It was during this project that I became fully aware of just how inefficient Unity can be sometimes, and of the importance of understanding how the compiler works in order to avoid some performance-devouring common mistakes.

This adds to the battery of optimizations the 3D engine requires; baking lighting, render batching, culling, etc.

Another challenge of this project was to develop systems that would interface with the REST API the backend team had set up, and to do so in a secure way. We had to build level managers that had scripted responses to any errors the server might reply, while trying to hide loading and communication times within the experience in order to avoid making the users wait too much.

As part of the onboarding flow, we implemented an avatar creation mechanic using ReadyPlayerMe. This involved opening a WebView inside the app so users would create their avatar, then fetching the results and reproducing the avatar locally on the phone. After this, we had a set of custom-made animations that we applied to avatars as feedback and gamification elements throughout the app.