Description
Truck Driver: The American Dream is the first game developed inhouse at SOEDESCO, released in 2023. It Expands on the Truck Driver formula by introducing a connecting narrative and a larger, more diverse world. I worked on the project during its original prototyping phase, laying the groundwork for the game’s ideas.
info
Platform: Xbox Series X, Playstation 5
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Year: 2022
team Size: 18
Responsibilities
- Getting early versions working on the consoles
- Prototyping the Customization system
- Technical and tool support for Artists
LEARNING ACHIEVEMENTS
Unreal Engine 5
This project was the first professional Unreal Engine project I worked on. We decided to switch to UE 5 for this project so our artist could better utilize the engine with minimal support from the Tech team. However, switching to UE5 was not without its issues: From the various growing pains of the engine to the fact that most of the tech team had barely worked with Unreal Engine (or in C++). It often fell on me and one other programmer to support the tech team with the various challenges that come from switching to a new engine.
Graphics and Tech Art
During prototyping, I was tasked with exploring how to expand the previous games' customization system. Although I was not the most experienced with creating shaders, I managed to create the basic Material shaders for the car finishes. On top of that, I created a system heavily inspired by the paint job systems found in games like Forza Horizon or the recent Need for Speed series. During this, I was able to pick up more knowledge about working with shaders and render targets. I’m still no master, but it has already helped me debug and profile various other issues on Consoles.
Large Scope on a small Tech team
We had quite a small tech team during the prototyping phase, consisting of just 4 programmers plus 3 external developers who weren’t on the project full-time. As none of us had any experience as a lead (or even know product development outside of porting and our school projects) it was a real crash course in how to scope, give technical insight to our producer, and support the rest of the team with limited resources. We were able to successfully deliver multiple early milestones with positive feedback, thanks to us communicating our challenges and perspectives early in the process. One plus is that with a smaller team we were a lot more adaptable. Meetings were never long and straight to the point.