Ash Makes Games
Project Overview
Core Loop
Get a donut order, do the skate tricks assigned to each order, and deliver them.
Team Size
Total team size of 68 with design, production, art, music, and engineering. There were 2 tech artists including.
Role
Tech artists doing a mix of both 3D and 2D effects to add juice to the game.
Timeline
I joined the project in January of 2025, and we released on Steam in May 2025.
Tools
Unity, P4V, Maya, VFX Graph, Shader Graph, and Shuriken Particle System
Genre
A race / skating arcade styled indie game.
The Process
I joined Donuts! during their alpha stage where a majority of the games development was already completed but needed a heavy amount of juice for the style and flare the game was going for. On Donuts! I make collision effects for when players bumped and crashed into obstacles, visual effects for the truck, and 2D effects to go along with UI.
During my creative process I mostly used a mix of in engine shader graph tools for Unity and Maya to model unique based for our effects to be displayed on top of.
Implementation Summary
Wanted to add life to some of the in-game objects you collide with by having a fire hydrant splash water if you crashed into it.
I started off by modelling a simple dome-like shape reminiscent of a water fountain spurting out of a fire hydrant, being sure to put a puddle beneath it that had a radial mesh for the desired effect I wanted. I then utilized Unity’s Shader Graph to make the flowing water effect that would be added to the fountain and puddle base, and Unity’s particle system to help make the splashes that would loop as the water hit the floor. I primarily used Voronoi and offset its agitation over time to create the “marbled” effect of moving water.
Fire Hydrant
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To match our cartoony style, we wanted to add a line boil effect to our selection screen where the border of the buttons would come to life as you hovered over them.
I created the line boil effect in Unity Shader Graph by using animated Gradient Noise to distort the outline’s UVs. I limited the animation to a set FPS so the lines shift between frames instead of moving smoothly, giving them a hand-drawn look. I also added controls for the speed, strength, scale, and thickness of the effect.
Line Boil
