Stefano D'Ambra

TRC Design Check

The Challenge

In order to be published on PlayStation, the game must pass all mandatory TRCs.

My Solution

I created a game testing pipeline to verify that all design features mentioned in the TRC are successfully completed. These choices must also reflect additions that aim to improve the quality of the game in terms of design.

UX/UI Design

The Challenge

Create a menu system suitable for the VR experience and a HUD system to be displayed in first person on a moving vehicle.

My Solution

I worked on the design of the menu flow and in-game interfaces. As for the menus, I designed a system with a central panel (where the main interactions are displayed) and two panels slightly tilted toward the user that appear as needed and are used to show additional information or display contextual buttons depending on where you are in the menu. As for the HUD, it has been positioned above the motorcycle dashboard (so that it is always visible but does not interfere with the player's view) and has been designed to be modular depending on the player's needs and game modes.

Tutorial

The Challenge

Create a tutorial for a game with complex and unusual mechanics in VR.

My Solution

I designed the tutorial in two stages: the first stage takes place in the pit lane and demonstrates all the basic mechanics, requiring the user to complete tests to verify their understanding of the basic interactions. The second stage takes place on the track, offering different sections of the track with increasing difficulty so that the mechanics learned in the first stage can be applied.

Motion Syckness Prevention System

The Challenge

Being a VR racing game, motion sickness is easily verifiable in the player.

My Solution

I designed this system considering both prevention outside the game, giving players advice on how to position themselves and how to arrange the room during the tutorial, and systems that actually reduce motion sickness: vignetting, helmet, reducing brightness, reducing headshake, and other measures in line with current research on motion sickness in video games.

AI Tuning System

The Challenge

Tuning the AI parameters was tedious and slow.

My Solution

I designed and implemented a system on Unity that uses genetic algorithms to find the best parameters for the artificial intelligence algorithm of the game's opponents. This system reduced parameter tuning from one month per track to about three days.

Player Progression

The Challenge

Manage player progression by considering both their skills and their respect for other players in multiplayer mode.

My Solution

I implemented a system with Python to manage experience points and the formulas that assign them. In addition, this system retrieves player data so that evaluations can be made based on player analytics in order to adjust point allocation and difficulty balancing.

Level Design

I worked on the track design, specifically focusing on how the materials should slow down or modify the drivers' performance, adjusting the penalty zones, managing the splines, managing the cameras on the track, and adding scenic elements.

Combat System

The Challenge

Create an agile combat system that progresses as the game advances and the player upgrades.

My Solution

I designed a queue-based enemy generation system. Each level is represented by a list of events (enemies, traps, junctions, secret rooms) that follow one after the other. Each item on the list controls the possibility of entering the field (if there is enough space, if there are other items with which it cannot be spawned). Given a list of the composition of a level, its statistics increase depending on the level in the game you are at. Thanks to some tools I developed, it is possible to calculate the difficulty of the level in relation to the player's equipment and consequently balance the level by modifying the elements of the list.

Card Design

The Challenge

Designing NFT cards that contain a lot of information and visuals and that affect gameplay.

My Solution

Designing these cards was a fundamental part of this project: all the rest of the design, marketing, and ecosystem of the narrative universe is based on it. The most difficult challenge was to incorporate many different visual characteristics in order to have cards that were simple to make but sufficiently different from each other. The rarity of a card increases depending on its components. The rarer a card is, the more components it can have. The components are, for example, the artwork, style, background, type of holography, and so on. In this way, the differentiation between the various cards is easy to achieve, and the chosen features give value and physicality to the cards produced.

Monetization

The Challenge

Designing a monetization system that also included NFTs.

My Solution

The monetization design for this game was complex to implement due to the presence of NFTs and the cryptocurrency used to purchase them. Together with the development team, we designed a hybrid system that allowed players to go through the main mobile device store before purchasing game resources linked to NFTs. In general, the monetization system was designed to be of interest to the player and keep them engaged.

A Project for Growth

The Challenge

Creating a video game and taking care of all aspects of it.

My Solution

The idea to work on this project came about when I was thinking about my weak point in video game development: drawing. For this reason, I built a very simple artistic pipeline that uses the tools I know well (Figma and Photoshop) to create modular and easily producible assets.

Challenging Mobile Design

The Challenge

Designing the mobile back office version.

My Solution

After working on improving the UI and UX of the PC web version, I had to adapt the back office to a mobile view. The problem was that, with so much information to display about the products, the mobile view was difficult to read. I worked on the entire design of the mobile site, simplifying interactions and making them very clear. I redesigned the product cards, making them much more readable and easier to view on mobile devices.

A Serious Game

The Challenge

Creating a serious game starting from maneuvers that are far from a game.

My Solution

Starting with resuscitation maneuvers, I studied which of their characteristics could be applied to a video game aimed at middle and high school students (which requires a game that also offers a challenge) and which could compare the results of mini-games and matches played. Deconstructing the maneuvers and finding playful mechanisms was not easy for all the mini-games, but by finding repetitive mechanics, actions that required specific timing, and also playing with the order in which they had to be performed, I achieved a fun result that the kids who played it really enjoyed.

Procedural Levels

The Challenge

Create a unique daily game that can only be played once.

My Solution

To create a different and challenging game every day, I developed, prototyped, and implemented the system that manages random generation starting from the seed (today's date). The implemented algorithm allows you to generate the dungeon (choosing from different rooms with different details), the characters to save, the traps, and the objects present and necessary on the map. This, using a custom algorithm that does not depend on the device, allows you to offer the same challenge to all players without the need to be connected.

Offline Multiplayer

The Challenge

Create a multiplayer game system that can work offline.

My Solution

The challenge with this mechanism was to create a way for different kids from different schools to play together without necessarily having an internet connection. The idea was to use a code consisting of about ten characters that would allow them to compete in two ways: in a normal game, by giving the code to the teachers in order to obtain an overall team score, or in marathon mode, which involves passing the code from teammate to teammate after performing a resuscitation. The innovative design choice lies in the code passing mini-game: while one player dictates the code, the other must re-enter it through three different mini-games (one for alphabetical, numerical, and special characters).

A Serious Game

The Challenge

Designing mini-games with an educational purpose by collaborating with professionals outside the gaming industry.

My Solution

Having to work with psychologists, finding common ground on the development strategies for the mini-games and the main game hub was the focus of this game's design. In order to communicate effectively with them, I produced mockups of the mini-games and we iterated on each one until we found a compromise between non-frustrating gameplay and the educational purpose of the mini-game. Having to document the specifications of the mini-games to present to the artists and developers also required particular care to avoid misunderstandings between what was decided during the mini-game design phase.

A VR Experience For Non-VR Users

The Challenge

Design an intuitive, easily explainable, and motion sickness-free experience for an audience unfamiliar with VR.

My Solution

For the control design, I worked on making the interactions as easy to understand and intuitive as possible. The left controller has a tablet attached to it that can be touched naturally by poking it with a pen positioned on the right controller. This way, the user does not need to know where the device's buttons are or what they are called. The UI is simple and clean with labels illustrating each type of interaction in the experience.

Unusual Input System

The Challenge

Use Technogym equipment (treadmills and exercise bikes) as input.

My Solution

To avoid distracting the player/athlete from their training, simple inputs were chosen, such as buttons positioned on the handles of the devices and, above all, the goal that the athlete must maintain during that training session, a value that will influence the loading of power-ups and, if respected, give an advantage to those who perform the exercise correctly.

An Accessible Game

The Challenge

Make the game accessible to blind and colorblind players.

My Solution

The game was designed to take advantage of the device's helper for the blind people so that anyone can complete it. In addition, colors were chosen from a colorblind-safe color scheme.