Alina Onyx
Software Developer
Experience
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Ryalto
2023 - Present
Full-stack Developer
Developing the Ryalto communication platform for health workers in Europe. My role involves a mix of front-end and back-end web development in Ruby on Rails and JavaScript, as well as design.
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Larian Studios
2021 - 2023
Capture Artist
As a Capture Artist at Larian, I worked on producing the game trailers and marketing content for Baldur's Gate 3, from pitching and recording to editing and post-production.
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Unity Technologies
2020 - 2021
Technical Writer
My mission as a Technical Writer at Unity was to create clear, concise, and accurate technical documentation for our users, giving them all the information necessary to achieve their creative goals with Unity.
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Unity Technologies
2018 - 2019
Developer Advocate
As a Developer Advocate, I was responsible for representing Unity in front of the developer community at large, engaging with creators online and at events and conventions.
I was also responsible for producing and delivering technical demo content, which involved working with the new features of the engine in order to showcase them to our community in the context of a working project.
Education
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City, University of London
2016 - 2020
BSc Computer Science with Games Technology
Graduated with First-Class Honours (1:1). I studied software engineering concepts such as data structures, algorithms and algorithmic complexity, and engineering patterns; and their application in the context of software and game development.
My Work
Baldur's Gate 3
- My Role: Capture Artist / Video Editor
- Engine: Proprietary
Baldur's Gate 3 is an awards-winning RPG from Larian Studios that took the industry by storm.
Set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, it's the quintessential D&D experience - gather your party, and return to the Forgotten Realms in a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival, and the lure of absolute power.
I had the awesome chance to contribute to this amazing project as a Capture Artist.
My key contributions and responsibilities:
- Building the creative and narrative foundation for Baldur's Gate 3 trailers, communicating closely with developers to highlight their best work.
- Responsible for all stages of production: pitching, storyboarding, capturing, editing, and post.
- Co-ordinating trailer production with artists and developers; ensuring feature requests are feasible to implement and ready in time for capture.
- Major contributions: the PS5 announcement trailer; the 2022 Game Awards trailer; "Of Valour and Lore" - a trailer announcing the Bard class; "Absolute Frenzy" - announcing the Barbarian class.
- Produced media for the press kits that went out to all major news outlets; created videos for the Larian Studios social media channels, and other community content.
Demonbound
- Play it here: itch.io (Windows)
- Engine: Unity
- Project focus: Procedural Generation of 3D environments
- Team size: 1
- Length of development: 1 week
In this personal project inspired by the Diablo games, I created a game prototype that uses a procedural algorithm for dungeon generation.
Key features:
- Fully procedural and customizable 3D dungeon generation algorithm.
- Room population algorithm based on 'theme' presets (implemented via Scriptable Objects).
- New theme presets and props can be added to the population algorithm without the need to write any additional code.
- Smart prop placement behaviour (e.g. avoidance of similar prop types, placement along walls or in room center, etc.)
- Depth-based dissolve shader (to allow the player model to be visible behind walls)
- Performant 2D minimap solution for procedural levels.
Torrheim
- Play it here: itch.io (Windows, Mac)
- Engine: Unity
- Project focus: 2D game development pipeline
- Team size: 2
- Length of development: 2 days
I created this project together with my colleague, Ciro, at Unity. It was the backbone for our game development tutorial for Global Game Jam 2019. The goal was to prove that you can make a simple game with Unity in just 48 hours.
My colleague and I wanted to make use of the new (at the time) 2D features of the Unity engine - the 2D Animation package and Hexagonal Tilemaps; as well as Scriptable Objects for game architecture.
My key contributions and responsibilities:
- The 2D art pipeline - including all of the character art, animation, environment art, and GUI.
- Story and dialogue.
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Tunnel Surfer
- Engine: Custom (C++/OpenGL)
- Project focus: Graphics programming
- Team size: 1
- Length of development: 3 weeks
This game project was a way for me to learn how to implement a custom graphics renderer and graphics pipeline in a C++ game engine, and the creation of commonly encountered graphics shaders using OpenGL.
Features:
- Procedural mesh generation based on a Catmull-Rom spline (used to generate tunnel geometry)
- Custom shader implementation of the Blinn-Phong model
- Normal-mapping shader
- Geometry shader for visual debugging of mesh normals
- Implementation of different types of lighting (spot light, point light, directional light)
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Unity Royale
- Find it here: GitHub
- Engine: Unity
- Project focus: Unity for Mobile
- Team size: 2
- Length of development: 3 weeks
I created the UI art for this mobile game development project made by my colleague, Ciro.
Contributions:
- UI art for character cards, healthbars, menus, and other elements
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3D Fighter
- Engine: Unity
- Project focus: Game Jam - Fighting game
- Team size: 4
- Length of development: 2 days
3D Fighter was a game I worked on with a team of 3 other people during HackSussex.
Contributions:
- Local co-op support for 2 players
- Controller support
- Level design
Art Board
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Resource Orbs
Shaders/VFX - UI
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Wings
Shaders/VFX
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Malenia and the Unalloyed Gold Needle
Fanart - Elden Ring
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Lady Maria
Fanart - Bloodborne
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Abigail - D&D Portrait
Personal Work
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Jinx
Fanart - Arcane
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Unity Royale - UI Assets
Unity Technologies
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Character Concept Thumbnails - "Growth"
Personal Work
About Me
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Hey there! I'm Alina. Thanks for taking the time to check out my portfolio! :)
You may have guessed this from my work already, but I am a multidisciplinary enthusiast who loves programming, art, and games. The creative process of bringing ideas to life is my favourite pastime - whether that means developing a new game project, painting an illustration of my next D&D character, or anything in between!
For me, the most rewarding part of creativity is growth. Learning is its own reward - I'm always seeking new challenges and ways to push myself to improve, and experimentation is what drives a lot of my work.
Aside from that, I love playing games - I could never list all my favourites, but recent ones include Elden Ring, Diablo 4, and Baldur's Gate 3 (I loved it way before I got to work on it!). I also play D&D and enjoy tabletop games in general.
I'm a big melomaniac - I play guitar and sing. I also love exploring new places. In particular, castles and cathedrals from the Gothic period (when I get the opportunity), as well as historical museums (especially if they have medieval armour or weapon exhibits!).
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