One of my university classes was a semester-long group project. I was selected as the leader of my group.
We were tasked with taking an existing project and expanding it further; a project called Hidden Town 3D.
You can check out the original project here.
The original project was a collaboration between history and art students. There was a slave dwelling that no longer stands today, and this project was tasked of digitally recreating it. By using known building materials and documentation of the dimensions of the building, the art students successfully recreated the dwelling to an impressive detail. They also created numerous tools and props as 3D models, and this website allows you to view them in your browser.
Our task was to take these models and create some sort of interactive experience with it. And we did exactly that.
If your web browser supports it, you can play our finished product right here.
Additionally, you can view a video presentation of the project here.
The game runs directly through a web browser. The idea was that this game could be played by students as part of their history curriculum, so it needed to be as accessible as possible. The game's main feature is the pickup system; you can pick up almost every object in the scene and learn more about it.
Prior to this project, I had significant experience with C# and the Unity game engine. My other group members had little to no experience, however, so I was tasked with both managing the project and teaching four other people how Unity works. I gave them the concepts and algorithms we needed in order to implement what we wanted. After they wrote some code from what they had learned from tutorials I provided for them, I would then pass through and bugfix anything that wasn't working. In the end, I probably ended up writing half the code purely from bugfixing.
My primary task was using Blender to optimize all of the very unoptimized models for use in Unity. I figured that all of my group members are programmers, not artists, so I left the coding to them. I only knew how to use Blender due to some of the hobbies I partake in, and I didn't want to put them through the learning curve of it.
I also was tasked with communicating with various departments, like the IT department responsible for reserving server space to host our game.
I was quite proud of the final product, and we ended up being one of the only groups that actually worked together with no issues.