Alberto Giudice

MOARI is a predator-prey environment simulation, in which simple carnivores and herbivores move in a 2D petri dish and search for food in order to survive. In particular, herbivores survive by eating green food pellets, while carnivores eat both red food pellet and herbivores.

The project was developed in Unity as an exam project during my MSc in Games at the IT University of Copenhagen. The training of preys and predators is done through deep reinforcement learning, with the usage of Unity ML Agents. Both herbivores and carnivores were trained multiple times with the PPO, SAC and MA-POCA algorithms, tweaking each one to achieve the best results. Finally, all algorithms were compared against each other.

My contributions to the project include:

• Setup of the ML Agents environment and development of the simulation code;
• Tweaking of parameters for PPO, SAC and MA-POCA;
• Analysis and comparison of resulting AI models' performances.

LINK: MOARI on GitHub

Keep Moving and Nobody Explodes is a 2D platformer in which the player controls a yellow square and needs to transport it to the end location of the level, passing through a series of obstacles and avoiding falling or exploding.

The game was made in Unity as an entry for Ludum Dare 49. Originated from the theme of "Unstable", the main spin of the game is that, once outside the start safe area, the yellow box shakes whenever it's still. By using the shockwaves, some obstacles can be destroyed. However if left shaking for too long, the square explodes. Obstacles are made of different materials, such as glass or stone, so the amount of shockwaves required to destroy them varies. This makes it so that positioning and timing of shaking become key to progress.

In this game jam we were only 2 people and I was the only programmer. The game is just a prototype, made in roughly 20 hours. My contributions to the project include:

• Entirely programmed the whole game;
• Co-autorship over the design of the mechanics;
• Design and implementation of animations and audio effects.

LINK: Keep Moving and Nobody Explodes on Itch

The LEGO Pirate Cube is a hybrid 2.5D platformer, in which 2 players need to cooperate in order to make a pirate reach the treasure, through a series of platforming challenges and puzzles. The hybrid component comes from a physical cube built with LEGO and powered by a LEGO Technic Hub and four MINDSTORMS sensors, which allow a player to interact with the digital video game.

The game was made in Unity as an entry for a LEGO x Unity Game Jam, organized specifically for ITU students. The goal of the jam was to create a unique interaction between LEGO Technic Hub and MINDSTORMS sensors, using as a starting point the LEGO Unity Microgame with action and trigger LEGO blocks. Our approach has been to create a physical cube, corresponding to a digital cube following the player's avatar in the game as a companion. This way 2 players can play together, with one using the keyboard as input and one instead using the cube to aid the first player as the cube companion.

During this game jam I took on the role of lead developer of the team, but I also designed some of the interactions and parts of the cube itself. Some interesting remarks:

• I was responsible for making the whole hybric technology setup work;
• I designed the usage of the ultrasonic sensor on my own;
• I figured out how to use a motor instead of a color sensor, for better reliability;
• I was responsible for all the gameplay programming part of the video game;
• The game won a honorable mention award, which was not originally planned by LEGO.

Pathfinder 2E Critical Decks website is an online transposition of the original Paizo's release of the decks for Pathfinder 2E. This tool is thought to be used during Pathfinder 2E campaigns played online, whenever a player or NPC rolls a critical hit (20) or critical fumble (1), in order to apply additional effects and make the combat more intriguing.

This project was developed in plain HTML and CSS, with a JSON file to store the various effects and some logic in JQuery to randomize the card drawn based on the parameters chosen by the users. The website has been designed entirely by me, with the objective of making it easily usable both from PC and mobile, while also keeping the original card design from Paizo and the feel of drawing a card central elements of the UI/UX. Most importantly, I categorized the effects based on effect severity, in order to allow the players to draw only appropriate effects, either avoiding the very mild or extremely nefarious ones.

The design and development of the website, including the categorization of the cards, took approximately 3 days. Some of the main highlights from this project are:

• UI/UX design aimed at recalling Paizo's decks and the immediacy of drawing cards;
• JQuery + CSS animations on deck hovering and card drawing;
• Resonsive design to allow immediacy of usage both on desktop and mobile browsers;
• Categorization of card effects on different levels of severities, to allow a finer degree of control;
• Effect list easily extendable by adding entries on a XLS sheet and converting it to JSON.

LINK: PF2E Critical Deck Website

Memorex is a very simple walking simulator game, the main focus of which is to guide the player to a teenager's fantasies in a chill and relaxed mood. During the game the player just walks around Rex's dreamy world and explore it slowly, stepping on some stones to piece together all of Rex's memories.

This project was developed in Unity as an exam project in the MSc in Games at the IT University of Copenhagen. Initially conceived to explore relaxed gameplay through nostalgic walkman imagery, Memorex became a game about the relationship of Rex - a teenager - and his father who lives in Japan. The game starts from Rex's bedroom, where the protagonist finds a shamisen (a japanese guitar-like instrument) sent to him as a gift from the distant father, and then moves to a fantasy land. Here, Rex goes through his memories, finding his videogames, the first fishing and sushi with dad and other experiences that helped him grow as the person he is now. Finally, Rex returns to his room, called for dinner by his mom, and the game ends with this cyclic metaphor.

I developed this in a team of 5 students and many of my ideas ended up in the final product. In particular, my contributions include:

• Camera programmer, iterating through different styles and finally implementing a "hybrid" dolly follow;
• Level designer, responsible mainy for the creation of the central bedroom hub;
• Narrative designer, responsible for dialogues and environmental storytelling;
• Art Bible creator, responsible for aligning the vision internally and sharing it to the public;
• General polishing of many graphical and code details.

LINK: Memorex on Itch.io

LINK: Memorex Art Bible (PDF)

Dispattern is a mobile interactive music experience aimed to connect up to 4 players simultaneously, in order to create beautiful music together. The players can draw platforms with simple swipes, and the note produced varies in relation to the platform's length.

This project was developed in Unity as an exam project during my MSc in Games at the IT University of Copenhagen. The multiplayer component is handled via Firebase, which handles platforms' transactions and player states. If more than 4 users connect at the same time, the ones not playing can spectate and listen to the music piece, while waiting for their seat to play.

While developing Dispattern, I've had the chance to improve in these regards:

• Shader development in HLSL, specifically playing with reverse subtractive effects and sprite texturing;
• Game logic implementation to support rendering of online multiplayer actions;
• Touch input handling for complex logic and animations in Unity;
• Reactive UI and tutorialization;
• Game mechanics design to satisfy constraint set by sounds and art.

LINK: APK Download (Safe to test!)

Evolutionary Platformer is a 2D vertical scrolling platformer in which you are a monk trying reach Nirvana by jumping your way up to the sky on various types of platforms, while avoiding the demons floating around and the darkness creeping up from the bottom.

This game was made in Unity as an entry for the Lvl One Jam. Originated from the theme of "Left Behind", in Evolutionary Platformer you can enter Zen Mode to stop time and edit the level by moving around any one platform or enemy, in order to save the monk from death or to make your life easier. Moreover, after each death or level completion, the monk's Karma changes and the player can select one of three options that will modify some in-game parameters like the gravity, the player speed, the number of edits per run and so on.

During this game jam I decided to work with a team of people I did not know before, and I took on many responsibilities:

• Game Designer, responsible for game mechanics and vision;
• Art Director, responsible for drawing the main sketches of all sprites;
• UI, animations and graphics randomization programmer.

LINK: Evolutionary Platformer on Itch

Tank Ball is a fun-packed couch-party game in which you can brawl in macthes with 2 to 4 players. You're a cartoonish tank and need to touch the ball 3 times to get a chance to spike it down and destroy your friends' tanks. Meanwhile, you can shoot other tanks to bump them away or dash to avoid bullets and spikes.

This project was pitched by me and got selected to be developed as an exam project during my MSc in Games at the IT University of Copenhagen. The core idea was about playing volleyball with flying tanks, but we pivoted and polished the game until we reached a game we felt it was real fun for both casual and seasoned players.

While developing Tank Ball, I was responsible for most of the high level roles:

• Game Producer, responsible of team coordination and communication;
• Lead Game Designer, responsible of game feel and mechanics selection based on player testing;
• Lead Programmer, responsible of code tweaking, various in-game mechanics and UI;
• Website developer and promotional material creator (trailer, posters, banners).

LINK: Tank Ball Website

Light of The Moon is a basic bullet-hell boss arena battle game made with free isometric 2D sprites. The aim of this project was never meant to become a polished finished product, whereas this was developed as an exam project in the MSc in Games at the IT University of Copenhagen to showcase low level programming ability.

This project was developed in Simple Render Engine, a simple game engine developed by a PHd at ITU. Using SRE meant not having the usual visual shortcuts modern game engines provide, as well as having the full control over which type of architecture to use to handle game objects. The code was entirely written in C++, to handle physics and collision we used Box2D and to load data we used RapidJSON.

I took part in all decisions about the architecture and patterns to be used in the project, but some of my personal contribution to the codebase include:

• Handling of the game state via a Singleton Game Manager;
• Handling of game objects with a component based architecture;
• Collision detection and multiple fixtures handling for each physics component;
• Animation and movement smoothing of bullets with Box2D;
• Boss phases "AI" for spawning bullets in specific patterns;
• Object Pool to handle bullet's allocation and deallocation in a light way;
• Performance optimization and code refactoring based on memory usage profiling.

LINK: Light of The Moon on GitHub

Ninja2D is a small videogame project I created to learn the basics of Unity. The game is a 2D platformer developed primarily for Android, but easily portable to other platforms. In this game the player controls a ninja character in 2D linear levels with the goal of reaching the end of each one without falling from the platforms, while also facing some enemies. The player can jump, crouch, attack with a sword or shoot a fireball forward, while two of the enemies are a frog that jumps back and forth on platforms and an eagle that follows the ninja while he's within a certain range.

This videogame was entirely made by me except from the characters sprites and the background tiles, taken from royalty free assets. As a first experiment with Unity and C#, it took me approximately one week to study the basics of the game engine and to develop the actual game. Even though the concept is really simple, I plan to continue the development in the future in order to add levels and enemies and enhance the control and combat system.

Some features of Ninja2D to highlight are:

• Movement control system completely working both with mobile overlay UI and keyboard;
• Tile and scene system organized to easily build new levels without needing additional code;
• Good level of abstraction on the components and code structure;
• Fully implemented pause menu, loss menu, won level screen and end game credits;
• Attention to visual feedbacks like healthbars, camera shakes and fluid animation changes;
• Overall coherent graphic style to match the third party assets I used.

LINK: Ninja2D on GitHub

Lupus is my personal take on the party game Werewolf. It is a game were 9 to 37 players can roleplay a set of characters from a little village, were were a pack of werewolves started decimating the population during the nights.

To play, a master anonimously deals a card to each player and then narrate the events. One game round consist of day and night, and each part has different rules: during the night everyone close their eyes and one at a time some individuals with special powers get called by the master to open their eyes and use their power. Lastly, all werewolves open their eyes and decide on a prey to devour among all the other players. During the day, instead, all the player who are still alive discuss the current turn of events and ultimately settle on a person to burn at the stake, on charges of being a werewolf. The game ends if the good villagers burn all the werewolves or the number of alive good characters equals the number of alive werewolves.

Some things worth mentioning by my experience designing Lupus are:

• Analyzing similar products and evaluating balancing and design decisions;
• Designing many new characters from scratch and testing them against consolidated characters;
• Changing common-known characters from other similar editions to improve their playability with my ruleset;
• Playtesting of different combinations of synergies in deck based games;
• Evaluation of character influence on a game based on the group's size, in order to help players decide when to use which characters;
• Introduction of new mechanics compared to other editions of the game to better engage "dead" players;
• Card design and logistic for printing and cost of deck based games.

LINK: Lupus on TheGameCrafter