Langston Key - Portfolio

Beyond Meet Space

Designed and programmed meeting tools under hardware, multiplayer networking, and research constraints.
Conceptualized, designed, and programmed virtual reality slingshot game to align with research goals. I later presented this process at the 2024 Meaningful Play Conference.
Designed and programmed an interactive tutorial system to help all users, including non-developer researchers and study participants, quickly learn the platform.
Worked with artists to design and overhaul in-world user interface.
Effectively communicated across programming, art, and research teams about capabilities and limitations of the platform.

Demonstration of the tutorial and user interface

The original User Interface that predated my inclusion on the team was difficult for new users to grasp quickly and had limited scalability.
I worked with the artist to develop a visual overhaul that kept a consistent look and branding across the interfaces.
I developed a design pattern for the new UI that allowed future developers to easily add more tabs, buttons, and features to the UI as the needs of the project evolved.
This new UI system was used to create the onboarding tutorial and the HUD for users and administrators to use in-world features.

Items can be locked if users want to prevent them from despawning

Beyond Meet Space is a platform built using the VRChat API and hosted on VRChat servers. It was chosen because it gave developers the ability to use Unity and Udon Sharp (a subset of C\#) for development.
The API's built-in ownership system was powerful, but it limited project goals. The system needed to be both performant and allow for spawning many persistent objects that multiple players could interact with.
I solved this problem by building an ownership system on top of the existing API that would keep track of which player originally spawned the object, who it is allowed to transfer ownership to, as well as interfacing with the built-in system of ownership to determine who can change the object properties.
This was integrated into the inventory along with a performance-conscious, item-locking setting. Spawned items would despawn if the current owner was too far, unless the item was locked.

Multiplayer can be enabled or disabled on the for the slingshot

The research team tasked me with designing and programming a game mechanic that could be used to test attentiveness in meetings. This mechanic needed to be easy to pick up for users new to VR, utilize VR motion controls, and minimize distraction to other participants.
The slingshot fit these constraints well because it effectively utilized motion controls without risk of accidently throwing a controller. It had a toggleable ant line for accessibility, and administrators could change the settings to prevent players from seeing each other’s projectiles or slingshots to minimize distraction.
The slingshot was used for both playing solo and team building activities within the meeting space, so it was a feature that also required implementation of the item-ownership system and networking.