Cassy Cornish

Until Dawn (2024)

Branching Narrative - Cinematic - Horror

Relive the nightmare

When eight friends return to the isolated lodge where two of their group vanished a year prior, fear tightens its icy grip, and their mountain retreat descends into a nightmare with no escape.

Immerse yourself in a gripping slasher horror rebuilt from the ground up with stunning visuals in Unreal Engine 5. Enhanced by movie-like cinematography, refined gameplay mechanics and more, venture into a thrilling exploration of an isolated mountain where nothing is as it seems.

Due to release Autumn 2024

Role: Jr Game Designer

Format: Unreal 5, PC & PS5

Project Type: AAA

Team: Ballistic Moon

Team Size: 60+ devs

Duration: June 23 - Present

Personal Contributions (hover over!)

Integration

Setting up trigger volumes, sequence actors, spline world collision, floor and IK collision, QTE and directional choice actors and cameras, and more.

Documentation

Adding to tracking docs for the contents of each chapter and progress status, as well as creating system and procedure reference documentation

Cinematics

Using Unreal Sequencer to work logically with actors, animations, UI and event triggers; as well as creatively with cameras and visual composition

State Machines

Worked with Unreal Animation Blueprint state machines as the logical core of interactions. Setting up conditions and branching flow.

Version Control

Everyday usage of Perforce with P4V. Using proprietary validation tools, clear and detailed changelist descriptions, shelving, buddying, and streams.

Bug Fixing

Using internal and publisher-side JIRA databases to log, track, and update bug and task status.

Additional Inputs

Roles & Responsibilities

Created and maintained various documentation such as for systems, instance tracking, and workflow standardisation.

Frequently checked for and read internal documentation to keep updated on as much of the game's state as possible.

Reported, tracked, and fixed bugs with annotation and media for detail through Jira databases.

Provided support for other developers across all disciplines.

Collaborated with external teams.

Used Perforce version control with stream switching and proprietary validation tools.

Had frequent and positive, respectful communication with other developers in my team and the wider studio.

Assisted with optimisation of the game such as through disabling actors after they're no longer needed, or flagging up areas with low frame rate and providing details and output logs.

Level Ownership

Monitored the quality and progress of individual levels from initial conversion to polish.

Got to know my levels inside and out, both the original game's iteration and our own, to best understand the state of the characters; narrative flow; and tone.

Made suggestions and changes to improve the quality of the player experience and immersion in the cinematic story.

Did numerous passes through the levels as systems changed or were added, such as with locomotion.

Worked on updating the levels' logic flow in state machines, through which the many branching routes through the game and actor states are managed.

Setting up and adjusting actor locations and properties including: trigger volumes, boundary and floor collision, nav mesh, set dressing, cameras etc.

Editing AI commands, cue timing, and target locations to make the AI behaviour feel as natural as possible.

Cameras & Cinematics

Broadly used Unreal Sequencer with various subsequences and shot tracks, utilising frame markers with events and their triggers for branching cutscenes and actor states.

Created and improved camera sequences in cutscenes, interactions, and locomotion by using a variety of camera types and cinematography techniques. For example:
- Using a spline camera that gets gradually closer to the player to build tension.
- Using a low focal length to make a location feel large and lonely.

Worked extensively with interactive cutscene sequences (decisions and QTEs/Quick Time Events) to set up and polish them. From framing the camera, UI elements, and characters for good composition that facilitated camera movement and animation, to revising logic properties like the duration of a QTE before it times out.

Conversion

Used a range of proprietary tools to convert interaction assets, animations, and core state machine logic from the original game's engine Decima to Unreal.

Followed standardised internal procedures to set up converted assets from the original in Unreal and integrate new systems with them in a consistent manner across the board.

Intensively used Animation Blueprints for interactions and their testing, as the ABP state machines and conditional flow are the core of interaction progression.