Blast Ball All Stars
A local four-player party game featuring a wide variety of sports game modes. I became a programmer on the project a year into its development.
Contributions
Developed a replay system using the Ultimate Replay 3.0 package and expanded existing package functionality to include visual effects graphs.
Created and implemented visual effects, motion graphics, and other juice to elevate the game to commercial quality.
Prototyped and iterated new and existing integral gameplay mechanics, including jumping, sliding, kicking, and spinning.
Identified resource sinks and optimized the game to improve performance more than double the target specs.
Example of the first version of the replay
Replay System
The replay system was designed to emulate heightened version replays in real sports, a design goal of Blast Ball. Camera positions were intentionally chosen to replicate sideline cameras in different sports, with the addition of a slow motion camera to conclude each replay.
A limitation of the package was that visual effects created using Unity's visual effects graph system were unable to be replayed with the built-in version, so I wrote a component using the API of the package to replay any specified parameter in a visual effect. Current and future developers may now include any visual effect in the replay by following steps I documented in the visual effect manager class.
This is profiling data from before optimization
This is profiling data after, as you can see though the menu cinematic is still expensive (on the left) the gameplay (on the right) is at our target frame rate.
Optimization
Blast Ball accrued a number of performance problems which made it difficult to test or run on mid to low end devices, including the Steam Deck, an important target platform.
Utilizing Unity's deep profiler, I identified performance bottlenecks on both the GPU and CPU and effectively addressed them by rearchitecting the crowd system, creating an object pooling system for visual effects, ensuring as many assets as possible are batched, and removing unused animators and virtual cameras.
example of some gameplay visual effects I created including ball hit, ball bounce, ball score, and aim arrow. (ball and player for scale)
Technical Art
I developed several visual effects that matched the stylized aesthetic of the game, inspired by Super Smash Brothers and Splatoon series.
The effects had to clearly distinguish who was responsible for them based on team color to help players determine what was happening in such a fast-paced, chaotic game. Effects were made with the ability to change hue, as well as hue spread, or how much variance the base color had.
I closely worked with the animator and art director to ensure that each effect was reinforcing the action taking place on screen.
We find some bugs and playtest new movement features in a Friday playtest
Playtesting and Prototyping Movement
I worked closely with the creative director to create prototypes of movement mechanics that would support the expressive character controller and a wide variety of sports available in the game.
I was proactive about organizing playtests with development peers, friends, and family. I pushed for the team to play the game together after every team meeting, which became an invaluable time for cross-discipline communication and feedback.
I compiled feedback notes into small summaries that I reviewed with the gameplay director to determine what the next changes to the controller should be.
© 2025 Langston Key
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contact at keylangs@msu.edu