We Are Jake
Responsibilities
Gameplay Programming
Project Length
April 2018 – November 2018
Game Description
We Are Jake is a physics based multiplayer soccer game where the players are kaiju-sized beings named Jakes that are wreaking havoc and scoring goals in a regular-sized city. It was one of four games we developed for Microsoft’s interactive streaming service Mixer. It gained over 6 million views over 3 months, putting Very Very Spaceship’s channel as the 8th most watched channel on the platform.
Mixer was a really cool platform that allowed for viewers to interact with streams through the use of controls and personalized UI that was displayed as an overlay on their video. We Are Jake took this to the extreme by allowing viewers to jump in and directly control a character from any device they were watching on with very little latency, thanks to Mixer’s FTL streaming protocol.
The VVS team was very small at the time, around 7 people. When this project started, I was the only engineer working on it, but I was later joined by a couple of other engineers. I owned the Unity side of the development, and developed many of its features including the character controller, procedural animation, soccer mechanics, Mixer integration, character abilities, character customization, UI, and others.
This project will always be special to me, because it was so much fun to make. We began streaming and playtesting the game very early on in development, so it felt really collaborative with the folks who were playing it. There was one player who really enjoyed making their character dance by wiggling around in front of the camera. They did it so much that it became a meme, and many others would join in. This lead to adding a dedicated dance mode that removed the ball from play, and brought in a disco ball. Then any viewers who were not playing could vote who was the best dancers, and their team would get a goal at the end.
Some of my favorite features to work on were:
Active Ragdoll
Making the character controller for We Are Jake was a lot of fun. It’s probably the most I’ve laughed when working on a feature, and I have so many funny gifs of the process. It was implemented as a ragdoll character that was held up like a marionette with spring forces that would try to match a rigid skeleton.
These forces could be interpolated up or down dynamically, allowing for the character to fully ragdoll at times, like when a goal was scored. It also had a fun side-effect where the player could move around without their body, which later became a feature. If your character was KO’d, a ghost would appear and players could continue moving around, while their body would catch up later once they were revived.
Destructible Buildings
Another satisfying feature to create was the skyscrapers that the player could destroy by punching or ramming into. It was surprisingly simple for how good it felt to play with. It was made using Unity’s physics joints for each segment. When all of a segment’s joints were broken, the segment itself would shatter and break into broken pieces.
Although this number of physics objects could pose problems for other projects, since our arenas were so small, it never had an impact, and we were able to place as many as we wanted.
Ball Mechanics
The ball started off very simple, with a regular soccer ball mesh. At some point, the idea came for a referee to be inside of the ball as if it were one of those giant hamster balls. Then, I started adding totally different mechanics to some balls. For example, my favorite was probably the moon ball, which had its own gravity and would pull all loose physics objects towards it.
Character Customization & Progression
The game supported different body shapes, skin color, hair, clothes, and hats. Hats would unlock as your player leveled up, and there were also seasonal events where you could unlock exclusive hats, like monster-themed hats for Halloween. We also had a special hat for the mods of our channel.
The body customization was fairly simple in that there was a small set of body shapes that were swapped out, and a lot of the variety came from facial hair, accessories, and hats.
