Ocean’s Paradise - Liminal VR Internship

Immerse yourself in an underwater environment as you are guided through a peaceful meditation. Participate in a relaxing breathing exercise as you learn details about the sea life that you encounter on the beautiful coral reef.

Roles:

Producer
UX designer
QA tester

Team size:

10

Development length:

17th October 2022 - 16th December 2022

Engine: Unity

Link to Liminal Platform download on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1453730/Liminal/

Link to the Liminal Platform on Meta Quest: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3158342884265828/

Link to build:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hH9tiCR6-vqXFuz19QtoYYkPTKKbFrM5/view
Note: Oculus Quest 2 VR headset is recommended to view this experience.

This is a VR project I worked on for my internship at Liminal VR from the 17th of October to the 16th of December.

I was the producer and UX designer for this VR experience. I managed, created, and assigned tasks to animators, programmers, and audio team members. I used Confluence for documentation such as PMP, GDD, and TDD. I used Jira for the Gantt chart, and task management, and I used Google Spreadsheets for the asset list and burndown chart.

I designed the UX (User Experience) for the main experience sequence. I worked mainly with programming to get the pathing right and received feedback from other game designers on the flow of the sequence as well as the timing. This was a very time-consuming task but it was worth putting in the time and effort to make it flow naturally.

I worked with the animators and audio with asset implementation and gave them clear feedback and directions on how their work looked and sounded in the engine. I used the asset list to keep track of art and audio passes.

Ocean’s Paradise has been published on the Liminal Platform and has already received positive reviews. The project is ranked 5 out of 37 in the calm experience, and most users have reported feeling calm and relaxed after immersing themselves in the experience. Ocean’s Paradise is currently the best-performing student experience in the Calm arena.

Top transferable skills developed and improved in this project:
- Teamwork
- Communication
- Time-management
- Problem-solving

Production

I led a team of 9, which includes 6 animators, 1 programmer, 1 audio specialist, and 1 game designer. I reported to the CEO of Liminal VR during weekly stand-up meetings. I ran daily quick stand-up meetings with my team to ensure everyone was on track and organised meetings with those who couldn’t attend previous meetings. This helped to keep clear consistent communication within the team. The daily stand-ups allowed me to stay up-to-date on where everyone was up to in the schedule. During the weekly stand-ups with the CEO, I reported the team task tracking during sprints, and overall tasks I did that week.

I used Confluence to keep all documentation up-to-date and I used Jira and Trello to keep track of tasks and sprints. I managed the Gantt chart and asset lists to keep track of art passes and co-managed a burndown chart with the co-producer to keep track of time with tasks in Google Spreadsheets. I created and delegated tasks to all animators, audio, programming and designer team members in weekly sprints using the agile methodology.

I strive to work as a leader, not a boss, as I always want to help my team succeed in both the project and their personal career growth. I engage with my team to ensure everyone understands what they are working on and not over-assigning work to avoid burnout. I am passionate about uplifting and motivating the team.

I collaborated with the programmer on the movement pathing for the animated assets for predetermined pathfinding. I laid out the pathfinding nodes, to create an arched path for the game object to flow smoothly in a natural way. I internally playtested multiple times to find the right take-off timing, animation speed, game object speed, and swim height. To make the experience appear realistic, I had to ensure that everything flowed perfectly together.
I used Google Spreadsheets to document the speed timings to find the right speed, and from there I was able to get the sequence perfectly synced and in order. After all assets were in a perfectly timed sequence, I touched up the animation timings to ensure they moved in sync with the speed timings.
This was a difficult task that took a couple of weeks to get all game assets swimming perfectly in a sequence.