About Anchor

Jaywalkers

Infinite Runner Personal Project

Coded audio, animation, object physics interactions, player controls, user interface, and gameplay loop.
Utilized object pooling to develop an optimized endless course with diverse obstacles, objectives, powerups, and purchasable upgrades.
Programmed a save / load data system as well as an online leaderboard utilizing Google Firebase to keep track of player progression and encourage competition.
Improved immersion by implementing post-processing effects and creating cutscenes with the Unity Timeline and Cinemachine tools.

Overview: I embarked on the 10-month journey to create Jaywalkers so that I could practice C#, Unity game engine systems, and networking.

Challenge: During the development of Jaywalkers, one challenge I encountered was project optimization. In the past I thought optimization was something to be cautious about only when making a mobile or AAA sized game until my super computer could no longer efficiently process the lowpoly world for more than 15 FPS. I learned the hard way that game performance is something to always keep an eye on from the beginning to the end of any and every project.

Solutions: To make the game run smoothly I learned how to use the Unity profiler tool and discovered performance heavy elements such as physics rigidbodies and lighting/rendering/post-processing. I addressed these performance issues by reducing rigidbody count with object-pooling, and reducing render draw calls by baking lighting and removing excess effects. I also discovered the technique of using mesh LOD's (Level of Detail) I plan to utilize in future projects which helps reduce the number of GPU operations that Unity requires to render distant meshes.