I was responsible for creating all of the design docs for the game. Since most people on the team only had 1-2 roles on the project, it was more beneficial to make several shorter design docs for different aspects of the project, rather than one master doc. In addition, the design changed drastically during development as we altered the story and scope of the game, so some details may not be accurate to the final product.

• Farming Design Doc
• UX/UI Design Doc
• Level Design Doc for 'The Rusty Pitchfork'
• Level Design Doc for 'Ranch (Floor 2)'

• MY ROLE:
• Designer, writer, programmer, sound design, audio production, shaders, acting.
• GOAL:
• I wanted to make a dark, theatrical introduction that would set up the world of Harvestville and introduce Father Winslow, as well as the mystery of the Ancestress while offering a sample of the game's horror vibes.
• I also wanted to establish tone of the game, where moments of darkness or uncertainty are contrasted with moments of bliss and familiarity. This dark monologue in the intro is quickly interrupted by bright and happy music as the player begins a new day.
• EVENTS:
• There are 14 separately-timed cues throughout the intro, which are triggered by dialogue tags.
• Each tag starts a coroutine that enables/disables objects or cameras, or triggers SFX or character animations.
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• CORPSE STAGELIGHTS:
• The corpse stagelights are activated based on their order in the hierarchy.
• The delay between activations decreases 0.1 seconds each time, down to a minimum of 0.1 seconds.
• Each time one is activated, it picks a random SFX to play from an array.
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• SCENE TRANSITION:
• Since the cutscene instantly cuts to the player's house, the cutscene has to be loaded into the same scene as the player's house to ensure there's no delay for loading.
• The lighting/camera immediately change to give the illusion of being in a different place.
• The cutscene's objects, scripts, and cameras are instantiated as a prefab, then destroyed after the cutscene for optimization.
• FMV FOOTAGE:
• The hands FMV uses a custom shader that uses chroma keying to remove the green background. The chroma keyed footage also reacts to light and emissives.
• The glowing orb is just a default sphere, but the camera's bloom effect is turned up to give it a glowing appearance, which reacts more realistically with the FMV footage.
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• MUSIC:
• I produced and integrated the music for the cutscene. Made with real recordings!
• The scary string sounds were also made by our team.

• PlayerFootsteps
  I designed a surprisingly-complex system to handle the player footstep SFX. Here's a full breakdown of the system.
• THE BASICS:
• Each time the player takes a step, an animation event triggers this function, which checks:
  • The footstep cooldown (prevents unintended audio in fringe cases)
  • The player's Movement State (determines the sound array & which animation events to listen for)
  • The player's Velocity (determines SFX volume)
  • The Floor Material the player is stepping on
  • The previous footstep SFX played (avoids playing the same SFX twice in a row)
• Afterwards, it picks a random footstep from the selected sound array and plays the SFX from the player's position.
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• FLOOR MATERIAL:
• Each ground object has a script attached to it called FloorMaterial.cs
  • Outdoor terrain has an additional script called FloorMaterialTerrain.cs
• We needed a system that allowed different SFX based on the material the player steps on, accounting for layered objects (like a rug on wood).
• Objects with FloorMaterial scripts are prioritized:
  • Trigger colliders (rugs, leaf piles, etc.)
  • Non-trigger colliders (floors, bridges, staircases, etc.)
  • Objects with Terrain components
• If a player walks on wood but steps on a rug, it will play the rug's SFX.
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• TERRAIN MATERIALS:
• Terrain objects were trickier due to multiple texture layers painted by environment artists.
• I created a script that uses the Terrain Data splat map to determine the dominant Terrain Layer underneath the player in real time.
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• This creates dynamic, accurate footstep sounds that are also efficient and easy for level designers to use.
• WWISE INTEGRATION:
• All footsteps sounds are played via Wwise events.
• Events are sorted into sound arrays.
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• Separate arrays exist per Floor Material and walk/run state.
• Random SFX is chosen per array but never repeats consecutively.
• RTPC controls footstep volume based on player speed.
• 3D panning uses player position + orientation.
• Each event is stored in Footsteps soundbank for optimization.
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• ADDITIONAL FOOTSTEPS:
• Non-movement animations sometimes require footstep SFX (like stomps or balance loss).
• Added functions called by animation events, allowing manual volume control per event.
• These functions still check floor material/terrain for accuracy.
• Unity animation events accept only 1 parameter, so walking/running sounds were split.
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• THE BASICS:
• This system allows the player to interact with various props in a modular and flexible way.
• Currently, there are three main types of interactions:
• Instant — triggers a function immediately.
• Inspect — shows descriptive dialogue about the object.
• Choice — gives the player options for how to interact.
• Each prop displays a unique button prompt (e.g., "Press A to Turn On TV").
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• This simple script supports many different interaction possibilities, while still allowing programmers to add custom behavior for unique props.
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• HIGHLIGHT: THE GRAMOPHONE
• When the player interacts with it while inactive, it plays an animation where the lever winds, the record spins, and the needle lowers onto the record.
• While a song is playing, leaving and re-entering the area resumes playback from where it left off.
• If interacted with again, the player can stop the music.
• When stopped, the pitch gradually lowers and ends with a record scratch sound.
• The gramophone animation resets when the track ends or when stopped early.

• Challenge: The level was made inside of a Unity template project with poorly-designed mechanics.
• Solution: Embrace the design and try to make it fun and interesting purely through level design.
• Challenge: When entering combat, players would just walk backwards into a different room and wait for enemies to ambush them.
• Solution: Added walls and cover all over the map so as soon as the player aggros an enemy, they can take cover to recharge their weapons.
• Challenge: One critique from playtesters was that there wasn’t enough verticality to the level.
• Solution: I expanded it and added more ramps, and I also changed the original areas so they get a bit more use out of verticality.
• Challenge: Larger enemy turrets expand when aggro’d by the player, meaning that walls which once blocked their vision will no longer prevent them from shooting the player at inappropriate times.
• Solution: Make walls TALL so they don’t shoot over them.