student project
Uber Planetary
An interstellar taxi-driving capstone developed with four classmates around an open-world narrative.
An open-world narrative from the passenger seat
I created Uber Planetary, an experimental interstellar taxi game, as a capstone project with four classmates. Rather than making the player the driving force behind every event, we designed them as an observer catching fragmented glimpses of a larger story while moving through the world.
Movement and navigation
I iterated on the ship's movement until traversing the world felt simple and responsive, then used code-driven animation to give parts of the vehicle additional motion and feedback.
I paired backend landmark tracking with player-facing guidance for the navigation system. I made destination indicators change their vertical placement based on the player's position, helping communicate the actual height of a parking space without adding more UI.
Reusable systems and rendering
I organized landmark implementations behind shared interfaces and used type-based lookup plus generic overloads to keep navigation code reusable across different landmark types. This meant calling systems only needed to provide the relevant parameters rather than understand the manager's internal structure.
I also built a toon shader for the project, exploring shadows, point lights, and edge detection while documenting the codebase's high-level organization for future contributors.
