Taco: Hamster Hero

Designed and implemented 6 in-game levels

Led a team of 6 level designers

Came up with a procedure for rapid level implementation

Provided prompt feedback regarding level and environmental design

Held level design meetings, updating the team regarding new updates and design directions

Took an initiative during the initial design phase, discussing new mechanics that could be added

Designed and implemented in-game tutorial

Worked closely with audio, art, and development departments during development

Took responsibility to lead the team of 20+ people for the last 3 months of development

Restructured work of the team to ship the project to meet the shipping date

Held team meetings, updating the team on the current progress and plans

Presented project progress during sprint meetings, answering questions and taking responsibility for the team’s progress

Even though I had a lot of previous experience working in the team, team size never exceeded 9 people. Breakers World on its peek had more than 30 people working on the project at the same time. With number of people increasing rapidly, we as a team had to comeup with procedure to the optimise team’s work. By assigning teammates to department leadership positions and shifting the team to agile development we were able to optimize team’s work and ship the project on time.

During the development of Breakers World, the team ran into a situation when I was asked to step in first to lead level design position, then to lead designer position, and then to project lead position. Taking this responsibility with no prior leadership experience was a big challenge, but I was able to overcome it. By asking for advice from people with experience, extensive communication with the team, and by utilizing my previous professional experience I was able to successfully step into the new role and lead the team towards the shipping on time.

Breakers World is utilizing the combination of multiple packs of paid assets from Unreal Marketplace. In previous games that I’ve worked on I never used assets that require such a huge level of attention in regards to alignment and lighting. Also, different asset packs have different ways of using them in regards to shadow resolution maps, placement and etc. I was able to overcome this challenge through extensive research of documentation and trial and error when building the levels. I was also able to come up with a procedure for level implementation for each different asset pack and explain it to other level designers, which helped us optimize the level implementation process.

Breakers World originally started on Unreal Engine 4.27 version, but when the project was already in the middle of development the new version of Unreal Engine came out. As a team we’ve made a decision to switch to the new version in order to utilize the new tools like Lumen and Nanite to their full potential. This change required us to completely refracture all the lighting on multiple levels and completely change our approach to lighting. I was able to overcome this challenge by extensive research of new lighting systems using documentation and experimentation, given that at the time there was very little amount of guidance regarding Lumen. By trying the new system out I was able to come up with a new procedure to implement lighting and also explain all new changes to other level designers.