Hu Chi: Unity Portfolio

This video showreel showcases my work highlights up to 2020. All projects shown in this showreel are created with Unity. 

In this portfolio, I will highlight the projects that I consider are the highlights, and give some more in-depth views of them.

Aperture

Project Brief

Aperture is a first person horror game. You play as a Taiwanese high school student, who suffers from a lot of pressure from daily life. This game blends between reality and imagination, blurring the borders between them, 

Aperture won several awards and was selected to multiple exhibitions. Most of the work was done by myself, with collaboration with friends for script proofreading and for voice acting.

Project Download

The game is playable from start to finish, but there are still many things that can be optimized in the future, including UI, localization (the native language of this project is Traditional Mandarin), mechanics etc. 

You can download the executable file of the current progress on itch here. (Mac & Windows)

Screenshots

Making Of

In-Game Cutscenes

This game's camera blends between in-game cutscenes and gameplay using Unity Engine's Cinemachine and Timeline tools. This can make the game transit between different states seamlessly, making it look like a long continuous shot.

Scene Manager

Since this project is quite big, it is practical to divide the game in multiple scenes, and switch them based on the progression of the gameplay. However, to create a smooth narrative for this project, my target is to make loading times as short as possible. So it is crucial that I develop a way to "additively" load multiple scenes, i.e. make some of them visible at the same time, and then when the player leaves the area, unload the scene that is unused. I have created a tool to load/unload scenes base on the story context.

Gestalta

Project Brief

Gestalta is a short 3D side scrolling narrative platformer which I worked on as a group project with friends. We wanted to craft a story that is told from the perspective of a toy — similar to the Toy Story franchise. But instead of a stuffed toy, the main character is a humanoid wooden mannequin that is commonly used to practice drawing human poses.

Gameplay Video

The following two videos are in-game playthroughs. The first clip features a theme music that I composed with Logic Pro X. The second clip shows more gameplay mechanics (running, jumping, and grabbing/dragging objects) in a level with thunder soundscape design.

Making Of

Customized Camera System

Since this is a side scrolling game, the camera should be on the same side of the level, which the player has limited control over the camera. The camera can be moved to slightly look away from the character, but it will “springs back” to its original position once the player release the camera control.

I intended to create a smooth continuous shot for each level, but at the same time the relative position between the character and the camera should not be fixed, i.e. should be contextual, so different shots should also be made depending on the story context.

Unity’s Cinemachine is a good camera system tool to do this, as virtual cameras can be made to represent different shots, and shots can be blend or cut. Shots can be also set to procedurally tracking target objects, and it works great with tools like Timeline and Post-Processing Stack. But I decided to create my own camera system from scratch with mainly two reasons: to practice coding skills and to get full control of the features I want to add.

The following images show the working of this tool in Unity Editor's view. The green boxes are triggers, whenever the player enters one of them, the camera will change its position and rotation.

Chapter Select Menu

In the chapter select menu, each chapter is presented like a shop window. When the chapter is selected, you can zoom in to hear the soundscape of each chapter. I took the design inspiration from the game Little Nightmares. The camera movements here use the custom movement system I implemented.

Screenshots

Stranger Things 3 Title Remake

Project Brief

Stranger Things 3 Title Remake is a interactive title sequence I created dedicated to Netflix's show Stranger Things 3. It is a solo project for practice purposes. I tried to capture the atmosphere of the original show while adding some personal perspectives into it.

It is created and runs in realtime with Unity Engine. I composed the theme with Logic Pro X.

Project Download

The full project executables can be downloaded on itch here. (Mac & Windows)

Process View

Screenshots

Making Of

The sequence is created using Unity Engine's tools: ProBuilder, Cinemachine, Timeline and Post Processing Stack.