Nicholas Drobes

Project Details

The MCO Family Play Area kiosk is an installation of M3D's Merge system, which allows players to walk up to a large screen and see themselves put directly inside a game using real-time trackerless motion capture. The games created for the Merge system are designed to capitalize on the fun of having players interact with the games using their physical movement as a control scheme. The installation at Orlando International Airport and all three custom games were completed within two months.

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• Studio: M3D Technologies

• Type: Interactive Kiosk

• Engine: Unreal Engine 5

• Scale: 1000+ players per day

• Team Size: 6

My Contributions

As a Technical Designer, I was tasked with creating and refining the gameplay and content for all three games. Within a short timeframe, I found creative ways to bring concepts that had gone through an extensive approval process to life, making sure the gameplay was engaging without deviating from what had been approved. My contributions included:

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• Developed mechanics and gameplay from prototype to launch for three Merge games:

  • Flappy Wings, a Flappy Bird-inspired game that allows players to fly over a 3D scan of downtown Orlando while dodging clouds and collecting balloons by flapping their arms to fly.

  • Luggage Loader, a game that allows players to use their hands to push luggage from a conveyor belt into the cargo hold of a plane preparing for takeoff.

  • Mural Painter, a game that allows players to use their hands to throw paint at a wall to reveal an airport mural.​​​

• Developed a system to support pre-rendered backgrounds that appear to react to camera movement using a custom depth pass global shader and level sequences.

• Created robust control systems that allowed players with different body sizes, physical abilities, and play styles to interact with the games using gestures and full-body movement.

• Created a developer menu for adjusting game parameters in the shipped build. This allowed key values like object spawn rates or score thresholds to be changed on the fly to adapt to player preferences or client requests.

• Implemented data logging and analysis to provide insights into player behavior and engagement. The system recorded gameplay data to CSV files that are imported into Excel for analysis through automated reports and tables.