Hats Worn: UI Designer, Tools programmer, CI/CD Engineer
Tools: Unity, C#, IMGUI, Unreal Engine, GitLab CI/CD
Team Size: 20
Time Frame: On and off 2022 through 2026
The Nexus Engine, also called 2AD, is a cross-engine plugin designed to aid with the implementation of lifelike characters in other game engine projects. Features include facial emotion, blinking, and lip sync (streamed or canned). All actions a character can take are stored as a timeline, allowing for easy authoring and debugging of character sequences.
A primary role I held on this project was the creation of a “composer”, a garageband-like interface designed to help users interface with and create timelines. I made the Editor GUI for an in-engine composer, and did the same for our standalone composer app (also made in Unity). This in particular was a challenge to maintain as features were added and removed from Nexus during development. Because this wasn't just meant to be an internal tool, I had to take extra care to maintain documentation and general stability of the plugins.
I also wrote and maintained our CI/CD suite for these plugins, setting up build machines and enforcing testing workflows. This involved unit testing for our core code as well as integration testing in Unity.
Nexus is still in use, and I've worked on several other projects that rely on it, with clients including InWorld and most recently Operative Games. It's by far been the longest running project I've been a part of, and keeps evolving year to year.