Hi, I'm Mihail, an aspiring developer and this is my story so far...
Every box on this website contains experience and knowledge I've gained throughout the years on various projects.
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VR Anxiety and Horror
During my Academic education, I had the chance to take a course in VR Game Development. We were given the entire course's duration to create a VR Game demo, mechanics included.
The main character has to go on about their day by avoiding sudden changes in the environment and, if they do happen, find a place to rest and relax, before continuing on. Your job is to go through their entire day, starting from the shortest path they take up to re-living the whole day.
The demo was made in Unreal Engine 4.26. The props are assets used from the Unreal Engine store. Scripting was done using the Blueprints system only to save on time needed to create a small demo.
Link to a presentation video of the WIP Project
Simulating water in Virtual Reality
The thesis focuses on the development and comparison of techniques for simulating flowing fluids. Additionally, the dissertation provides an overview of the possibilities for interaction with the flow of fluids in the environment for use in virtual reality video games.
The comparison between the different techniques focuses on different aspects, including the possibilities for displaying the fluid, player interaction, different resolutions, etc.
To that end, practical examples of fluids and interaction with them have been developed, using the latest tools and technologies in the Unreal Engine: NVidia's Cataclysm and FleX, Epic Games' Niagara FX, and the Mantaflow system.
The thesis answers the question of which technique has the best combination of efficiency and solid display in a virtual reality environment. In this case, considering all of the variables used to conduct testing, the best turnout had Nvidia's FleX due to its fantastic optimization for Video Game usage.
Link to the thesis presentation video
A Hack&Slash idea
Expanding upon my existing knowledge of Unreal Engine, I took a course from Udemy in Programming for Video Games in C++ and started creating a concept Hack&Slash video game.
The main character is a knight that gets displaced through time and has to travel through different time periods to return to his own time.
In this project, my main focus was building the game from the ground up using C++ only, instead of relying on Blueprints solely. When using C++ in Unreal Engine, you can write anything the Blueprints can do with nodes. Even though that gives us flexibility, it's still preferred to use Blueprints, because, as the name implies, Blueprints are pre-written functions, so it saves on time when you don't need to rework/rewrite everything.
The project was built using the experimental build of Rider for Unreal Engine in Unreal Engine 4.26.
Link to a presentation video of the Project
Blender knowledge refurbishing
Ever since the start of my Academic education, I was interested in 3D modeling and general 3D art/design. Most of my academic knowledge lies in Autodesk Maya, but due to various technical issues with the newer versions of Maya I've had and with the many scripts I had to use, I decided to move on to Blender.
The main technical reason for my move was the way Maya interpreted Water Simulation animations for implementation as objects in Unreal Engine. The simulation in Maya lacked bones for Vec3 geometry in Unreal and has quite a few lag spikes even post-optimization. The simulation in Blender had bones for Vec3 geometry and fewer lag spikes when used in a level as a background object.
It was initially hard to move over due to the slightly different command palette, but one crash course and a couple of tutorials later and here we are. The best thing I've noticed straight off was that many of the scripts I had on Maya were already implemented functions in Blender.
GraviGopnik - Platformer/Puzzler
A local GameJam under the name of GDHT (Game Design How To?), made by M3DS, took place between 10/10/2022 and 04/11/2022, 2 weeks' worth of planning and development. This is the 7th time this competition took place. To compete for the GameJam, we had to take a short 7-video course about UE5 using the Hour of Code UE5 demo made for the Hour of Code lessons pack EpicGames provided for free as a way to start learning UE5.
The goal of the GameJam was to create a Puzzle/Platformer game in 2D/3D, with assets we had from Epic Games or our own. We had made a team, me and 4 friends, titled Semichki Games, and we set sail on our 2 week-long adventure.
The game takes inspiration from Ratchet & Clank's Graviboots sections, where you could walk on walls using a pair of boots that defy gravity. With this, the level design and the platforming were set. For the puzzles, we used a variety of platforming challenges, switches, and AI zombies.
A summary of the story would be: Vadim the Gopnik was drinking kvass on the curb near the local nuclear plant, when a meteor suddenly struck the Earth, shattering the ground, and leaving floating islands all around. Vadim, on the quest to reunite with his bottles of kvass, finds a pair of irradiated Shabidas Graviwalk shoes that grant him the ability to move and jump on all sorts of surfaces and do charged jumps.
The assets used in the project were from the Polygon Apocalypse pack. The character and shoes models were made by our 3D Designer - Filip. The project was built on Rider and Unreal Engine 5.03.
Link to the demo presentation video
Link of the written presentation for the Demo
M3DS Course - Unreal Engine Specialized Program Showcase
This is a scene showcase that was done throughout the course.
The goal of this course was to create a scene from scratch using our own or pre-made assets from the Epic Games Marketplace.
The scene takes inspiration from my previous living quarters back in New Belgrade several years ago in the Blocks. Initially, I didn't have a plan on how to make the scene, but after reminiscing about the entrance of the Blocks, the whole parking area and the flat open concrete entryway to the buildings, the usually empty steel playground, and the small concrete jungle that keeps popping out from the planters.
Inspiration images come from these 2 amazing galleries of New Belgrade linked here:
arch daily - Discover the Grit and Glory of New Belgrade's Communist Architecture
The Calvert Journal - Suspended city: a visit to New Belgrade, the town caught outside time
The assets used in the project were from multiple sources: Kitbash 3D Brutalism, Soviet packs from the Twin Souls game project files from the Epic Games marketplace, etc. The project was built on Rider and Unreal Engine 5.1.1.
Link of the rendered scene as a video
Project Revenant
After GDHT 2022 ended, we were given the opportunity to apply for the Rookies Festival 2023 (Anyone can apply, but we were given preparation courses and such to get up to speed and improve our workflow).
The combat is a unique blend of present shooter mechanics (projectile and hitscan weaponry) imbued with the magic system from Magicka, where you can combine several elements to create an Ultimate, which you can trigger once you have the proper skills listed in the visual stack. You have your primary 4 elements which have individual mechanics and the ultimate which you can cast once every X seconds (at the moment the cooldown is 4.5s).
Video presentation - Ultimates
Further details about the project have been noted in the Rookies Festival 2023 entry. I'm proud of this one.
Link to a presentation video of the Project
Link to the Rookies Festival 2023 Entry
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