Tech Art & Game Design Portfolio
Jingcheng Yang | UIUC '28 | CS + Philosophy
Unity Engine | Game Development
Project Lop Nur
Graphics | Environment Design
Story
In 1979, a task force of veterans from the recently concluded Sino-Vietnam war is sent on a mission.
Objective: Investigate unknown activities near the lake bed of Lop Nur, Xinjiang. A missile shot down the helicopter en route, and you are the only survivor.
Finding your way into an abandoned mineshaft, you discovered a vacated, hidden underground research facility deep under the Xinjiang desert, a relic during the days of the cultural revolution.
Lop Nur has always been a site of fascination. The mystery of the ancient Loulan Kingdom, rumors surrounding the Pisces Jade Pendant (双鱼玉佩) and its ability to replicate living beings, unconfirmed sightings of "sand-people", ex-KMT soldiers who fled to the far west,
and the curious choice of making Lop Nur the site of China's nuclear tests.
At the heart of this mystery lies a vast research facility — a labyrinth of concrete tunnels stretching miles underground, completely silent and lifeless... until the faint murmur of Russian echoes through the desolate chambers.
This jungle level is designed as a flashback to the Sino-Vietnam war.
Underwater VR
VR | Research
I assisted a research project in UIUC utilizing visual language models in an underwater communication environment. In order to test out the feasibility of using AI generated messages to talk with other divers, I made a realistic underwater VR simulation. Users can test the effectiveness of the AI-based communication system in various scenarios (e.g. Shark Encounter, Tank Leakage)
Simulating schools of fish using boids in Unity HDRP render pipeline, with underwater volumetric light.
Internet of Things Infrastructure Project
VR | Research
I joined an IoT research group in UIUC and assisted them in developing a digital twin environment inside Unity. The goal was to create a digital copy of a complex environment, such as a lab, utilizing simulations and IoT sensor data to simulate and present accurate data. I experimented a lot with high-performance code using Unity DOTS and ECS, as well as cost-efficient ways of rendering them. This included experimentations with scanning and implementing Gaussian Splatting inside Unity, utilizing GPU instancing and computer buffers to visualize data etc.
Temperature diffusion simulation in Unity. Written with Compute Shaders, GPU instancing and ECS.
Gaussian splatting achieved inside Unity, photorealistic environment of UIUC's cleanroom lab.
Airflow simulation system in Unity. This includes data interpolation from sparse sensors.
Bricks of Steel (铜墙铁壁)
Game Design | Story
Bricks of Steel was originally a game I made during Grade 8 (2018), on a cultural visit to Kaiping, China. It is a turn-based strategy game that features the unique Diaolou (碉楼) buildings the locals have built.
It features a narrative with 5 chapters, each being one scenario the player can play, featuring unique troops and units from that time era. It roughly takes place from the fall of the Qing Dynasty to the end of the Chinese Civil War.
The game includes a flowchart based AI system and uses a low-poly artstyle.
I improved the game with better VFX graphics, animations, and icons in 2024 for my portfolio used to apply to NYU's Game Design undergraduate program. The posters on the left are taken from the portfolio, I was accepted.
Improved animations and VFX of units engaging eachother.
Mandate Eternal
Graphics | Game Engineering
Mandate Eternal is a discontinued grand-strategy game set in the Ming Dynasty of China. I was responsible for developing a visually pleasant, highly-optimized performant map system that also reflects the game's overall theme. I used HLSL compute shaders and Unity's JOBS system extensively.
RTS module of the game. We employed a special technique known as "vertex animation", which converts skeleton-based animation to vertex-based, allowing it to be ran entirely on the GPU. This allows for huge performance boosts.
High quality water & terrain shaders I wrote. We used tessellation extensively for 3D terrain. Alot of maps and textures had to be processed in Photoshop.
We blended unseen regions (fog of war) of the map with an ancient map of the world from the Ming Dynasty. It was slightly reprojected using Photoshop to match real geographical features.
Continuum
Game Design
Stamptory
Game Design
This is the end of the Top Works showcase, however, more works are available below for those interested.
Gallery of Smaller Works
Illinois 1985 Robot | 2024 | Blender
Star Wars Quasar Class | 2018 | Maya
Great Wall | 2020 | Blender + Unity
SCIE Horror (Game), Pixel Art (PS2) Style | 2024 | Blender + Unity
Finitude (Game) | 2019 | Blender + Unity
Shenzhen Bay | 2021 | Unity
YUHUI (迂回)
Unity
YUHUI is my experiment with creating a unique architectural artstyle (but I forgot the name of). It utilizes shadergraphs extensively to achieve these single-color shadings. If you observe closely, in the first image, there are some noise in the gradient between the colors, this felt like a more suitable approach for single color shading.
Backrooms
Game | Unity | Blender | Photoshop
The Backrooms are a fictional, online horror story that began with a 2019 image posted on 4chan. It often features endless liminal spaces. I attempted to recreate some of them for a prototype unity game.
Technical Demonstration
In this project, I experimented with VHS post-processing effects and screen-space global illumination.
I also implemented a mesh based networking system, you can read more about that here
Level 0
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Level 13
Level 15
Level 20
Level 21
Level 30
Subsurface Operator
Game | Unity
Subsurface operator is a procedural game set in Enceladus, the 6th largest moon of Saturn. What's unique about this planet is that it's entirely covered by water, but then by a thick sheet of ice. Subsurface operator utilizes a procedurally generated 3D voxel terrain that generates the entire planet. The thought was to have a fully explorable planet with certain, underwater horrors.
UI/UX | Graphics Design
SCIE Today
A mobile app for SCIE students to access school systems.
Possible the most important feature of a school mobile app - ease of use. Thousands of students use SCIE Today on a daily basis, and the home screen has been redesigned numerous times to ensure that information are presented in a most effective way.
The entire home screen UI is dynamic, a carefully designed algorithm pre-sort information based on their importance, and the most important ones (e.g. new assessment scores) are placed on the top.
While putting functionality as the priority certainly limited the aesthetic freedom of the app, it still had a lot of potential for customization.
The two most important features are theme colors, and the banner - the block of color on the top of the app. Initially, it was there to look good, but that space had alot of potential. Different animations and graphics can be displayed inside, and they are designed in a way to adapt to any user themed color. This binary combination allowed for unique outlooks on every phone - reflecting the school's diversity and respect for personal expression.
We took further advantage of this feature by joining it with certain events, school or cultural. For example, on Christmas, not only would a snowman theme be available, we also covered the entire UI with snow in a way that does not hinder the app's usability significantly.
A special event for SCIE's Programmer's Day, awarding participants with an exclusive cyber skin.
On international week, greetings in different languages are shown on the banner.
The UI would be covered with snow on Christmas, a new feature allowing people to send gifts to friends was also made. The number of gifts you receive will show up on your banner next to the christmas tree.
20th Anniversary Mini-Program
UI/UX | SWE
My highschool, SCIE, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2023. I was contacted by our admissions office about a potential mini-program on WeChat, China's largest social platform, to celebrate this milestone.
The goal of the app was to bring and connect our alumni around the world. So an idea regarding an app where everyone can send their best wishes & greetings came into fruition.
The app featured a flying banner of greetings sent from people around the world, showing the global reach of our alumni network.
It also featured an auto-generated poster system (see left), where users can save a poster showing their participation in this event.
The program was online for 1 week, the duration of our school's celebration. It saw 4000+ greetings being sent across every continent except Antarctica.
Website written and hosted by myself. Proudly made with .NET and JavaScript, simple, lightweight.