Celestial Currents

“Make your parent proud by restoring water to the planet in a 3D fluid and terrain simulator.”

Achievements: Honorable Mention, Top 10 in Game Jam

• Translated mouse input into 3D GPU texture manipulation, integrated with custom runtime fluid simulation
• Delivered level success and gate opening puzzle mechanics utilizing readback of GPU fluid texture height
• Dynamically altered vertex color on player interaction using custom shaders that read from GPU texture
• Synthesized dialogue and fluid systems into one gameplay flow, fixed bugs in collaboration with team

Over GDC, I met some cool people through MAGICAL (Marginalized Genders in Gaming) and we decided to build Celestial Currents for the Unlikely Collaborators Jam. I worked on the terrain editing gameplay and level design, and also helped integrate the fluid simulation and dialogue systems that other people worked on into the game flow.

One of our engineers wrote the fluid simulation GPU code from scratch, which was super cool to work with. I added user interactibility to the texture, level start and success states, transitions to dialogue, and a level designer. I’m glad we were able to create a complete experience in a short amount of time, although it’s a bit shorter than we would have liked.

We were inspired mechanically by games like Where’s My Water, and wanted the player to feel a sense of meaning and charm through the narrative and gameplay, as if you’re singlehandedly saving and beautifying this planet.