EST. 2023
CASE STUDY // PC ACTION-ADVENTURE

Pirates of the High Seas (2023)

SITUATION & TASK

Developed as a collaborative academic project focused on creating a compelling, mechanics-driven Boss Fight encounter. The challenge was to build a high-fidelity cinematic arena that seamlessly transitions from environmental puzzle-solving into intense third-person melee combat, requiring tight coordination between level art and gameplay programming.

ROLE & SYSTEM

Technical Artist & Lead Environment Designer (Team of 2). Responsible for the complete world-building pipeline, including terrain sculpting, custom lookdev, and prop modeling. Developed specialized technical art assets, including custom lava and glowing orb shaders, expanded the character controller capabilities, and orchestrated the cinematic sequence using Unity Timeline and Cinemachine.

TECH STACK

Unity, Custom Shaders (HLSL/Shader Graph), Terrain Tools, 3D Modeling, Unity Timeline, Cinemachine Integration, Character Controller, Particle Systems.

PROJECT INFO

Duration: 1 Academic Semester.

Context: Advanced Game Design & Tech Art Course.

Try it yourself: Link for Download


* Click and drag the slider to compare base environment mesh with active lava shader and lighting

Tech Art & Environmental Shaders

Sculpted and vertex-painted the claustrophobic volcanic arena using Unity's Terrain tools, modeling specific focal assets to fit the dark fantasy pirate aesthetic. I also created a custom scrolling lava shader with dynamic emissive properties to heighten the atmosphere of the boss fight

Timeline & Cinemachine Integration

Designed a structured, sequential gameplay loop spread across 5 distinct scenes to manage the narrative tension. The game transitions smoothly from the initial playable exploration into a scripted cutscene when placing the orb, shifting to a cinematic deck sequence, followed by a pre-fight cinematic build-up, and finally dropping the player into the active playable boss fight. This scene-based pipeline completely avoids complex input-blocking code by isolating active gameplay states from custom Unity Timeline and Cinemachine animations.