Projects
Eriast Derby
Data-driven combat and race simulator for a homebrew D&D campaign, built to automate large-scale NPC vehicle behaviour across a multi-stage tournament. Handles modular vehicles, crew-operated subsystems, layered targeting rules, AI decision-making, and custom combat mechanics at a scale that would be wildly impractical to run by hand.
- Automates large-scale NPC behaviour for a rules-heavy vehicular combat system across a full tournament
- Solves an unusually difficult targeting model: vehicles, modular components, crew-operated subsystems, and vehicle-wide effects all coexisting in one combat layer
- Fully data-driven - skills, conditions, vehicles, stages, and AI content are all authored in the Unity editor without touching code
- Custom DM tooling: detailed logging with full modifier breakdowns, live monitoring panels, and a vehicle inspector
- Backed by a large automated test suite enabling confident refactoring across a complex, interconnected codebase
Fox-Fire Heist
Solo-developed first-person environmental puzzle game set on a steampunk airship and inspired by a Chinese folktale. Built from a blank Unity project over two months, with gameplay centered on reusable physics-based interactions, diegetic puzzle design, and near-complete self-produced art and level content.
- Built entirely solo over two months from a blank Unity project, alongside a dissertation and other coursework
- Designed around a small set of reusable interactions rather than isolated puzzle set pieces or separate puzzle UI
- Roughly 95% of the environment art was self-made in Blender, alongside scripting, level design, and lighting
- Received the highest grade in the cohort and was later used by the course organiser as an example for future students
Moody Space Station
Solo-developed atmospheric experience built in Unity, with a custom posterization shader pipeline, 100% self-made assets, and a fully scripted emotional arc. Designed as a technical art piece with visual direction developed in Blender Cycles and translated into a realtime render pipeline from scratch.
- Custom posterization shader built as a realtime render pipeline feature, with a dual-camera setup to selectively exclude UI
- Visual direction derived from Blender Cycles concept renders and translated into Unity's realtime pipeline through research and iteration
- 100% self-made assets - every model, material, and environment piece built in Blender
- Fully scripted atmospheric arc with roughly 20 timed and reactive events
- Topped the class with a grade of 90%, the threshold the department associates with publishable-quality work
Mass-Spring Charge Systems
Master's thesis research on charged mass-spring systems for animation. Co-first author on a research paper covering DDEF charge-interaction methods and artist-facing tooling, with my contribution focused on debugging, optimizing, benchmarking, and validating DDEF, as well as building the full Blender-based workflow for artistic control.
- Co-first author on a published research paper on charged mass-spring systems for computer animation
- Found and fixed a critical bug in the DDEF implementation, significantly reducing error after a full reimplementation in Python
- Reimplemented and optimized DDEF in C++, achieving 10x to 300x speedup over the Python version depending on test conditions
- Built the full artist tooling pipeline: Blender export/import, Polyscope controls, keyframing, vertex-group charge control, and external charge support
- Research available on arXiv