Final Output is WarLocks - a four player, local splitscreen, spell-slinging deathmatch. Check out the final output here: https://youtu.be/wrQJFBgRQy8​Advanced Technologies Research Projects 2 Research Projects: - Can Controllers be used to create novel gameplay? - Can you teach a machine learning agent to play two games? Outputs are available here: Machine Learning:

Year two introduced modules specialising in Engine Programming, Gameplay Programming, Level Design, and Advanced C++ Programming.Engine Programming involved researching and evaluating methods available to produce typical feature required for a game. My Project involved comparing methods available for producing convincing Fur/Hair Effects in Unity & Unreal. This was demonstrated through two parallel in-engine projects, as well as a post-mortem style technical report.Gameplay Programming involved designing a practical portfolio piece showcasing common Gameplay Features using Unity. Deliverables included: 1. A 3rd person avatar with camera relative controls2. A camera controller that could switch between modes such as a follow camera, a cutscene view, a spline sequence, and a lock-on camera3. Use of Unity's timeline system to quickly and effectively create cutscenes, and some moving platforms4. Combat ready enemy AI5. Powerups and collectibles that affected the avatar in some way6. A platforming sequence along a spline that relied on linear interpolation to calculate camera position.7. UI and Particle effects as a method of appropriate feedback to the playerThis evolved into a group project involving taking the best features of each member’s individual portfolio, and splicing them into one final game that had all features present.Level Design asked us to produce a report assessing the level design of a shipped AAA game of our choice, followed by taking what we’d learned and producing a level design portfolio piece in Unreal EngineAdvanced C++ continued the trend of completing tasks, however this time involved more complex topics such as importing tilemaps and rendering them as world sprites and networking for local networked multiplayer using the host device as a server and then creating instances of virtual clients. – This culminated in having to produce a group game to client specification involving single screen local multiplayer.

The expected goal of this year was to develop our foundational knowledge of various game development workflows.This involved some holistic topics such as best practice Game Design Theory, Radical Game Design, understanding player psychology, wider game production pipelines and international laws and regulation to consider when launching to certain markets.Technical theory cemented understanding of core programming concepts such as OOP, Algorithms and Data Structures, best practice Coding Standards, Memory management via Stacks and Heaps, sorting Algorithms, State Machines, Behaviour Trees, Pathfinding and leveraging Multiplayer Technologies. Practical application of our learning came through using a handful of industry standard tools to produce portfolio ready projects. These included modelling and animating an airship asset to a given client specification, Using AutoDesk Maya, then importing said asset for use in a playable demo level made with UnityAnother project involved realizing a Mobile Game from idea pitch to a live demo as part of a team. This was also done using Unity We were also tasked with developing a series of portfolio pieces made using C++ and SFML. These had to mimic classic arcade games in gameplay and mechanics, with art assets and other twists up to us.