Niels Derderian
Junior Technical Designer
Welcome to my portfolio, you'll find my best projects!
I am looking for a position where I can combine my technical skills and my game design knowledge in a team project.
Looking for mainly a Technical Design opportunity, I also have a generalist profile: I like to touch to everything in a project.
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About meContact meTech Design Exercise - Doors
Into Game Sprint
I participated in the Becoming a Technical Designer sprint from Into Games, led by Yasmin Curren, where we followed courses and documentation exercises focused on technical design practices. The final challenge was to create a versatile door tool in Unreal Engine.
I developed a system to set up multiple types of doors (Normal, Trap & Sliding Doors) within a single parent actor.
- Duration: May 2024 (1 month)
You can access the showcase level HERE
Tool Overview
I've created a flexible Door Setup Tool in Unreal Engine 4.23: The goal was to allow designers to quickly configure different door types while maintaining ease of modification and workflow efficiency.
We had a model through a video to visually help us how the tool should be working.
This tool enables designers to:
- Use a single actor parent to manage different door behaviours
- Easily modify door properties through preset configurations and data assets
- Customize interactions and logic while keeping the setup simple and efficient
There is always something to upgrade in the tool I makes, and each time I gain experience I find a new way to make them better.
Tool I used:
"Master" Door Actor (Parent)
The core of the system is a Parent Door Actor, which serves as the base class for all door types.
It includes core functionality of:
- Door Movements
- Interaction handling
- State management
- Door Type (Normal or Sliding)
I haven't exposed the Door Type to designer and made 2 preset child as it was making the UX bad for designer.
Master Parameters
The Parent Door allow the designer to create its own base preset of door by turning it into a child and tweaking some of the parameters.
All the Offset parameter are used to align the door with its frame, as it is made to be used on any door it's a necessary parameter: A hinge door and a Sliding door doesn't move the same way, and must be placed at different position in the frame.
Exposed Parameters
When adding a preset in a world, the designer can access multiple parameters to define the behaviour of the door: if the door is already open, locked, should close if the player is far away, ...
The data asset used to define the door can also be exposed but the best scenario is to let the designer create preset of doors in case it needs additional gameplay features!
E.g., Adding a Green/Red Light for a locked door as a visual feedback of its state.
Data Assets
To simplify the designer workflow, I implemented a data asset system. This allows designers to define door properties outside of the blueprint, making changes without modifying the tool's code.
Each Door Data Asset contains:
- Mesh & Material, for the door's visuals
- Sounds, when the player interact with the door
- Opening & Closing Time, for the animation length
- Auto-Close, to close the door if the player is far away
- Always Open Away From Player, ensure consistent opening direction for better UX
