Project Summary

Waveform is a controller-focused rhythm game where the player controls two separate reticles across six lanes, tapping notes in time to the music. With a retro art style, Waveform takes place in the early 2000's as you help the music producer Crescent to finish her project songs. Waveform was a 3 Month Project.

Created by:

• Daniel Carr - Design/Producer

• Lachlan Smithers - Design

• Michelle Portelli - Programming (UI/UX)

• Finley Saghaie - Programming (Gameplay)

• Jasper Pringle - Art.

Project Management

Responsibilities:

• Creative Direction

• Project Planning & Scoping

• Establishing & Maintaining Documentation

Acting as the producer for Waveform's developer team of 5 people, I created sprint milestones to ensure consistent deliverables across agile development in a 15 Week Timeframe. Clear goals were labelled for the entire team and for individuals through a holistic scope and sequence that was updated weekly and the use of 'HackNPlan' for task tracking. The GDD was revised weekly to ensure accurate documentation standards were maintained.

UI/UX Design

Responsibilities:

• Iterative Wireframe Concepts

• Gathering User Experience Feedback

• UI Pipeline Integration

The UI of Waveform was inspired by Windows98 to match the retro aesthetic of the art style and fit the context of the game's setting in the early 2000's. Wireframes were developed in Figma with varying iterations gathered through initial user experience testing. The following Wireframes were created:

• Song Select

• Results Screen

• Settings Menu

There is a robust settings page with a multitude of customisation options for players. Creating infrastructure for these settings was a major priority of the project due to the nature of the genre demanding customisation as players wish to customise settings to their likening.

Content Design

Responsibilities:

• Creating Expert & Master Song Charts/Beatmaps

The process of 'beatmapping' was created in Sheets using a key to place notes. The sheets are exported as a csv file, taking advantage of Unreal Engine's native csv support through Datatables. This allowed for a modular and extendable system accessable to developers, resulting in quick iteration for beatmaps based on feedback.

Quality Assurance

Responsibilities:

• Gathering User Feedback from Prototypes

• Collating and Organising Data

• Implementing User Feedback through iterative refinement.

Over the course of development for Waveform's Prototype, a total of 5 external playtesting sessions were run, with all users asked to complete a post-test experience form to collate both qualitative and quantitative data. Over 45 responses were gathered across playtests, with the data collated helping to inform design decisions across:

• Beatmap Difficulty & Synchronisation

• UI/UX pain points and concerns

• Bug reporting

Music Composition

Responsibilities:

• Composing and Mixing Music

Across the prototype, I created 4 songs (Wavelength, Tutorial, Loved Dance, Curtainfall) for Waveform with a focus on the EDM genre, while also incorporating Vocaloid to include songs with vocals. Music was created to be high energy and a fast tempo to engage players into the rhythm gameplay.