Unity Base Building Game

See kschnee.xepher.net/code/unity/… for playable demo. (Requires free Unity Web Player.)

The company Unknown Worlds, makers of the underwater exploration game "Subnautica", have a programming test: make a demo in Unity of assembling bases from modular rooms. Here's my take on the idea. I've sent them the demo and a detailed description of what I was thinking. This is probably the only job application in which I will get to use the phrase "gratuitous lava".

Building this thing forced me to think about a lot of design decisions made by the professionals who did "Subnautica" and "Fallout 4". For instance, I forced all rooms to sit on a grid defined by absolute world coordinates, but that limited me to a flat world. FO4 allows for uneven land, but the devs had to create a snap-to-grid feature that can be frustrating to work with. I bet I could do that better in hindsight. And you know how you can't place standard wall pieces on the inside bits of an L in FO4? That's because each wall is exactly as wide as a room unit, and two walls would overlap unless you use a custom L-shaped wall piece. I'd handle that by making little corner posts that appear automatically as needed. I'd probably have designated "furniture slots" where objects go. Don't know how I'd keep track of whether the player or a bed is indoors (and not just under a roof); FO4 doesn't seem to bother.

Getting this thing working with all the features the company required and some semi-working extras, was a nice confidence-builder.