HaberDashers
Role
Track & Conveyance Designer
Game Engine
Unreal Engine 4.23
Platform
PC (Windows)
Development Time
4 Months, 2020
Team Size
54 People (18 Designers)
HaberDashers Trailer
Screenshots
Roles and Responsibilities
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Worked as part of track team and conveyance strike team. Documentation updates on visual, audio, UI needs, creating maps, integrating track layout with the environment and ensuring everyone on those teams were aware of the changes.
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Cross communication from start to finish with various strike teams and advocating team needs to leads. This ranged from different 3D assets for environments to color communication within the VFX. Every decision that went into this game came from collaborative efforts to make the best player experience possible. And to top it off, we made this happen during the first months of Covid 19!
Track Design
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I started off working on the track team.
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Building the concept idea and working with the track team for the Bathroom Track implementation.
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Also helped building the concept for the Kitchen Track.
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Through the efforts of the strike team, we were able to come up with a track that serves as a spectacular final track with some fun “wow” moments, such as jumping over flames, driving through dust, and leaping through a tight shortcut at the starting line.
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Living Room Track - A space designed to feel comfy and homey. The lighting is relaxed and the track has a balance of jumps and curves.
Bathroom Track - Cool colors and long curves make for a drifting experience. The spirals out of the bathtub and up the toilet were brought on because of the spiral mountain design I made during paper mapping
Kitchen Track - The prototype team and I wanted a thrilling track with lots of wow moments for the final level. This track uses thrills like lit burners and falling sand to test driving skill
User Experience Work
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When I was moved to a two person conveyance strike team, we were tasked with making sure that every aspect of the game conveyed well through the lens of standard players, while considering it through the lens of accessibility. We consulted with an artist that helped us through the considerations of red-green colorblindness, which I found to be a great eye opener. We took our knowledge and applied it across the UI, VFX, and art teams. We also worked closely with the sound team to make sure that all actions a player could do had a satisfying audio accompaniment.
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This document was a collaborative effort between myself and my teammate, James Nicholson. We carefully planned and coordinated with every team on HaberDashers. We spent about a month compiling the conveyance needs for each element of the final product. After week 2 of working on conveyance, we were moved to an online workspace due to the rapid spread of Covid 19. Despite that, we were able to generate an extensive document whose elements are represented in the final version of the game.
Tackling Conveyance Problems with my teammate, James Nicolson
Conveyance Design Document
Arrow Asset used across the Tracks for Directional Conveyance
Post Mortem
What Went Well ?
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Each team I worked with had excellent communication skills.
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When the team went virtual, the transition was smooth and people took to meeting in zoom easily.
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No stone left un-turned with conveyance, we made a point of involving every person that needed to be involved, which lead to thorough examinations of how conveyance elements could be done.
What Went Wrong ?
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Documentation took a long time. This was through no fault of anyone, conveyance was just a larger beast than anticipated.
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Documentation distribution got muddied. There was a centralized area for documents to live at, but not every document made it there.
What I Learned ?
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Communication was the key.
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Everything must be organized well in order to be effective.
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If you want people to use a tool, they need to be able to find it. That goes doubly for documentation.
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Keep up communications with everyone, even if it’s through a quick message on slack or via email. There are always people that decisions effect.
