Unannounced IP-Based AAA VR Title (2026)

Project Details

  • Role: Senior Gameplay Engineer

  • Project Type: Professional - Sanzaru Games @ Meta

  • Engine: Unreal Engine 5

  • Platform: VR

  • Language: C++

  • Status: Canceled

About

This was a AAA IP-Based VR title that was unfortunately canceled, due to Sanzaru Games being shut down as part of Meta’s strategy shift. During pre-production, I was promoted to Senior Gameplay Engineer, receiving more responsibility for designing and implementing traversal, combat, and other core character-related systems. Project is still under NDA.

Development COntribution

  • Player Movement / Traversal

    • Key contributor towards designing and implementing 10+ player traversal mechanics.

    • Received full ownership of the swimming movement mechanic, where players can swim using controller inputs and performing complex gestures, such as breaststrokes. This feature was prototyped during pre-production and was approved by directors to move into production.

    • Expanded on the traversal system to allow designers the ability to specify how traversals can be interacted with based on other contexts besides input (Ex: Walking, sprinting, falling, etc.), creating a smoother moment-to-moment gameplay when chaining together different traversals.

    • Improved the targeting calculation for the grapple ability to better determine a grapple point along multiple authored splines and points in a level, keeping aim reticle more steady while also ensuring framerate is performative.

  • Combat

    • Key contributor to the player takedown system, a core system used for the player to subdue unaware AI enemies during stealth sections for the game. I architected and developed 4 complex, environmental takedowns the player can perform on enemies.

    • Created a gesture-based attack to stun nearby enemies during hand-to-hand combat sequences.

    • Created a flying kick attack ability, where players can perform a dive kick to knockout unsuspecting enemies.

  • Player Items

    • Designed and prototyped an item that allowed the player to create a zipline and traverse it.

    • Designed and implemented a key item that allowed the player to grapple from various heights and distances.

    • Architected and implemented an item input manager system to easily add/remove item interaction inputs efficiently based on environment context or being held by player through Unreal’s Enhanced Input system.

  • World Subsystem

    • Architected and developed the time dilation manager subsystem, a system used across the project to create various slo-mo effects with different parameters, such as using ease-in effects or setting a timer, during combat and cinematic events.

  • Analytics

    • Collaborated with the engineering tools team to setup telemetry events for testing different input schemes for sprint and detecting player quick reset events (Ex: Falling into a hazard). This enabled designers to make more effective decisions from internal playtest sessions, such as deciding default input for sprint and iterating levels more efficiently.

  • Optimization

    • Created a new capsule collision component used by characters to adjust the half height when transitioning between standing and crouching without needing to make additional transform updates to every child component (Ex: Skeletal Mesh Component).

Next