Novice Alchemist

Overview

Novice Alchemist was a Unity and C# game project. This case focuses on a performance problem whose underlying cause involved the interaction between the technical implementation and the game’s assets.

Problem

The project had a performance issue that required investigation beyond its immediate symptom. The visible behaviour indicated that something was wrong, but it was not enough on its own to identify the underlying cause.

Investigation

The investigation focused on understanding the behaviour before applying a superficial fix. Contributing factors were isolated to identify the root cause, with particular attention to how code and assets interacted as parts of the same system.

Cross-Functional Communication

Resolving the issue required explaining why it occurred in a way that connected programming concerns with the art and content side of the project. The technical constraints had to be understandable across disciplines so that the solution could account for both technical and content needs.

Technical Value

This case demonstrates root-cause analysis, performance debugging, and an understanding of interactions between systems. Looking beyond the visible symptom helped avoid a symptom-only fix, while clear communication made the relevant technical constraints accessible across disciplines.

What I Learned

I learned to debug the cause rather than only the symptom and to treat performance problems as issues that can cross discipline boundaries. Understanding dependencies between code and assets, explaining technical constraints clearly, and evaluating the problem as part of the whole system were central lessons from the work.