Voyager Project is a local co-operative experience that requires two players to work together in entirely unique roles as they explore Eos, a space station beneath the surface of Pluto. It was developed in Unity, with a team of nine, as part of the capstone project for the Bachelor of Games and Interactivity at Swinburne University of Technology, from March to November 2018. It was then showcased at PAX Australia 2018.
In October 2018 Voyager Project was one of six games selected for the Student Showcase at the GCAP 2018 conference for game development, and was later nominated for the “Student Game Award” and “Excellence in Design” categories at the Freeplay Awards 2019, in Melbourne.
For this project I worked as the lead programmer and a designer. As a designer I collaborated with the team to design the mechanics and puzzles, with a focus on creating a balanced experience for both players. In particular, I was responsible for designing and prototyping the mechanics which would allow both players to interact.
As lead programmer I worked with a core team of three other programmers, and my role included team leadership, coordination with other disciplines, task planning and delegation, code documentation and review, and the designing and implementing of several core features of the game.
One of the features I designed and worked on was a completely original network architecture, which included a server console program and the corresponding client-side code and user interface. This was created from the ground up, using the .NET framework independently of Unity, due to the unique nature of the game design.
Other features that I was responsible for include a power system, which allowed interactive objects to be powered by connected generators and circuit breakers, and several designer tools which helped to visualise code systems and assist the testing and debugging process.
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Matthew Harvey 