order of the hive
The Order of The Hive (OOTH) was a Spaceboiz event that I collaborated with. The concept for the stage was a temple worshipping bees, where I was given creative license to fill the centre piece.
I decided to create a bespoke game for the visuals, honouring the classic endless runners like Temple Run and Subway Surfers. This project was a lively intersection of game development that presented an abundance of challenges.
Client:
Year:
Spaceboiz
2024
Conjured Using:
UNREAL 5
OFF-WORLD LIVE
RESOLUME ARENA
After 3 years of making visuals with Unity, I decided to use Unreal 5 as an learning exercise. Additionally, I dabbled in 3D art by modelling the hexagonal coin. The rest of the assets were sourced using TurboSquid, which required some extra texturing and animation.
To integrate the visuals into the game I utilised Off World Live, a plugin designed for streaming/broadcasting. The projections had to be operated on a separate computer so NDI was needed instead Spout. A layer from Resolume is projected onto the walls of the game, and then the camera feed would be sent back to Resolume to be projected onto the stage.
The joystick to control the game was placed at the back of the dancefloor. The player could move the astronaut between the three lanes, jump, and slide. There were also two power-ups: a magnet, and superspeed that the player could pick up whilst running.
One of the biggest issues was optimization. The meshes I acquired were not game-ready, and were causing performance issues even when the polygons were drastically reduced. Thankfully, I was able to leverage Unreal's built in mesh instancing to reduce the overhead.
