John Currie Portfolio of Work

Fud’s Flavor Fury

I saw the ‘FUD Quest RPG’ synopsis on the Second Dinner site and couldn’t resist an opportunity to make a fun little demo that illustrates some of my skills and experience in game development. I spent my weekend building a vertical slice of a take on Second Dinner’s mascot, Fud, battling it out against the spice bandits in a simple top-down demo. Stop the Spice Bandits and collect as much of the Flavor Dust as you can to bring back the flavor that was stolen, in Fud’s Flavor Fury!

See below for additional details on implementation

Engineering Skills/Techniques Demonstrated in the Game:

• Persistent Data/Versioning: I created a simple save system for storing the player’s all-time Flavor Dust total, that persists between game sessions. I intentionally created a “version 1” data schema and a migration tool for automatically migrating a save file in the old schema to the updated “version 2” data schema.
• Cloud integration: I set up an AWS Lambda & API gateway, writing a “Global Kill Count” service in C# .NET to read & write data to a persistent DynamoDB table on AWS servers. Any player that ever plays the game on any device contributes to, and can view, this value.
• Design Tools: In Unity I used Scriptable Objects exhaustively for all gameplay parameters: movement speed, animation timing, animation curves, enemy spawning, audio assets, etc., to facilitate easy updates from designers and other non-engineers.
• Game polish: I added code-based idle and active animations using DOTween to add life to gameplay characters and objects. I used particle systems and trail renderers for visual effects, and applied simple post-processing effects for enhancing the overall look. I made use of Cinemachine and Unity’s Player Input system for player movement and camera controls. Object pools keep things performant in the process. Tiered collectible objects with varying rewards and visual effects.

How would I improve the game?

It’s tough to get a full game done in a weekend, though I’m proud of what I got done in the time I had. That said, what would I add or improve if I had more time to spend on the project?

• Enemies: Add additional enemies. Could utilize existing art with different colored bandanas to have a few different bandit types (ex one with a blue bandana that uses the slingshot and shoots projectiles), or add totally unique additional enemies
• Weapons: Add additional weapons like a Chili Bomb AOE weapon that can be picked up as play progresses
• Visuals: Screen shake on taking damage or explosions, character animations in Spine, additional terrain elements (different terrain regions, streams, trees)
• Dialogue system: Add basic story with dialogue
• UI: Add settings menu for resetting game data, changing gameplay settings, etc., add a pause screen, inventory, etc.
• Audio: Adjust to make audio spatial, add music system for fading BGM in and out over an ambient backing track, and functionality to select random unique elements from audio clip lists to minimize SFX repetition
• Additional technical features:
  • Analytics for play pattern tracking
  • Rewarded Videos or In-app Purchases for cosmetics or Continues after a game over
  • Server-side game data for easy OTA updates
  • Data encryption / authentication