Medusa Slockbower
Graphics Programmer and Technical Artist
Kilonova
A 3D, third-person melee-combat game where a celestial world is being corrupted by a powerful alien force: The Kilonova. Play as Sol, a fighter of the cosmos, as she fights to repel the corruption and restore the world to its former glory.
My Work
Working on Kilonova allowed me to shift from focusing on low-level programming to technical art. My primary roles at Sleepy Spirit are Graphics Programmer, Technical Artist, and Build Technician. However, I have also been a versatile team member, acting as Animator, Cinematographer, Gameplay Programmer, and VFX Artist. My responsibilities included; managing Weekly Builds, support for Linux and SteamDeck, development of the Arena, Level, Gate, and Portal systems, supporting creation of VFX, as well as supporting Animation and Cinematography.
Combat System
Throughout this last semester, our iteration has focused primarily on design. One of the systems we decided to polish was the combo system. I was tasked with setting up the new system, and creating a first pass of the UI signifiers. This was built on top of the character controller, developed by our gameplay programmers, Liam Sarett and Mary Khuu
Camera Occlusion Masking VFX
At the start of my last semester, one of our designers approached me about creating an occlusion masking effect for our camera. Using Baldur's Gate 3 for reference, I was able to quickly put together an effect that our designer and playtesters were happy with.
Gate VFX
For our first semester developing Kilonova, my role primarily focused on gameplay. I developed our arena and gate system, which I have slowly been polishing the VFX for. The barrier is a material developed in Unreal, and the crumble animation was made in Houdini. The base model was created by our environment artist, Devon Stratton.
Steam Deck Support!
After our VFX Artist asked about running the game on Linux for his mentor from an internship, I discovered the cross-compilation toolchain provided by Unreal. I realized that it would be straightforward to prep the game for SteamDeck from there. For our third semester, we added SteamDeck as a target platform and I have been supervising the support for Linux and SteamDeck since.
End Cinematic
To wrap up the story of the game, we created an end cinematic to show Sol defeating the Kilonova. My responsibilities included programming, pipeline support, animation, cinematography, and VFX. One piece I am particularly proud of from this sequence is the shader effect that shows the de-corruption of the world by changing the colors of crystals and foliage as the camera flies above.
In-Game Trailer
To immerse the player into the world of Kilonova, we decided to real-time render the trailer at the start of the game to setup the story. My work to bring this to life included programming, shader work, animation, and strong interdisciplinary communication.
