UpaWhat
UPAMANYU Yavalkar
Multifaceted
Adaptable and deeply knowledgeable technical game designer with 6+ years of experience consistently mastering and applying diverse game development skills. Proficient in player-centered design, cutting-edge technologies, and object-oriented programming, with a strong commitment to continuous learning and innovation.
Beyond gaming, I enjoy motorcycles, music, art, and graphic novels, always seeking inspiration in unexpected places.
Fair Fortunes
Game Design
Fair Fortunes is a stealth action game set in a carnival. Compete against other kids to steal the most candy and make a name for yourself. Navigate a bustling crowd in a dynamic maze, outsmarting colorful friends and foes with your tools.
I served as the Game Lead and Technical Designer, in a team of 20 contributors.
LEVEL UP Showcase TORONTO 2024
FF
INTERACTION Mechanics
Inspired by the Helldivers 2 Strategem Interactions, the player must approach candy carts and punch in the button combo to successfully steal the candy.
FF
Level Design
The densely populated market setting in Fair Fortunes necessitated a robust navigational strategy. To enhance player orientation within this complex environment, vertical landmarks, such as balloons, were integrated. These visual cues provided a clear sense of direction, mitigating potential player disorientation.
To encourage strategic decision-making and emergent gameplay, color-coded balloons were utilized to signify objectives and ammunition pickups. The central placement of the carousel wheel provided a reliable navigational anchor, ensuring players maintained a clear sense of direction throughout the environment.
FF
AI Crowds
After a successful Level Up showcase, the biggest missing element from the game loop was the crowd system. The team's resources could not keep up.
This past week I gave Unreal Engine Mass AI another shot. I noticed more tutorials and even a GitHub example for reference that shed more light on the Fragments and Traits features of the AI system.
New Features added:
- Dynamic LODs for Agents based on distance and locked spawn counts (LODs include High/Low BPs and even instanced SM at large distances)
- Implementation for walking and stationary pedestrians (Separate behaviours, Zone Graphs and BPs)
- Avoidance for Player and Clown (Smart Objects and Avoidance traits)
- More robust navigation and collision detection
DC3-Viral
DC3-Viral
Enemy Design
Three distinct enemy classes – Striker, Healer, and Cubit – were defined, each with unique attributes that were translated into corresponding behavior trees.
These trees, responsible for enemy AI decision-making, were implemented as state machines within the project architecture. Graphical prefabs were then utilized to instantiate and animate these enemies within the game scene.
This modular and repeatable pipeline enabled rapid design prototyping and implementation, forming the foundational process for the T3 Mini-Boss development (documented below).
Game Design
DC3: VM mixes the movement and combat of an isometric twin-stick shooter with the tactical opportunities and turret management of a tower defense game accompanied by a vibrant narrative told through a comic book-themed aesthetic.
DC3-Viral
Level Design
DC3: VM presents a unique genre fusion, combining isometric twin-stick shooter and tower defense elements. The resulting gameplay loop emphasizes strategic turret management alongside engaging, movement-focused combat. To facilitate player onboarding, I designed tutorial levels that progressively introduce core mechanics, ensuring a balanced skill curve and seamless feature integration.
DC3-Viral
Game Programming
DC3: VM mixes the movement and combat of an isometric twin-stick shooter with the tactical opportunities and turret management of a tower defense game accompanied by a vibrant narrative told through a comic book-themed aesthetic.
Cubit Mini-Boss
The mini boss represents, what is, a staple in Twin Stick Shooter genre, a multi-stage encounter that tests the player's ability to execute what they have learned so far.
Working off of a concept for what the encounter needs to look like, I designed the enemy behaviour and executed the mini boss' state machine.
The Mini-Boss was developed using the project's standardized state machine architecture, and drawing directly from the established enemy design. Animation introductions were managed through pre-encounter states, with clip transitions ensuring a smooth return to the idle state.
Tweening was utilized for movement and rotational control, while FBX clips provided detailed animation and expression. Animation events were implemented to trigger VFX systems, collider state changes for attacks, and communication with other gameplay modules.
GRID SYSTEM
The Grid System allows the player to strategically place towers (Turrets) and perform tasks like crowd control.
The Grid system is a node-based list that populates in space colliding with walls and untraversable objects.
Using Inheritance the objects are spawned according to the player's decisions and available cost.
ISOMETRIC VIEW
The game was converted from 2D space to Isometric 3D. As the assets used were 3D, but just in a 2D space, converting to Isometric meant converting the components like moving and attacks to orient correctly in the Isometric space.
The Image above represents the old gameplay.
The Image on the right represents the new gameplay and grid system.
Fair Fortunes
Early Prototype
The early prototype for FF demonstrates the core mechanics and the overall vision for the game. This build includes crowds, basic mechanics and candy collection. It was built using UE5 in under a week.
Think! Wireless
Snow Plow
THINK! Wireless proposed a reseach project to build them a Snow Plow tracker that dispatches and tracks multiple trucks in the Greater Toronto Area. Using a web server to calculate and send routes, and a fleet of Android tablets to monitor the trucks.
Django - Python
Working mainly on the backend, I was tasked with setting up the database, hooking up the API to ArcGIS that was our many Geo-Data provider, and handle REST API calls from the tablets.
The Front End would send Beat Data(Geo Points) that the server would create a route from - we used the Chinese Postman Problem Algorithm to create the fastest route through the collected line segments(Streets). This data would be sent back to the Front End for the Admin to approve before it was "dispatched" to the correct device(Truck).
Once connected, the server would create new rooms using WEBSOCKETS to handle all communications with a singular device, updating location, handling obstacle s, and creating rerouting.
For secure logins I implemented a JavaScript Web Token(JWT) System. This relies on a handshake using a generated code that expires after a given time.
React Front End
REACT js was used to build the front end, integrating the ArcGIS API to render the maps for the Admins. This screen would also list all active trucks so the routes could be deployed
.
Over the course of the development I was tasked with integrating the API calls to and from the server. I had to parse the data and display the information.
META4LIVING
LORR Metaverse
As the Unreal Engine Specialist, I led the development on the LORR project. This Metaverse solution was aiming to allow for e-commerce platforms to seamlessly set up store fronts and conduct business.
I innovated the solution and used the Shopify API to process orders placed through an instance Unreal Engine, where the user selected the product in-game.
This project also experimented with the Pixel Streaming Solution from Epic Games. The build was running on remote servers, and streamed to your device where you could interact with the experience using touch controls.
This project was built using Unreal Engine 5, Websockets, Pixel Streaming, and a custom platform API to process e-commerce requests.
Ronin Labs
One Plus World
For our client OnePlus, We built a Meta-verse solution for a complete digital launch for their flagship phone. This platform was built for users to experience the OnePlus World in First Person.
I designed and developed the mini games the users could play. These were multiplayer 1v1 competitions, generating high scores and global leader-boards.
The platform was developed using THREE.js, WEBSOCKETS and REACT js.
Ronin Labs
GIGABYTE AORUS
We developed a First Person Shooter game for the brand GIGABYTE featuring sci-fi inspired environments where the player needs to shoot maximum targets in the shortest possible time with highest accuracy to gain points and dominate the leaderboard. The goal of a highly optimised web hosted experience was achieved while not sacrificing on high fidelity assets and scalable performance across multiple devices.
The game has been properly balanced by tweaking target positioning and timings to achieve high scores that reflect the player’s skills.
Ronin Labs
Jumanji IoT
Jumanji IOT is a physical 3D printed locked box that only opens when the user says "Jumanji" three times.
This marketing projects was developed using the arduino and voice recognition chipsets.
Ronin Labs
AR and Playable ADs
I designed and developed over 40 AR experiences and playable ADs during my time at Ronin Labs.
Our AR experiences were shipped on the Spark AR platform, while we experimented with Snap Studio, Unity XR and webXR.
Our playable ADs were shipped on Facebook and played in the in-built browser.
