Kyle Swanson | Electrical Engineer, Software Developer & Game Designer

## Overview
This project is simply the result of following Unity's [John Lemon's Haunted Jaunt: 3D Beginner](https://learn.unity.com/project/john-lemon-s-haunted-jaunt-3d-beginner) tutorial. The tutorial stepped through most of the basics of game development. Prefabricated assets are used to build out the game environment and level design. The end result is a playable 3D game where the character stealthily makes its way to the end goal.

## Objective
The main objective was simply to complete the tutorial, gaining familiarity with the various aspects of creating a game (camera, lighting, sound, gameplay loop, etc).

## Description
I probably need to revisit this project at some point as a refresher. Essentially, I learned how to put prefab game objects into the scene, move the character based on player input, perform object collision detection and some basic UI/audio effects. 




Lemon 3D

## Overview
This project is my first original game. I admit -- it's pretty terrible. But at least it's something. The goal of the game is to maneuver around rocks without hitting them. If you hit the rocks 3 times you sink. The controls use the keyboard up/down/left/right keys. You can combine vertical/horizontal movement to move diagonally (e.g. left arrow + up arrow moves you diagonally up and to the left).

## Objective
The main objective was to build a game from scratch with Unity. The previous game I built was based on a Unity tutorial so this was my time to shine building something of my own with what I'd learned.

## Description
This game uses prefab assets from the Unity store. For the rocks and the boat. Inside the boat sits a guy based on the Mixamo "Brute" character. The hardest part of the project was probably the animation of the rowing motion. I tried to implement physics-based rowing motion with inverse kinematics but ended up animating with forward kinematics. Some basic particle effects are used for the splashes. The rock hazards that you must avoid are generated from an object pool of several random rock types. As time goes by the number of instantiated rocks increases. Object colliders keep the player in view of the camera. When the player hits a rock, basic impact audio is played and player health is decremented by 1. When the player reaches 0 lives, the boat is sunk below the water level out of view and the "Sunk" UI element pops up momentarily before asking if you want to start a new game.

Yes, the hearts indicating player health are too large because I didn't set the Canvas Scaler UI Scale Mode to "Scale With Screen Size"...it's on the todo list if I ever revisit this project.


Paddle Harder

## Overview
This is a hobby project to create an IoT motion sensor/camera. Basically the motion sensor should trigger the camera to turn on, record some video, and then upload to a cloud provider. The device is supposed to be low power enough that it can stay in operation perpetually using a rechargeable lithium battery.

## Objective
The main objective was to build a complete hardware and software system. The hardware/PCB would be custom built to meet project requirements. The software would have frontend components for displaying images/video captured from the IoT device, as well as backend components to handle the MQTT communications between the IoT device and server.

## Description
This project was a lot of fun to work on because I had never built a custom PCB from scratch before. Up front I spent some time defining requirements and searching the best components to use for the project. The design consists primarily of a device called the ESP32-CAM mounted to a PCB that handles USB and solar charging. The ESP32-CAM is hooked up to a PIR motion sensor that triggers the camera to turn on. I used KiCAD to draw up the schematic, as well as to do the trace layout and routing. Once I had the PCBs in hand I did PCB assembly, soldering all the components (including SMD). The device unfortunately draws too much power in its current configuration so the solar charging features are inadequate and battery life is insufficient. If I revisit this project, I definitely need to figure out how to get the ESP32-CAM to operate in sleep mode until PIR senses motion in order to conserve power.



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