Agronova — SimGen Studio, Purdue Capstone 2023–24
The Project
Games as learning environments
Agronova targets high school and middle school students interested in agriculture and drone technology. The design challenge was making technically accurate drone simulation genuinely fun to play — balancing educational fidelity with game feel across hardware management, flight mechanics, and farming tasks.
My Role
Producer & Technical Artist
- Game production — managed sprint planning, milestone tracking, and cross-discipline coordination across a student team
- Drone simulation design — contributed to the interactive challenge systems balancing drone activity, hardware management, and farming technique
- Technical art pipeline — built and maintained the Maya-to-UE5 animation pipeline including rigging conventions, retargeting setup, and export documentation
- Auto Rigger Tool — wrote a Python tool in Maya to automate character rigging, reducing per-character setup time significantly
- Decal water spray material — built the dynamic wet surface shader for drone spray feedback on terrain and crops
Reflection
What this taught me
Agronova was my first experience owning both production and technical art simultaneously. The biggest lesson was that pipeline work is design work — every tool I built or process I documented shaped what the team could actually make within the deadline.
Research Question
How do simulation-based learning games balance technical accuracy with player engagement — and what design frameworks exist for building educational games that don't sacrifice either?