January 15, 2013
in category Projects and tags unity3d, techtonic
By Robert Utter
Bust-N-Rush (BNR) is a 3D endless runner for PC and Mac, made by Techtonic
Games, previously available for sale on EA's Origin.
Kovo is a hard and heavy bruiser who can "bust" through just about anything, as
long as he can "rush" fast enough. After the Satellite of Wub breaks his only
lawn flamingo, Kovo embarks on a quest for revenge.
I worked as programmer (and later lead programmer) during BNR's development,
ultimately supervising two direct reports and coordinating efforts with other
developers including designers, artists, and our in-house audio engineer.
I personally developed the backend for our quest-driven map generation system,
optimized our audio performance, avoided high-speed physics glitches, integrated
several third-party libraries including AlienFX, and implemented most of BNR's
gameplay code.
I'm exceptionally proud of our technical accomplishments, but we couldn't keep
sales high enough and the Techtonic team had to put our startup dreams on ice.
Unique challenges included:
- Static lighting system in a dynamic environment.
- Multiply-layered music tracks need to be kept in sync.
- Editor scripting to reduce workload for other departments, platforms.
- Movement at extremely high speeds presents difficulty for performant physics.
- Heavy focus on memory/runtime performance.
BNR was developed using the Unity engine, and makes use of various plugins
including NGUI, JsonFx, and BouncyCastle.
The game is no longer available for sale, but you can still find plenty of
gameplay videos on Youtube.
