Game Designer / Technical Artist
Technical Artist
Peridot is a whimsical AR pet simulation game where you bond with and take care of pets in the real world utilizing your phone's camera. Collaborate with other players to hatch new generations of 100% procedurally generated creatures.
Roles | Technical Artist
Tools | Unity, Maya, Figma, Photoshop, Gitlab
Duration | June 2022 - Present
Team Size | 30+
Peridot Launched Worldwide May 9 2023
❖ 1 Million+ combined installs and players as of June 2023
❖ Rated 4.1 Stars on App Store
AR Mobile Pet Simulation Game
About:
I joined the Peridot team in June 2022, when it was in the mid-stage of open beta. The game looked adorable, but clearly the game needed more visual polish and gameplay improvements and additions before it could launch worldwide and captivate players in the world of Peridot.
Since then, I put my technical, artistic, and game design skills to polish, improve, and expand the creature behavior system and gameplay into a game that was suitable for worldwide launch and beyond.
My Role:
As a Technical Artist in Peridot, I primarily focused on:
1. Expanding creature animation & behavior systems.
2. Creating polished UI, including UI animations.
3. Gameplay & feature prototyping.
Other things that I did on the project include:
- creating developer debug tools
- giving design input and pitches for feature improvements/additions, much of which was implemented into the game
- Collaborating with leads and artists to resolve technical issues and ensure assets all meet the level of consistency, quality, and optimization that is needed.
- Unity profiling and optimization
> Here are a few examples of my work on the project. <
1. Expanding creature animation behavior systems
In order to make the creature's animation and behavior more robust and reactive to the player, I implemented various additions to the existing systems. These are some examples of the work that I did for creature behavior.
Petting:
When the player rubs their finger on the creature, it'll initiate a pet session. If they continue petting for long enough, the creature will start playing different animations. When the player stops petting, it'll end in a reaction based on how satisfied they were.
If the player double taps on the creature, it'll float up close to the player before transitioning back down after not being pet for some time.
Fetch:
The begging animation and happy jump reaction animation differs based on how attention-starved the creature is. If the creature is satisfied, it'll sleep instead.
The original creature locomotion system had forward movement only, so the creature would often do strange things such as slide on the ground and rotate while standing. I implemented turning animations into its locomotion system to have the creature move around more naturally, turning instead of sliding on its butt.
Multiple-target Head IK:
When the creature has a target to look at, it'll turn it's head toward the target to look at it. Each look goal has a priority, so that the creature will transition its looking direction to the highest priority goal (whether that be an object, or the player).
Tricks training is one example where the head IK is used, but it is also used in feeding, petting, and various other behaviors to make the creature feel more lifelike.
Various VFX creation and implementation:
Notice the creature walks up to a spot in front of the player when the player is holding the food. This is one of the navigation improvements that I worked on.
When a trick is successfully performed or mastered, the moment is celebrated using a burst of VFX and a happy reaction.
New evolution animation and VFX sequence
The creature loosely follows the player's screen position throughout the whole evolution sequence to ensure the player sees it. The animation was split into 2 parts, where the baby (or teen) would play the first part, then the model will be swapped out with a teen (or adult) to play the last part. Flashing vfx would cover up the transition between the two parts to result in an extravagant transition into the new life stage.
When the creature grows to the next stage, it must communicate with the server to update the player's Dot's life stage and then load in the new model. This means that the timing would vary depending on strength of online connection. In order to account for that variability, I used a combination of looping vfx and fixed timing vfx to make the transition as smooth as possible.
2. Creating and Polishing UI
I occasionally filled in the shoes of client engineers by programming UI and implementing art based on UX designer's mocks.
The following videos illustrate the various UI that I implemented using C#, unity UI components, and custom UI components.
As for visuals, some were created based off of UI mocks, while others were adapted based off of the existing game UI style.
Intro cutscene, egg selection, and naming:
The background, naming UI, and the text UI were all redone and revamped visually, complete with UI animation to give it a more professional look.
A skip button was added to allow players to not be forced to watch the same cutscene every time they hatch.
Old Screen
New Screen
Various UI animations:
I animated much of the UI that I worked on to give it an extra layer of charm and polish. They are animated in a consistent wiggly and cozy style to fit the theme of the game.
Keeper Name Creation animation:
This screen is viewed when a player is creating a Peridot Keeper Name and registering their account for the first time. I revamped the old static name box screen into a fully animated UI screen in order to match the special-ness of the occasion.
Old Screen
New Screen
Camera Mode:
Here I revamped the Camera Mode to be more user friendly and polished, mimicking the look of an actual phone camera while retaining the style of the game's UI.
In addition, I created a new creature behavior for this camera mode, to beable to control the creature by toggling "Hover/Land" and "Say Cheese/Candid."
3. Gameplay and Feature prototyping
Utilizing my background in game design, I assisted our team of game designers by creating prototypes of feature changes/additions.
Many of the prototypes themselves are under NDA, but here are some examples of prototype and design changes that I ended up implementing into the actual game.
Fullness & Attention meters
In order to foster a deeper sense of nurturing your pet, I pitched and prototyped a proposal that would change the creature's 'happiness meter' into fullness and attention meters, which are filled with corresponding actions of feeding or playing with your pet. Filling these meters will give your creature some Growth xp, which the creature needs to grow to the next life stage.
Having these two meters also allows for greater clarity in what to do to keep your pet's needs fulfilled.