Broken Roads

The Brief

Drop Bear Bytes needed a technical partner for Broken Roads who could cover gameplay code, solution architecture, narrative tooling, CMS work, and Unity integration. The project spanned Articy Draft 3, a web-based CMS, and the Unity game itself, tied together with custom automation rather than three disconnected systems maintained separately. We were responsible for development from June 2019 to December 2021.

Our Approach

Jacques, as the Technical Lead, had the following responsibilities:

• All software development at Drop Bear Bytes, creating Broken Roads RPG
• Solution Architecture for Broken Roads solution, which included Articy Draft 3, an Angular Web App (CMS), NodeJS Automation, Bash Automation and Unity project for the game itself
• Articy Draft 3
• Implementation of custom fragments, from data design to implementation in Unity/C#
• Created custom Articy Draft 3 plugins using C#/WPF
• Angular 9 WebApp
• Inhouse custom tool, which was used as a CMS for the game items, characters, POI, locations, etc..
• Software Architecture and development of the SPA using Angular, Firebase, NodeJS, Leaflet
• NodeJS and Bash Automation
• Source control automation and Content automation tools
• Unity and C#
• Design and development of all systems and modules in the game, from Gameplay, UI, Persistence, AI, Dialogue, Quests, Characters, Editor Tools, to name just a few.
• Provide Unity technical support and training for the team
• Provided technical support to Level designers, narrative team, and content team
• Provided source control support and training to the entire team
• Created and maintained technical standards, documents, and diagrams.
• Created hand-over technical documents for Team17 and The Knights of Unity

Melanie, as the Level Assembler, had the following responsibilities:

• Level Assembly of various scenes in Unity
• Implementing game features
• Documentation of manuals

The Outcome

By the end of the engagement, Broken Roads had a working Unity game, a custom Articy Draft 3 pipeline for narrative content, and a CMS built to manage items, characters, points of interest, and locations without touching code, plus the technical documentation and training needed to hand the project on. We prepared formal hand-over documents for Team17 and The Knights of Unity so the next team could pick up the project without starting from an undocumented codebase.

Related Services

This case study connects to our Unity development, full-stack development, and technical leadership work for larger Unity productions.