Overview / Usage

Tight and responsive arcade racing physics

Neodash is very fast-paced, and has a variety of traps that require consistent, accurate and responsive arcade vehicle physics. Because of these requirements, a car physics system was built from the ground up to ensure the best gameplay experience.

Audio-Reactive visuals

One of the most appealing element of Neodash is how the visuals react to the pulse of the music. To create a truly unique and exciting atmosphere, elements react explosively in different ways; through animation, intricate pixel shaders, vertex displacement, and other methods.

A Powerful and intuitive level editor

Neodash features a powerful level editor, allowing me to create spectacular campaign maps, as well as enabling future players to build and share their own levels. Amongst the different available tools, every element is entirely customizable: size, colors, material, custom properties.

Methodology / Approach

Audio-Reactive visuals

The first iteration of beat/onset detection was a custom-made algorithm that summed amplitudes of the lower frequencies (to pick up on the percussions) of the music in real-time. However the results weren't consistent enough over multiple songs. The second and current implementation uses Unreal Engine's Audio Synesthesia plugin that analyzes and bakes results for different types of audio data (onset, loudness, constant-Q). Its accuracy provided great results, amplified by the use of multiple thresholds and algorithms to trigger events used by the entire environment to react in different ways to the music. It also allows to seamlessly add new songs with very little adjustments required.

Fully dynamic

As levels are generated at runtime, everything has to be dynamic (no baked lighting or other rendering precomputations). This increases the importance of performance optimization. In order to minimize frame times, UE4 profiling tools and Intel's Graphics Performance Analyzer allow to pinpoint and help fix performance bottlenecks.

Technologies Used

Unreal Engine 4

Blender

Intel Graphics Performance Analyzer

DaVinci Resolve

Microsoft Visual Studio

Other links

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• Steam Store