Elite Dangerous: Odyssey

Role

Senior Game Designer

Key Responsibilities

Designed, prototyped and developed all environment interactions

Prototyped and developed the Suit Tools

Mentored and trained a number of graduate designers

Odyssey is the latest expansion to the space simulator game Elite Dangerous. Odyssey gives the players the opportunity to disembark from the cockpit of their ship and step out on foot to explore vast distant worlds and countless unique planets. This expansion take the base gameplay loop of ship exploration, trade and combat, and incorporates it into the new on foot experience. Players take contracts from NPCs and visit the numerous settlements scattered across the galaxy to earn credits and materials that can be used to improve their suits and weapons.

My core role on the team during this project was as a senior designer who specialised specifically in the technical implementation of the designs. I joined the project mid way through production and was tasked with taking concepts the team wanted to implement, fleshing out the designs, working with code to build a prototype and then finally working with art, animation, VFX and audio to take the designs through to completion.

Specifically I worked largely on environment gameplay pieces that the player would interact with at settlements. Examples of these include, Airlocks, Doors, Terminals, Consoles, Lockers and Containers, Turrets, as well as handling other more generic concepts such as a Settlement States and Loot.

I was point of contact from design who handled almost all the technical implementation for these interactions, which required a solid understanding of the Cobra engine and its editor. Most of my work revolved around setting up of prefabs, hooking up events, dealing with state machines and making sure that all documentation regarding these interactions was well maintained and clearly communicated.

Most interaction concepts were briefly designed before I joined the project however I did get the opportunity to update and create some new interactions during development. One of the core interactions that I designed and implemented was the Arc Cutter. This was a tool designed to cut into panels in order to gain access to restricted interactions (typically valuable loot, recharge ports that could be overloaded or consoles that when interacted with could have serious effects on buildings; such as the venting of a building’s atmosphere).