SUNBURN RAILWAY
ROLES/CONTRIBUTIONS
PRODUCER, 3D ARTIST, DESIGNER
- Creation of Idea and game loop
- Creating 3D Assets and textures and environment
- Optimising for Meta Quest 2 Standalone
- Managing task lists and ensuring team cohesion
- Conducting playtests and iterating gameplay from results
TEAM MEMBERS
- Daniel Lowe: Game Designer
- Darius Mclean: Programmer
- Brenten Edwards: SFX
PROJECT OVERVIEW
This was my first attempt at creating a Virtual Reality experience, and I also got to be the producer of a small team for it. We created a train track switching simulator set in the Aussie outback. This game uses the Quest 2 and Quest 3's hand tracking feature and is optimised for standalone play to increase player immersion.
Accolades
Our game was produced to a high enough quality that we were able to showcase at two events, both QUT's 2025 Immersive Festival and QUT's 2025 Open Day
GAMEPLAY VIDEO
SCREENSHOTS
THE PROCESS
IDEA AND STORYBOARDS
My original idea for this game was a time management game with the player having to focus on multiple tasks, including flipping levers, shooing away birds, and managing their sunburn.
After successfully completing a full loop, they would be rewarded with money the player can use to buy toys to play with in VR up on their tower.
The gameplay loop largely remained the same. There were a few changes made based on how we wanted to showcase the game.
3D MODELS AND ART STYLE
For the meshes I wanted to use low poly models as it is more performant, especially for a VR game
For the objects the player sees close up I increased the poly count to keep the objects looking appealing.
As for the art style I went with a custom created painterly smart material, which has pre-baked lighting on the colour.
OPTIMISATION: SKYBOX
Optimising for VR standalone is a daunting task, and one of the best things I did to the project to achieve a stable build was baking the environment into the skybox.
After doing this, only the player's platform, the train tracks, and some rocks and houses were left in the environment, even the ground was now part of the skybox.
OPTIMISATION: LIGHTING
Another big part of getting the game to run smoothly standalone was to completely remove all lighting.
All of the objects use unlit materials in Unity, with all of the shading coming from textures with baked lighting on the base colour.
Doing this more than doubled performance.
OPTIMISATION: POLY COUNT
While creating the game, we had a placeholder train model (not mine) which had 35k triangles. This was way too much for something so far away from the player.
Because of this I used it as a reference to model a new train, this time bringing the poly count down to about 500.
After optimising, the scene only ever reaches around 200k triangles at once, easily reaching the requirement for standalone.
OPTIMISATION: ATLASING
This is the first time I've played around with texture atlasing.
After some trial and error I was able to develop a workflow for me to produce them.
With these atlases, along with all of the other optimisation, I was able to reduce the draw calls to under 40 for the game.
1ST PLAYTEST BUILD
2ND PLAYTEST BUILD
3RD PLAYTEST BUILD
FINAL BUILD
SHOWCASE
Getting to showcase the game twice was one of the best learning experiences I had at QUT.
We got to have many different people play the game, and people laughed, smiled and enjoyed their time in the game.
Not only this, but we got to see how different people reacted to the game, and how really young audiences seemed to understand the game more than the teenagers/adults. This was an extremely interesting find.
These showcases ignited a fire in me. I have more drive to show my work to others, something I wouldn't feel as strongly without being given this oppurtunity.
FINAL COMMENTS
This was one of, if not my favourite, games that I have worked on. My team did an amazing job for only being given 8 weeks to produce the game, and I couldn't have done it without their support.
Not only was this project fun to work on, but I learned a lot: from optimising for VR, to Creating my own stylised smart material in Substance Painter.