2024
PC - Unity
Ore Operator
You’ve been hired to keep Stevo’s mine in order! balance metal orders and the mine’s pH before the fines roll in!
Role: Lead Programmer
About The Project
Ore operator is a mining management game where players must complete orders of metals while also managing the waste that gets produced.
If waste is left out for too long, the pH of the mine goes up, giving players fines if it goes over certain amounts.
Summary of work and contributions
Only programmer on team
Programmed backend systems for the level manager to track the fines, pH and orders completed
Programmed scripts for processing stations and waste stations to allow designers to customise them easily in editor
Programmed shader colour changer for the water
Programmed scalable tutorial system
Created the in game UI
Aided in optimisation for the game by identifying resource intensive areas
Project Outcomes
This project was my first experience collaborating with an industry partner, and it was a valuable opportunity to develop a wide range of skills, including scope management, game optimisation, and designing user-friendly scripts for designers.
As the sole programmer on the team, we had to significantly reduce the project's scope over time. To streamline development and empower the artist/designer on our team to contribute more effectively, I designed the scripts to be highly customisable within the Unity editor.
Throughout the project, I also gained important insights into game optimisation. Late in development, we discovered that the game performed poorly on lower-end systems, which pushed me to learn how to use Unity's performance analyser to find the resource intensive areas of the game
Gameplay Video
My Process
The Project Brief
This game was developed for IGB200 Game Studio 2 at QUT, where we had to design a game for an industry partner. My team was given a brief from INAP to create an educational game to teach highschool to uni students about Acid metalliferous drainage (AMD) that occurs at mines.
My team originally consisted of two programmers including myself, a designer and an artist. Early in the project, our other programmer left the unit, leaving me as the sole programmer for the team.
Early Development
During early development, my team spent 2 weeks researching AMD and its prevention methods. We found that the common practices for AMD prevention was proper waste management. The two common methods was either dry or wet storage.
Our target audience being highschool to uni students meant we had to pick a game idea that was engaging enough for them to play. We decided that a fast paced game like Overcooked would be a good game to take inspiration from. Players could associate different stations with different mitigation and refinement techniques while they played.
I was in charge of the early story boarding for the game
Further Development
During development, most of my time was spent trying to figure out ways to cut down development time as one of the largest setbacks was our other programmer leaving the unit early in the semester. This left me as the only programmer on the team and meant that the team had to rethink the scope of the game. So in order to help with development time, I spent time to make sure the scripts were customisable within the editor. This allowed for even the artist/designer of the team to make quick changes if we needed to which significantly aided in development times and meant I could dedicate more of my time on new features.
The scripts for the stations such as the waste storage and ore processing stations allowed for quick changes to their stats, models and even shader colours if needed. In my team's discord server I kept the team notified of how the scripts behaved so that the team knew how to modify the scripts.
Late Development
By late development, the game had made a few changes to reduce the scope or to improve the gameplay experience. Some of the notable aspects removed was the extra levels, weather and money. The game was reduced to just a tutorial level and a main level. The tutorial featured a scalable dialogue and tutorial system that I had programmed to work with glowing triggers that guide the player. Since we had cut the extra levels, I programmed a randomiser to change the location of the stations for each playthrough.
A major feature that was added later in development was the water colour changes. This addition to the level manager allowed the colour to update based on the pH and was a better visual indicator for the player.
My team also found that the game ran poorly on lower end systems. By learning how to use Unity's profiler we had identified that the art assets were the cause and dedicated time to fix it before submission
