Bastion

Rebuilt tower defense in C++ — place towers and tune stats live with an in-game editor.

A tower defense game rebuilt from the ground up as a full architectural reboot of 'They Are'. Players defend against waves of enemies while the engine supports a real-time ImGui-based in-game editor for immediate tuning without recompiling.

Led the technical reboot, analyzing legacy code to salvage reusable rendering/ECS cores while redesigning the gameplay layer for modularity.
Engineered a data-driven loading system that parses external configuration files, reducing the 'Save-Build-Reload' iteration loop from 62s to 15s (4x faster).
Developed an in-game editor using ImGui for real-time unit placement and balancing, decoupling design iteration from code compilation.

Technical Deep Dive

Engine Reboot Strategy

My contribution in the reboot was focused on stabilizing ownership boundaries while reusing reliable legacy subsystems, reducing regression risk during feature iteration.

Data-Driven Merge + State Transitions

I implemented parts of the merge/state refactor into data-driven mappings + explicit transitions and helped externalize wave/enemy/unit stats through text parsing for faster tuning.

Editor-Centric Production Loop

I contributed editor-side tooling (ImGui-backed) for placement/tuning workflows. In our measured loop, save-build-reload time dropped from 62s to 15s, improving day-to-day iteration speed.