Unexplored 2 creates a vast, rich fantasy world for you to discover. It has a cool twist on permadeath: your character may die, but the world might persist. The game is an ambitious, procedural action-RPG without grind, xp, or gold. Instead the story is all about your choices and their consequences as history unfolds.
As the titular Wayfarer you take on the quest to destroy the Staff of Yendor, for which you’ll have to traverse your world. Along the way you’ll meet tribes, encounter magical creatures and explore ancient ruins to discover mythical weapons and historic items.
I started working on Unexplored 2 as an intern, but was there to stay as part of the core team. During my internship I wrote my Bachelor thesis on evoking emotions in generated levels, which has been published in AIIDE-WS 2018.
I've been responsible for graphics programming, the world map visualisation, UI and controls implementations. Additionally, I've worked on level generation and gameplay programming.
Ever since a course on graphics programming I've been thrilled about the possibilities. As a game programmer, I feel empowered in a way I'd never felt before. And as a creative soul, I take great delight in combining technology and art.
In addition to my professional expertise, I have dedicated time to expand my understanding and skills through personal prototyping projects. These projects have been instrumental in deepening my knowledge: from manipulating vertices to line renderers, and from godrays to fernels. The lessons learned from these projects have greatly contributed to my growth as a graphics programmer - and as a programmer in general. In combination with my artistic skills, I've a unique perspective on making graphics come to life.
Since I developed a basic understanding of procedural content generation (PCG) I've been wildly curious about it due to the (endless) possibilities and the way in which a design or a vision has to be captured in an algorithm.
During a few summers, I embarked on an exciting journey delving deeper into PCG. This allowed me to combine my passion for the technology with my desire to create dynamic and immersive experiences.
Through research and hands-on experimentation, I explored various algorithms and techniques for generating procedural content. I generated dungeons and mission structures with generative grammars, adapting to playstyles. I generated items in Diablo 3 fashion, complete with stats based on affixes and quality levels. And I generated RPG-style quests in follow-up school project. This work not only deepend my understanding of PCG but also honed my programming and problem-solving skills. And resulted in a delightful few summers in general.
Professional projects as a freelancers and a lecturer, personal projects for the fun of it and to appease curiousity, game jams with colleagues and friends, and student projects: there is more where that came from.
