Skye

SKYE is a relaxing explorative game where you venture into a world inspired by the Western Isles. Fly around the captivating islands, help the locals with their troubles, and set the fastest time in races while absorbing everything around you through the painterly environment.
I was part of this team during the concept, pre-production phase of the project.

  • Technology Used:
    Visual Studio, Jira, Jenkins, Perforce
  • Student Year:
    Third Year
  • Platform(s):
    Windows
  • Engine:
    Unity (concept, pre-production phase), Unreal Engine 4 (remainder)
  • Development Time:
    16 weeks
  • Programming Language(s):
    C#
  • Team Size:
    6 programmers, 7 designers, 6 artists, 1 producer

Role(s):

  • Engine Programmer
  • Gameplay Programmer

Highlighted Contribution(s)

Flight prototypes:
During the prototype phase of the game I worked closely with designers to establish a good prototype for the flight controls and feeling. A large part of the game is flying around, therefore it was important to start early, do a lot of playtesting and take inspiration from games such as War Thunder, My Sims SkyHeroes, and the Wii Sports Resort Flight minigame. On the bottom of the page an early demo can be found showcasing the final prototype I worked on.


Level Streaming:
The original design called for a large open world with lots of moving parts. To support this I conducted research in both Unity's and Unreal's handling of large worlds and level streaming. Unity recently came out with DOTS (Data Oriented Technology Stack), after experimenting with their flight demo, I implemented a similar level streaming scheme in our project and pushed it to the max. The video on the right shows multiple scene files dynamically loaded in using DOTS to move around 300 flying gnomes. This demo helped visualize to the team the raw power DOTS could provide our project.



Painterly Effect:
Skye's art direction called for a painterly style of rendering. We worked on a such an effect, however it got scrapped once Skye moved from Unity to Unreal. Hannes Vernooij and I decided to continue this project in our free time, more about this project can be found here.



Early Demo

Trailer