I had the opportunity to work on Space Control as part of my internship at
MoonMonster Studios
.
During my internship I worked on various tasks ranging from fixing bugs to implementing new features and polishing the game to AAA quality.
With each new feature implemented, the team's confidence in my abilities grew, and soon I was entrusted with more responsibility, taking ownership of game updates independently.
As I worked on adding more content and features, I continued to refine the gameplay and improve the overall experience. Some of my work included optimizing player feel for the Druming Rhythm Game, implementing a new Turret GameMode, and enhancing the Hand Tracking feature to a level of quality that surpassed anything else on the market.
But don't just take my word for it:
"Dylan is a great developer with a broad set of skills, who always seeks to finish a task in the best and most complete possible way. Socially he's also a joy to work with!"
— Lina Zhao
"During Dylan's internship (...) he showed me his excellent programming knowledge and ability to quickly learn new tools/skills. (...) I also commend his focus on ensuring the final result of his work is always of a high quality. Finally, he's also just a great person to work with, good humor but acts professionally when needed."
— Simon Scheap
"(...) he quickly adapted to the hectic situation, had no issue working independently on complex parts of the game (...) ready to step in when priorities shifted or another member of the team needed help. Whenever he had a new feature finished, he always clearly communicated to the team what he made (with description and video) and what he needed the rest of us to test or give feedback on (...) he has good sense for gameplay feel, as well as a sense for integration of non-programming elements such as sfx and vfx (...) He greatly improved the drumming rhythm game and the turret shooting game, all while also cleaning up the old and messy code base these games were initially made in. (...) Through his rigorous methods of testing, he always managed to find the strangest and most obscure bugs. And then he would of course fix them. In short, for the few months we got to work together, Dylan proved himself to be a great addition to the team, both through his work ethic and his sense of humour!"
— Joran Potze
View on LinkedIn"Dylan was a pleasure to work with and always delivered high-quality work!"
— Brian van Hyfte
Trailer
What I did
Here's a quick overview of some of the work I did during my internship, being a Gameplay Programmer my tasks varied a lot:
- Polishing mechanics to AAA quality
- Adding Hand Tracking to a quality far beyond what the current market offered
- In-game cosmetics dispenser for hats, glasses and hands
- Cosmetics persistence to the game
- Infinite Wave GameMode Turret Minigame
- Physics and Rendering Optimizations
- Various Audio Implementation
- Various Instruments
- Fidget toys
- Polishing the game's climax for optimal player feel
- Animations and Visual Effects
- Special Powers for Characters affecting gravity
- Various interactive UI elements and dispensers
- Playtesting and Iteration
- Cutting Voicelines
- Many, many, many bug fixes
I learned a lot during my internship, and quite happy that I could meaningfully contribute to such an exciting project! Special thanks to the the team, who would later become colleagues, for teaching me and letting me grow with the company.
I learned many valuable skills and gained valuable practical experience in game development, particularly in working efficiently and effectively under pressure, tight deadlines and with legacy code.
Be on the lookout for more updates in September with the new turret GameMode and Hand Tracking Update!
You can read more about all of my work on my complete internship report. As well as find out more about the project on Meta!