01
Player feedback & health
Implemented the player health bar and its behaviour, created the supporting visual assets, and extended the shared event system with maximum-health and healing-related state.
Licensed diploma project
Haardon: a fast hybrid of an FPS and an RTS.
A licensed Unity diploma project combining first-person combat, real-time strategy and procedurally generated objectives in a science-fiction battlefield.
- My role
- Programmer & project lead
- Team
- 5-person diploma team
- Engine
- Unity · C#
- Status
- Completed · 2024
Licensing & ownership
The source code is not publicly available because the project is licensed and jointly owned. This project page uses the dissertation and development history to distinguish my documented work from shared implementation and the wider team result.
Project overview
Two perspectives, one battlefield
Haardon asks the player to think like a commander and fight like a soldier. Strategic decisions shape the battlefield, while first-person action makes the consequences immediate.
The team designed a loop around building and combat phases. From the RTS view, the player expands defensive locations, manages resources, constructs buildings and commands allied units. In FPS mode, the player enters the battle directly with weapons and abilities. Procedural terrain and randomly generated objectives were used to make each scenario less predictable.
My original idea was to combine the speed and presence of an FPS with the planning of an RTS. I brought participants from two student groups together, led the first brainstorming sessions and helped turn that concept into a shared diploma project with a playable Unity build and a formal technical dissertation.
Gameplay trailer
See the hybrid in motion
The trailer demonstrates first-person combat, strategic structures, abilities, enemy encounters and the project’s science-fiction presentation.
Trailer hosted on Vimeo. I contributed the trailer music as part of the project’s final presentation.
My contribution
Game development with project-level responsibility
My work crossed gameplay programming, player presentation, prototypes, technical writing and project direction. Shared items are described as contributions rather than sole ownership.
02
Player presentation
Integrated the player model and animation assets, worked with the FPS weapon camera, and contributed to player movement and camera-control code as part of the shared character system.
03
Healing & game events
Co-developed the Healing Aura ability and its connection to GameEventSystem, helping translate a team-designed ability into health changes and visible player feedback.
04
Persistence prototypes
Built an early modular save-system prototype for player position and a work-in-progress high-score system. These experiments informed the architecture even though the high-score feature was not part of the final build.
05
Project direction
Originated the core hybrid concept, brought students from two groups into one project team, led the initial brainstorming and helped keep the gameplay, technical work and dissertation aligned.
06
Documentation & trailer
Contributed to the English abstract, game design, Unity methods, player-model and FPS-camera sections, discussion, future work, conclusions and references, and created music for the game trailer.
Evidence note: the surviving Git history includes health-bar and healing-event work, the early binary save prototype, high-score experiments, player-model and animation integration, and shared player/camera changes. Because the repository contains merges and collaborative systems, this page prioritises specific capabilities over commit volume.
Agile delivery
Three milestones, one shared plan
We managed the diploma as an iterative team project, progressing through early alpha, beta and final-product milestones rather than waiting for one large submission.
Jira gave the team a shared view of scope, ownership and progress.
We met twice each week to review completed work, discuss blockers, split upcoming tasks and adjust priorities. As project lead, I helped translate the agreed direction into actionable Jira tasks and kept technical implementation, documentation and milestone expectations visible to the whole team.
Tools & practices
Jira · shared backlog · task assignment · milestone planning · twice-weekly reviews · iterative delivery
- 01
Early alpha
Established the playable foundations, validated the FPS/RTS concept and gave the team a concrete build against which responsibilities and technical risks could be reviewed.
- 02
Beta
Brought the main gameplay systems into a more complete loop, integrated work from across the team and used regular review meetings to identify blockers, defects and remaining scope.
- 03
Final product
Focused on integration, stability, presentation and diploma delivery, completing the playable build alongside the dissertation and game trailer.
Team outcome
A connected hybrid, not two separate prototypes
The broader implementation was divided across the team and integrated into one game loop. These systems describe the delivered project as a whole, not my sole authorship.
- 01First-person movement, weapons, abilities and combat feedback
- 02RTS building placement, unit training, selection and orders
- 03Switching between FPS and overhead strategy perspectives
- 04Procedurally generated terrain and randomly assigned objectives
- 05Resource gathering, defensive expansion, enemy AI and wave management
- 06Separate FPS and RTS HUD states with persistent battlefield information
Technical approach
Systems that had to meet in real time
Combining two genres meant coordinating character control, strategy commands, generated environments, interface state and enemy behaviour inside one Unity runtime.
01
Engine
Unity · C#
02
Gameplay
FPS combat · RTS commands · abilities
03
World
Procedural terrain · generated objectives
04
Character
Animator · Animation Rigging · IK
05
Architecture
Game events · coroutines · modular systems
06
Performance
Unity Job System · pathfinding
Performance challenge
Pathfinding without blocking play
The dissertation records a team optimisation that moved pathfinding work away from the main thread with Unity’s Job System, reducing the measured calculation from roughly 50 ms to about 0.2 ms in the documented test.
Scope discipline
Prototype honestly, ship deliberately
The early save and high-score work helped explore persistent state, but the high-score system remained unimplemented in the final experience. Keeping that distinction visible is part of presenting development work responsibly.
What I learned
From concept leadership to a playable build
- 01Turning an unusual genre idea into a scope that a student team could divide, integrate and demonstrate.
- 02Treating leadership as hands-on coordination: defining direction, contributing code, integrating shared systems and documenting decisions.
- 03Designing player feedback so health, healing and ability state remain readable during fast first-person combat.
- 04Integrating character models, animation, camera behaviour and gameplay code as one coherent player experience.
- 05Prototyping save and high-score systems early, then being transparent about which experiments did not enter the final build.
- 06Writing a technical dissertation that connects implementation choices, limitations, challenges and possible future work.
Primary project document
Read the diploma dissertation
The full team dissertation documents the game design, implementation, challenges and conclusions behind the playable build.
Haardon diploma dissertation
Scroll inside the preview to read, resize it vertically from the lower edge, or use the full-reader link for the browser’s complete PDF controls.
Project status
Completed diploma project
Haardon progressed from early alpha through beta to a playable, documented final diploma release in 2024.
The project demonstrates my early game-development experience in Unity and C#, but also the broader responsibility I took for forming a team around an original concept, planning work in Jira, contributing to shared technical systems and helping communicate the final result. It remains a collaborative work: the finished game reflects the combined engineering, design, writing and presentation effort of all five team members.
Watch the result