Maracas Studio
Maracas Studio
Maracas Studio was a brand new company when I joined them, they had two projects that I can't reveal but I worked mainly on one.
I was in remote 100% of the time because there was no building yet but the experience was very pleasant and I was able to learn a lot.
What I Do
I had the role of a generalist programmer during these 6 months, so I did a lot of gameplay with the integration of several systems, UI, 3C but also a lot of tools for Unity.
The project being confidential, I will only be able to talk about the tools I made.
Editor Generator
A tool to generate level design elements in editor.
By moving a point in the scene, we are able to generate meshes behind this point, to draw roads or paths but also to add recurring elements like street lamps every x meters.
Notes in Editor
The team needed to be able to leave notes in the scene to warn of things to change and put comments.
The comments are stored in a google spreadsheet that Unity retrieves at launch. It will also update when the user will create a note otherwise he will have to update manually with a button set up for that.
Comments are gizmos, so they can't be manipulated but they can be modified since each note has an ID, the first 5 characters are visible in the scene and are enough to load a note to change.
When making the tool, the team wanted several different visuals other than just one position.
So we have an area that is a simple projector and an arrow that indicates the direction.
These two visuals are modifiable with a value that is a float, for the zone it modifies the size of the circle and for the arrow it gives the angle of rotation ( 0° to 360° ), but both are stored in the same value to avoid categories not used in the spreadsheet.
To modify an existing note, the easiest way would have been to make them selectable but I opted for a window where you enter the ID of the note.
And if it finds a note, it displays it and you can modify it and send the changes that will be visible instantly.
