Chance Alexander
Game Developer
Commercial Projects
Shipped titles I've contributed to.
Chinatown Detective Agency is a cybernoir point and click adventure game.
I assisted in storyline mission implementation, UI creation and general gameplay programming.
Volcanic Games’ debut title. A zombie defense game released on PC and Nintendo Switch.
I was brought on early in development as the primary developer to complete all game features for Frontline Zed.
Highlights:
Extensive timeline development
Storyline mission & content implementation
Highlights:
Platform agnostic systems, and optimizations for Nintendo Switch port.
Steamworks integration including achievements and cloud saves.
Chance was hired as the primary Unity software developer for an 18 month project. He was responsible for the full stack of development, specifically integrating UI, visual FX, character control, animations, localisation, data serialisation and saving, gameplay and balance systems, platform middleware (Steamworks), and anti-piracy functionality.Chance was able to implement comprehensive and performant solutions, despite the technical challenges presented by 3rd-party assets. Over the course of development, Chance proved highly agile and responsive, able to independently identify problems, propose solutions, and enact fixes.Additionally, Chance’s 2D and 3D art expertise proved highly beneficial for UI, visual effects, and performance optimisation. In many cases Chance was able to design and implement functionality which exceeded the initial scope, and significantly increased the appeal of the product, thanks to this expertise.
Critically, Chance was able to design and build systems which could be easily updated and expanded.The end result has been a successful commercial product released on multiple consumer platforms, including multiple successful upgrades delivered to a live customer base. Chance will be my first point of call for any further development work. I wish him all the best for the future.
-Richard East, Game Director at Volcanic Games
Bite sized projects
Small, performant systems and experiments.
Fast perlin noise map generation.
1 draw call, 2 tiny textures in memory.
This project was completed in a few hours to explore using perlin noise as a simple alternative to more involved road network generation algorithms.
128x128 source texture generation
3 perlin noise maps are generated, one for the base landmass shape, another to distort that, and a third which is stepped to generate roads and land bridges where roads travel over water.
These are stored in different channels of the same 128x128 texture.
Final shader
I've applied a tiny texture atlas containing grass and sand tiles for some simple detail.
Setting the filter mode of the generated texture provides enough information to smooth the output, detect edges for adding sand along the borders between grass and water, and create simple shoreline waves on the water.
Takeaways
While the initial output produces results with little direct control over path flow and connections, as well as some nonsensical loops, this technique is simple and fast, and consistently produces many natural paths covering the entire map whether or not a more complex base terrain generation system is used.
By determining the placement of intersections and the connections between paths, undesirable routes could be discarded. This can be followed by running further iterations to introduce new connections, or by incorporating other techniques to this system. I believe this would be an appropriate approach to create natural and believable roads and pathways for many game types.
Optimizing terrain painting in a small open world.
In a project targeting a wide range of machines with a tilling mechanic and interactive weather systems, performant texture painting is important.
Painted terrain textures are loaded and unloaded in and out of memory as the player moves between terrain chunks. Pixel processing happens in a compute shader, offloading that computation to the GPU.
Personal Projects
Games I've made alone and with friends.
A year of weekends resulted in this action roguelike demo. I programmed and co-designed Book of Eve as part of a team of 3.
This project taught me a lot about roguelike design and game production in the context of a tiny indie team.
Highlights:
RestAPI high scores.
Highlights:
Procedural level generation.
AI and combat systems.
Technical art and shaders.
Game Jams
Games made in days.
A simple game about surviving a journey above the clouds. Made in 72 hours for Ludum Dare #53.
A pun riddled culinary adventure. Made in 2 weeks for the Seattle Indies 2022 Slow Jam.
Highlights:
Momentum based platformer controller.
Spatial audio system with occluding surfaces (no middleware).
Highlights:
Advanced Timeline scripting.
Yarnspinner implementation & extension.