The Division Heartland

The Division Heartland was Ubisoft’s attempt at entering the extraction shooter genre. At the time there was no AAA extraction shooter with cutting edge graphics and polish, and Ubisoft wanted to fill that hole. During FIEA’s last semester, I joined Red Storm as an intern Gameplay Engineer. This was after they pivoted away from being a battle royale game, and the game was now fully an extraction shooter. Over the next 2 years I learned how to work in a large, worldwide team, I learned to navigate a large code base for the first time, and developed skills related to version control and code reviews while of course coding. Eventually my internship would end, and I would become an Associate Gameplay Engineer.

I was mostly focused on combat and movement as part of being a Gameplay Engineer, but I would also branch out to working on animations and UI as well. My first tasks were to help with fixing bugs, for example relating to crouch sliding or shimmying across walls, or bugs related to taking and moving in cover. These would involve deep dives into the code, and collaborating with my more senior engineering team who had experience in the areas I was working in. Eventually once I was more comfortable in my role, I would help develop some systems related to improving save systems and character systems. Unfortunately, around this time, Ubisoft cancelled the game due to wanting to focus on larger titles, like XDefiant, which would be the next game I was assigned to work on.