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Portfolio of Most Recent Projects

This page contains a mix of mockups, screenshots, and gifs, generally with short notes explaining what is going on and where to get more information. Each of these projects was either completely done by Mark@DigitalDragonSlayers.com or he was the lead and main contributor for the project.

♻️Gestalt: Scavenger

{July 2021 - present}

Gestalt: Scavenger is my first attempt at a large scale game with many of my favorite game mechanics.

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Game Design

CC&C {camera, character, and control}

  • Top Down camera
  • WASD movement
  • aim and fire weapons with the mouse
  • hotkeys to select tools, weapons, blocks, and use abilities

Level Design

  • multi-level, pseudo generated space ship wrecks as dungeons
  • grind down blocks to collect components from them
  • build new blocks with those components
  • use blocks to solve puzzles, to fix broken ships, and to upgrade your own space ship
  • Build up a fleet of salvaged ships to get ready for the next experience
  • mine ores from asteroids
  • refine ores into ingots
  • use ingots to build more components, to build more blocks

Story

{TBD}

Persistence

All of this happens in a persistent universe, hosted in the cloud, so if you leave a refinery block refining raw ores you collected from an asteroid and you are gone for 10 hours, your refinery worked on those ores for 10 hours while you were gone (assuming your ship had enough power).

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👾 Untitled Guns and Drones Game

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Check out the full review here: 🔫Untitled Guns and Drones: Retrospective
Action up front and personal.
Action up front and personal.
The player spawn unit has a green aura around it to indicate it is a healing sphere. The Goal indicators in the top left give the player instructions on how to further use the friendly spawn unit. Under its own power, it generates a set amount of meta-metal every second and eventually would spawn a friendly drone, but you can inject meta-metal into it by stepping close to it and holding F — allowing it to spawn friendly drones at a accelerated rate.
The player spawn unit has a green aura around it to indicate it is a healing sphere. The Goal indicators in the top left give the player instructions on how to further use the friendly spawn unit. Under its own power, it generates a set amount of meta-metal every second and eventually would spawn a friendly drone, but you can inject meta-metal into it by stepping close to it and holding F — allowing it to spawn friendly drones at a accelerated rate.
All of the spawned resources (called meta-metal in this prototype) glow gold to make their value obvious and the pickups easy to see.
All of the spawned resources (called meta-metal in this prototype) glow gold to make their value obvious and the pickups easy to see.
Still capturing the player's attention with light.
Still capturing the player's attention with light.
For everything that can take damage, it gets a health bar after one shot.
For everything that can take damage, it gets a health bar after one shot.

Sci-Fi Top Down Prototype

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Check out the full retrospective on this prototype over at 🎮Sci-Fi Top Down 2.1 Prototype: Retrospective
Multiple weapons firing where the mouse points.
Multiple weapons firing where the mouse points.
Boss room with multiple area aware turrets, gauntlet like spawners, and a super heavy boss at the head of the room.
Boss room with multiple area aware turrets, gauntlet like spawners, and a super heavy boss at the head of the room.
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Tab key zoom to "strategy" view.
Tab key zoom to "strategy" view.
Zoom is live and you can control the character when zoomed out.
Zoom is live and you can control the character when zoomed out.
Higher levels add in multistory dungeons.
Higher levels add in multistory dungeons.
Seeing the lower dungeon thanks to free camera control.
Seeing the lower dungeon thanks to free camera control.

Luna Nova: Battle Simulator

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For the full project details — see the 🌘Luna Nova: Battle Simulator: Retrospective

I was working on this game back in the Unity 4.x days in my free time but was not able to complete my game design before the framework was deprecated and removed from the asset store. Through an early build, I am able to recover some of the look and feel of the "Asteroids" like game components, but the larger Moba work is lost in the sands of time.

To see more on the art, story, and music I also arranged for the game, check out the 🌘Luna Nova: Battle Simulator: Retrospective

Aim with the mouse, zero G, rear thrusters only. Later we added WASD thruster movement and a locked camera perspective, but that is not available in this older build.
Aim with the mouse, zero G, rear thrusters only. Later we added WASD thruster movement and a locked camera perspective, but that is not available in this older build.
Visually all of the weapons were distinct and exciting and each came with strength and weaknesses when it came to taking on different density, size, and speeds of asteroids.
Visually all of the weapons were distinct and exciting and each came with strength and weaknesses when it came to taking on different density, size, and speeds of asteroids.
The shop was a proof of concept and was very text heavy, but it got the job done.
The shop was a proof of concept and was very text heavy, but it got the job done.

RPG: Master Architect

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This project is ongoing as of the writing of this portfolio — but you can follow the progress over at the 🎲RPG: Master Architects page.
Top down, point and click to move mode
Top down, point and click to move mode
First person mode. In this shot, I do not have anything in my inventory or on my hotbar, but I am about to pickup the shotgun.
First person mode. In this shot, I do not have anything in my inventory or on my hotbar, but I am about to pickup the shotgun.
The enemy taking damage, animating, and reflecting the damage (and their energy use) on their world space HUD.
The enemy taking damage, animating, and reflecting the damage (and their energy use) on their world space HUD.
This is a loot weapon dropped by the enemy after defeating them.
This is a loot weapon dropped by the enemy after defeating them.

Aura 2: Asset MVG

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My modern experience with Unity started with buying a lot of assets, importing them into a fresh project, and taking them apart to learn how they worked. Along that journey, I crated a few small minimal viable games such as this one based on the Aura 2 asset. To see my whole review on this asset head over to 🏹Asset Review: Aura 2 - Volumetric Lighting & Fog
Aura 2 Bleeding through the cutouts in a cave wall. This is in real time on a GTX 980 from 4 generations ago. No fancy ray tracing here, just beautiful
Aura 2 Bleeding through the cutouts in a cave wall. This is in real time on a GTX 980 from 4 generations ago. No fancy ray tracing here, just beautiful
Aura2 with a frosted sphere.
Aura2 with a frosted sphere.
Spotlight searching for the player hiding behind the box.
Spotlight searching for the player hiding behind the box.
Player using point and click to move to avoid the spotlight as it rotates around searching for the player.
Player using point and click to move to avoid the spotlight as it rotates around searching for the player.

SEMT: Space Engineers Market Tracker

A data parser backend written in python and a web viewer frontend for the trade marked data in a persistent Space Engineers server.

After parsing the persistent universe data store, this tool presents players the ability to search through and visualize multiple aspects of the in game economy.

Below is the Figma mockup I designed for the first interface:

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Here is the normalized SQL relationship model for all the data pulled from the Space Engineer's persistent universe and stored in the SQL database:

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SEWA: Space Engineers Web API (and Interface)

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This project was a combination of a plugin to the dedicated Space Engineers server and a web front end which allowed users to authenticate into their persistent universe stations and ships. Once authenticated, the user could see and change the basic configuration, move content around, and view the various states of all game objects attached to the authenticated grid. After completing the SEWA api and web app, the plan was to create new game experiences beyond what the core game offered and monetize custom skins and
The most up to date mockup based on google design language for large volumes of data (such as what we had in this interface for most of our players).
The most up to date mockup based on google design language for large volumes of data (such as what we had in this interface for most of our players).
A previous generation mockup of the SEWA web app utilizing a multi-column and multi-tab view.
A previous generation mockup of the SEWA web app utilizing a multi-column and multi-tab view.
Want to know when you have completed refining all that iron ore you mined yesterday? Or do you want to get texted whenever your inventory of bullets drops over at one of your defense turrets?
Want to know when you have completed refining all that iron ore you mined yesterday? Or do you want to get texted whenever your inventory of bullets drops over at one of your defense turrets?
SEWA platform architecture
SEWA platform architecture

My oldest sketches for the SEWA and dashboard interfaces. All of these mockups are very text heavy, so hover over each and click on "Original" to see the max resolution to read what each element was meant to do for the game.

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The full mockup UI design for SEWA for the control panel, inventory, and notification managers:

SEWA Control, Inventory, notification manager.pdf947.8KB
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There are many other types of projects that our team has engaged in, particularly centered around media streaming and backend development that we don't mention here. These are only the most recent full stack and front end game projects designed and implemented by DigitalDragonSlayers.