Ulisses D'Ávila
A passionate Game Designer & Engineer with 5+ years of industry experience.
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Professional Projects:
The Coalition is a flagship first-party studio within Xbox Game Studios and the home to one of gaming’s most critically and commercially acclaimed series, Gears of War. The studio is one of the world’s leading studios pushing the limits of available technology to build next-generation experiences in Unreal Engine 5.
I worked as a Gameplay Designer at The Coalition from February 2023 to August 2024. The studio is located in Vancouver, BC (Canada).
Reference letter from Microsoft’s Lead Game Designer is readily available. Please send me an email requesting the letter and I will send it over.
My role at The Coalition involved:
Took ownership of Gameplay & Technical Design for a group of game features (Environmental Mechanics), with a keen eye for the impact on the overall gameplay experience and close attention to implementation risk.
Built level layouts that implement Level Blueprints/Level Sequencer to showcase specific play situations.
Used 3D tools (Unreal Modelling & Fracture modes, Blender, Houdini) to iterate on metrics and visual readability of game features.
Prototyped and iterated on Enemies.
Used Blueprints in Unreal Engine 5 (visual scripting) to develop drag-and-drop editor utilities, dynamic combat encounters and AI interactions.
Debugged C++ code in Visual Studio and submitted C++ code improvements to engineers.
Created and supported technical architectures for gameplay mechanics considering studio-wide scalability.
Determined metrics, collision and networking replication rules on Environmental features to optimize their architectures.
Tuned combat attributes for enemies and weapons with special attention towards game balance, feel and readability.
Broke down feature requirements and components, communicating with other disciplines (Level Designers, Artists, Animators) and reporting to the Lead Game Designer to drive owned features through production.
Created, upkept and iterated on thorough design documentation.
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My role: Gameplay DesignerEngine: Unreal Engine 5
February 2023 to August 2024 (1.5 years)
Pulling No Punches is a beat'em up action game with frame-by-frame animation and supporting 4-player co-op. In this beat'em up game, players battle through a fictional pandemic in a city filled with madness and denial.
As Lead Designer and Engineer, I helped Pulling No Punches get successfully crowdfunded locally in Brazil (the game is called Punhos de Repúdio in Portuguese).
The full version of the game shipped for Steam in 2022 as an indie, and for Nintendo Switch in 2023 via publisher QuByte Interactive.
My leading role in this project involved a long list of responsibilities:
3Cs Hero Design (Character, Camera and Controller)
Agile development and iteration of Combat systems
Developing deeply modular mechanics with frame-perfect, player-centric features such as animation cancelling, "coyote jump" and selective input buffering, allowing for smooth reiterations during the design process while delivering a polished core feeling to the game
Design for a diverse set of users (non-gamers to hardcore) and several use cases (1 to 4 players)
Building game architecture for modularity and scalability
Game balancing and economies for singleplayer and multiplayer
Creating enemy behaviour and pathfinding systems from scratch
Encounter Design and Level Design, employing the Situational Game Design framework to create playful situations
Product management
Game publishing and marketing
Design of unobtrusive tutorials
Using FMOD for sound design implementation
Creating User Interface that enables localization to other languages
Architectured the game’s memory management strategy, loading and unloading assets to ensure optimized performance.
Design Work samples:
🔗Enemy Design presentation
🔗Animation Cancelling & Input Buffering design presentation
🔗Article: How the player learns controls in Pulling No Punches
Awards:
Pulling No Punches won the 2 top honors at the SB Games awards in 2022.
🥇Best Professional Game
🥇Best Game (People's Choice)
See PDF document with winners here.
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Platforms: PC, Linux, MacOS and Nintendo SwitchMy roles: Lead Designer and Lead Engineer
Team size: 6
Engine: Unity
Release Dates:
- Steam: August 10 2022 by Braindead Broccoli
- Switch: May 25 2023 by QuByte Interactive
Hololabs Studio
🔗Universal Studios theme park attractions (Twitter post)
At Hololabs, I helped bring mixed reality games to life such as Sky Haven (mobile AR game) and interactive theme park attractions at Universal Studios.
Hololabs is a game development studio based in Victoria, BC (Canada). The team of AAA industry veterans is using novel Mixed Reality technology to deliver innovative and unique experiences.
I attained or upgraded several skills at Hololabs, such as:
Enemy & Character behaviour development and finetuning
Finetuning moments for best player experience with high quality bar
Gameplay and systems development (including game feel, UI, developer tools and performance optimization)
Collaborating with artists to bring features to life
Reporting to leads and iterating on features according to feedback
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Platforms: Mobile, Mixed RealityMy role: Software Engineer/Game Developer
Engine: Unity
2022-2023 (5 months)
Ultra Foodmess is a competitive party game for up to 4 players in which food characters battle against each other in a variety of fast-paced modes. In the food mess, players will explode, shoot, swing, push and dodge to come out on top.
The game has been released for Steam (which is the version I worked on), Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.
In this project, I attained several skills, such as:
Implementation and finetuning of game feel
Implementation of local multiplayer
Expanding and updating upon an existing project architecture
Experience with Steam requirements such as gamepad functionality and Steam Achievements
Reporting to leads and adjusting features according to feedback
The game is a commercial success and spawned a sequel, Ultra Foodmess 2 (released February 2024).
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Platforms: PC, Xbox One and Nintendo SwitchMy role: Gameplay Programmer
Engine: Unity
Released in 2020 - made with Painful Smile
SimBrain VR
SimBrain VR is a project by the University of British Columbia (UBC), a virtual reality training simulation for medical students.
The simulation includes a Clinical Room where students can go through a neurological exam on an interactive virtual patient and a Mind Palace to visualize their anatomical knowledge and compile relevant information.
In this project, I had the following responsibilities:
Usage of Speech-to-Text voice recognition in gameplay
Usage of hand-tracking technology for gameplay
Best practices for User Interface in VR
Reporting to leads and iterating on features according to feedback
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Platform: Oculus Quest 2My role: VR developer
Engine: Unity
2022
Keep scrolling to see personal/Master's student projects:
IRD-VR: an Active Shooter Simulation for Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC)
🥇The project won the 2022 Horizon Interactive Gold Award 🔗
This is a project where JIBC (the Justice Institute of British Columbia) asked our team to develop a VR-based scenario to train police recruits on responding to active shooter situations.
The scenario is in the format of a single responding officer, from a first-person perspective, as they move through a building responding to various stimuli and ultimately engaging the active shooters.
In this project, I attained or upgraded some specific skills, such as:
"3Cs" (Character, Camera and Controller) Design and Development
Civilian and Active Shooter character behaviours
Breaking down features into asset requirements
Collaborating with the team and client to produce feature requirements
Usage of Speech-to-Text voice recognition in gameplay
Design of voice-based immersive tutorials and interactions
VR User Experience focused on first-time users
Achieving immersion even when limited by mobile hardware (Oculus Quest 2 unhooked from PC)
Iterated and finetuned multiple types of player locomotion
Level Design for first-person perspective
Redirected Walking iterations so that players are automatically redirected to the center of the play while moving to avoid bumping into walls
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Platform: Oculus Quest 2My role: Lead Developer, Game Designer
Team size: 5 to 6
Engine: Unity
Fixed duration from January to July/2022 at the Centre for Digital Media
Project Anomaly: Urban Supernatural Investigator
Project Anomaly is a game about investigating cryptic creatures and solving mysteries by taking pictures and talking to characters in an open world environment.
The project is currently in development by DARK SCIENCE. It has showed in major conferences such as PAX West 2023 in Seattle.
I actively worked on the original concept/demo in 2020 and remained as a credited development advisor to DARK SCIENCE since then.
In this project, I attained or upgraded several skills, such as:
First-Person Camera and Controller - Design and Implementation, including photo mechanic and game feel
Designing and implementing gameplay-relevant menus used for solving cases and browsing anomaly information
Collaborating with the Creative Director to maximize player engagement
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Platforms: PCMy role: game developer/advisor
Engine: Unity
2020 to date
Archery Masters VR
Archery Masters is a VR game prototype made by myself.
The player needs to aim precisely with their bow while trying to escape a dangerous mob of angry goblins.
Download and play the prototype here.
In this project, I attained or upgraded several skills, such as:
3Cs Hero design and implement in VR
Prototyping and iterating on combat systems
Exploration of player physicality against objects and enemies when playing in VR
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Platforms: PC (tested on Oculus Rift S)Solo Project
Engine: Unity
2020 (prototype)