About Me

Hello! I am Alyssa Gregorash, a 2024 Computer Science graduate from the University of Manitoba. I have a bachelor's in Computer Science and a minor in History. I have a strong love of coding, writing, and cats.

This website is where I share things I have made. Code, games, books, videos, artwork, anything.

Navigating the Site

Contacting Me

If you wish to contact me for any reason, please find the links below:

Email: agregorashb@gmail.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssa-gregorash-6105142a6/

Cat Crazy is a Work-In-Progress cozy mystery! Help cats and find clues to the elusive Treasure of Tabbietown. Cats you befriend will help you in your quest to solve the town mystery!

The game is 100% feature-complete, with things like beautifying, playtesting, and bug-fixing ahead.

Cat Crazy was made in RPGMaker MV with many custom and modified assets. RPGMaker MV is a javascript-based game engine.

I created this game along with my mom, who had no prior game dev experience. We've come a long way, and I couldn't be prouder!

Future Plans

If all goes well, Cat Crazy will be available on Steam sometime in the future.

Mega Mystery Mansion is a game I made for a project in grade 12 with three of my friends. It is a goofy point-and-click puzzle game set in a mansion containing talking rats, pool-playing ghosts, dancing skeletons, and more!

Mega Mystery Mansion was made in Unity 2D, using object-oriented C#.

I was the sole programmer, and this was my first time using Unity (or doing object-oriented programming, for that matter). I also animated, organized the assets in the editor, and drew some of the characters like the mice and skeletons.

Partway into development, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and we had to take things online. It was an adjustment for sure, but it gave us more time to work on the project.

If I had one regret with how this was programmed, it would be not knowing how to make a loading screen as the game looks like it crashes when hitting play before it loads. There are other things wrong with it certainly, since I had no experience in software design, but this is the most glaring to an end-user. Despite that, this game will hold a special place in my heart and was an important step in my learning.

Get the Game

Click here to download the .zip of the game.

Once downloaded, extract the files.

Lauch the game using Mega Mystery Mansion.exe

A Walk in the Rain was a solo practice project I made to learn about Unity3D, C#, and how to finish a project. This game was made during my first year of university, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The game is a 'walking simulator' focused on a moral dilemma: the player must choose which of the island's inhabitants will have a chance to escape the world-ending storm.

The gameplay is very barebones- you can walk around and talk to people. As you explore, you unlock more things to talk about.

The aim of this project was to get a feel for how things get finished, built, optimized, etc.

Having minimal gameplay- and thus minimal opportunity for scope creep- was a goal from the beginning.

I believe this project gave me valuable insight into the planning and preparation for a larger project as well as the later parts of gamedev.

School Assignments

General

Some smaller, less exciting but still educational assignments can be found at a github here.

This includes depth-first searches, event driven simulations, a peer-to-peer node, and more. It also contains many of the graphics projects shown below.

Wordeo

Wordeo is a Wordle and hangman inspired browser-based word-guessing game with in-built competative elements. It was made as a 4th year Software Engineering project with myself and four other people. I mostly handled frontend things, as other people on the team had a stronger preferance for backend. I also made diagrams needed for the assessment, including the Architecture and Sequence diagrams.

The project was very well recieved by peers and professer alike.

Its source can be found at a github here. I do not own this Github, so I apologize if the link stops working.

Graphics Projects

I took two years of Graphics and created a variety of projects in Processing (a visual oriented language based on Java) and OpenGL with C++.

The final project in the second year was on a topic of our choice, and I choose to create a Shell-fur shader as I found the technique an interesting approach to realtime fur. The project .zip can be found here.

Once downloaded, extract the files.

Launch the project by using the .exe

Database Project

Myself and two others created an SQL relational database with a Java interface for a project. The data was about Pokemon, including the Pokemon, moves, types, items, evolutions, forms, and more.

I was involved with everything except the Java interface, particularly with parsing the data into insert statements, making documentation, and designing how the database would be structured. In the end there was so much data it needed to be split into 6 files to optimize initialization.

Here is a breakdown of the project:

Recimeal

Recimeal was an Android App created in Android Studio with four other people for a software engineering course. Using the app a user could create, such, store, and favourite recipes. The app worked like a digital cookbook.

I handled most of the frontend and documentation, as well as helping on the backend where needed. Most of the team was oriented to the database and backend parts of the project.

Unfortunately the GitLab it was stored on is private, and the website for it is no longer active.

Everan had finally caught his break. A poster from an up-and-coming mercenary band had reached the remote village of Shade's Edge. Eager to pursue this new life he headed for Suncrest, only to find that the group was disbanded, their leader slaughtered by a monster hunter with flesh more stone than skin. The path he's stumbled on drives close to the deepest corners of his past, the most vivid mysteries of the Ambling Expanse, and the dark presence wedged next to his mind. But dangerous figures lurk along this path, emboldened by visions of a world beyond the Expanse, starving for progress by any means necessary.

Across the Ambling Expanse is a character-focused fantasy story that is available on Amazon in both Ebook and paperback format! Available Here.

About the Trailer

Technical Details & Process

I made this to experiment with Unreal Engine, which I had never used before. It also seemed like a good excuse that would let me visually 'explore' the world I'd created. This video was created in Unreal Engine 5, using free assets (or 'free for the month' assets).

Every environment lies to the camera. If the camera were moved even an inch up, it would be revealed that there is a twenty-meter blue void between each 'layer' of land. This was done so that each piece of the environment was actually far away from each other so a nice depth-of-field could be achieved.

The trees in the forest are just trunks, and the shadows of leaves on the ground are created by floating bushes placed just above the screen. Similarly, the trees in the final scene are not actually trees, but trunks with bushes floating meters in front of them.

The strange creatures in the first scene use the model and animations of some oddly shaped and scaled cartoon dragon models. The sparkly appearance is a shader I created myself. The aim for this was to find the weirdest shaped models I could so that the creatures do not resemble any known animal. The goal was for the viewer to squint and guess at what they were looking at, rather than going "That's a sparkly fox."

One big question was whether to include characters, since there would be no real way to get models for them. I did not want to settle for 'close enough' and though Unreal Engine provides 'Metahumans' for free, the clothing options are nonexistent. So in the end only one character, the stone-fleshed monster hunter, got to appear. Only her legs are shown, and that is all that actually exists. The rock limbs were made by attaching retextured sodalite megascans to an invisible mannequin.

What is happening?

General

The first shots of the trailer are of the world itself, an idyllic valley covered in forest and farmland. Somewhere in the forests is a figure with limbs made of stone who has finally found what she is looking for: a mystical tree.
At the beginning of the novel, she has already found this tree and has moved onto the next stage of her plan, meaning this trailer provides a brief look into something that happened before the story.

The Forest

A shrine in the forest where unidentifiable creatures play. These creatures are Earth Spirits, who believe these sorts of shrines bring safety. The spirits are elusive, and their energy is the source of the world's supernatural oddities. These creatures are amorphous and often take shapes that crudely mimic animals.

The Crows

Several crows descend to investigate something shiny, a black feather that twinkles with false stars. The feather is far too large to have come from any bird, begging the question of what left it behind.

The Tower

A tall tower from an age long gone stands as a monolith atop a hill. This tower is how the story begins.

The Tree

A stone-fleshed individual moves through a lush forest, approaching a strange pink glow. It is revealed that the source of the light is an otherworldly tree, which is the initial driver for the plot.

Pathway

Away from the mysteries this land holds is a mundane trail past an abandoned building, a common sight that sits on the surface of everything.

Asset Credits, all sourced from the Unreal Marketplace

Quixel Megascans

"ANIMAL VARIETY PACK" by PROTOFACTOR INC

"Animation Starter Pack" by Epic Games

"City Park Environment Collection LITE" by SilverTm

"Countryside: Windmills and Barns" by GeorgeShachnev

"Dragon for Boss Monster: Handpainted" by Dungeon Mason

"Landscape Backgrounds" by Gokhan Karadayi

"MCO Mocap Basics" by MoCap Online

"Particles and Wind Control System" by Dragon Motion

Music Credits, sourced from Youtube

"In Search of Solitude" by Scott Buckley

Space Themed Pieces

Space is great for art. It's stunning and provides a window into endless possibilities. Plus, drawing astronauts means I don't have to draw human hands and faces.

Collections

One-offs

"Reach" Medium: Acrylic Paint

Medium: Acrylic Paint

Medium: Acrylic Paint, Marker

"Astrocat" Medium: Digital Art

"Starcat" Medium: Digital Art

Cryptid Coverup

These works were created as part of a digital art course where we were free to choose our own idea. Each piece centers around the plausable existance of an unknown creature similar in nature to bigfoot and other cryptids. Later pieces introduce a mysterious organization who may be doing a purposefully bad job at covering up the creature's existence.

Click the 'about' section of each artwork to find out more!

"Sighting"

"Have you seen it?"

"The Files"

Pokemon, Realism-style

I have not properly played a Pokemon game since 2017, but the elemental monsters still hold a special place in my heart. They also make for some easy and varied art ideas. These images were inspired by those "what if pokemon were real" images that have been circulating the internet forever.

Some are more stylized than others, but all aim to add a bit of detail to the normally cartoonish creatures. All digital art.

Other Pieces

Not everything needs a theme.

Collections

One-offs

Cat Pictures

My cat Autumn is pretty level headed.

She also does this a lot. The shelter found her in a blizzard so we think she did this to conserve warmth.