Game Design
The individual game projects I’ve worked on over the years,
organized from oldest to newest, from top to bottom.
First Game:
Below, I have a button that will let you take a look at the first game I ever made. I made it in order to be accepted into Champlain. I had to make a board game where players had to work together to progress, from what I remember.
The game is a series of circles, all broken up into 4 color sections.
Each player would start in their respective color section, and make on rotation around the board.
Once a rotation was completed, they would move into a circle that was closer to the center, with the goal of the game being to get to the center, first.
After this, players sitting opposite one another began working together towards the center, before inevitably double-crossing one another.
My sister and two step-siblings had a decent time playing. Nothing special, but they said it was fine.
I didn’t have a team for this.
I made this in fall semester, 2015, before I was accepted into Champlain.
This project helped me learn how to design games meant to be played for multiple people, as well as board games.
First Major Project:
For my first real game assignment, we were tasked to work in groups, and each member of the group had to make their own section of a larger game, using GameMaker.
We collaborated at least once every two days to make sure we got everything perfect for the story and mechanics of our game, but we didn’t share things like sprite art, or code.
We wrongly thought that would be necessary, since we wouldn’t actually be bringing our games together to make one larger game.
Me and a team developed the story, but I made this level all by myself.
I made this in spring semester, 2016.
But when we turned everything in, we realized none of our games looked, sounded, felt, or played similarly at all.
I don’t have access to their levels, but mine was the second to last in the story-line.
**NOTE:
The button below will take you to a google drive folder, where you’ll see a series of files.
You will have to download all of these to get my first game to run. Game Maker, especially back when I made this game, had no way of saving all the files to one executable.
All the images, sounds, etc, are separate files, that have to be in the same folder as the actual game, or else it won’t open. If there had been a better way to do this, I would have done it. Sorry for any inconvenience, if you wanted to see my first game.
This project helped me learn how disastrous things can be, when game teams work completely separately on their own parts of the overall game.
First Side Scroller:
This game wasn’t a huge task, we just had to have a game with enemies that:
Shoot at you
Spawn in every so often
Turn to look at you
And the game had to have:
A player icon that turned with A and D, and moved with W and S
A moving background
I didn’t have a team for this.
I made this in spring semester, 2016.
I still wasn’t too familiar with unity at this time, so as you’ll see, I simply did what was required.
**NOTE:
The downloadable files from this point onward will be .zip files.
Below that, is a video with footage of the game, if you would prefer not to download anything.
This project helped me get used to actual game engine’s, and real coding.
First Grid-Based Game:
I had no idea how to program grid-based movement, which was the requirement, so I tried to have fun while making this, since that’d all I could really do.
This is a game where the game just devolves as you go through the levels. Everything gets worse, the AI, the designs, everything.
I didn’t have a team for this.
I made this in fall semester, 2016.
I wanted to mask my weakness in this area, by making a genuinely unique concept for a game. Plus it was getting close to Halloween at the time, and I felt like making a somewhat disturbing narrative with the limited assets I had. And everyone really liked the concept.
My professor at the time, also liked the basic concept, but what he really liked, was the design of the main enemy. He said it looked good, especially for designer art.
This project helped me learn that just because the game engine is supposed to be hard coded to do/not do something, that doesn’t mean it will/won’t happen. It’s a 2D game, but the enemies can turn in 3D.
I also learned how to turn a bug into a feature, because I liked how the 3D movement of the 2D enemies looked, so I gave them 3D hit boxes, and left it as it was.
First Year Final Project:
We were tasked with simply making whatever we wanted. As long as it worked as we described in our Level Design Document, it would be fine to turn in.
By this time, I was starting to get the hang of Unity, so I decided to do something grand, to show just how far I had come. I was like Icarus, only it worked out, somehow.
So I decided that I was going to make a game, where you would fire bullets, that you would then use as platforms.
You could jump to place platforms at whatever height you wanted, and there were several types of platform bullets you could fire.
And, you could switch between the various platform bullets.
I didn’t have a team for this.
I made this in spring semester, 2016.
I think the initial inspiration for this concept came to me, because at the time, I’d recently heard about “solar surfing”, you can look that up if you want, I’m not going to bog you down with the details.
It was very difficult, especially since I also decided to fully animate the walk cycle of the player character, myself, leaving less time to actually code.
All in all, I think it turned out pretty good. I still like this one a lot.
This project taught me that too much player freedom can be a bad thing, as I failed to realize that I was expecting the players to do extremely specific things, even though this game has a fairly unique concept, meaning the player’s reaction is not guaranteed.
First Unreal 4 Multiplayer Map:
Some of what I did around this time was Unreal 4 stuff.
Unfortunately, there was no way for me to save any of this stuff at the time, but I do have the pdf document for my multiplayer map, which was the final assignment for this specific class.
I wish I could show you my other Unreal stuff, but the professor for this class insisted on only allowing us to save the project through our school’s local cloud memory system.
We call it “Pineapple”, and the professor for this class, made it for Champlain.
I didn’t have a team for this.
I made this in fall semester, 2017.
So, I was not able to save any of the projects outside of Pineapple. But even if I could have, since almost no one reading this is sure to have been a student at Champlain within the past 7 years, there’s no way for me to link my work to you, since you need a Champlain account to be able to access anything. So that’s disappointing, to say the least.
This project helped teach me how to design a map to have player’s both flow in a way that will generate fun fights, as well as make different play-style’s viable.
“2nd Person” Platformer:
This was the first actual game, and not a map.
I made this in fall semester, 2017.
I didn’t have a team for this.
We were told to make a collection game with a unique mechanic.
So I made a collection game where you control two characters.
The basic premise is that the main player character, the red pill, can move freely in 360 degrees, depending on the camera, but the second player character, the green pill, can only move based on North, South, East, and West, and can’t be affected by the camera.
This allows the player to almost control another character from an almost second-person perspective.
This project taught me that if collecting things is supposed to be the goal, I shouldn’t lock all of them behind a puzzle, so the player can have a chance to pick a few up, and learn that, that’s what they need to do.
Branching Path Proof-Of-Concept:
For this assignment, we were told to make a very short story driven FPS game, with branching paths, based on player choice.
We were given a week to make it.
So I really kept the actual game assets to a bare minimum, and tried to make a branching narrative, where all the paths tell a larger story.
Made in fall semester, 2017.
I didn’t have a team for this.
This project taught me that UI is extremely difficult to work with, and I made it a goal to get better at it, after this.
Multiplayer Racing Game:
For this one, you’ll need an Xbox controller, if you want to test it out. We were told to make a multi-player racing game that needed controllers to be played.
This is one of my best games in terms of functionality, and the one I never want to look at again. Because I think I did a great job on this, but the amount of headache I had to go through to get the controller support to work is just something I’d rather avoid reminding myself of.
Made in fall semester, 2018.
I didn’t have a team for this.
It did teach me a ton about setting up controller support for games, but it also taught me how fragile Unity is. I managed to find a bug in Unity 2018’s controller support, where it will give you a number greater than 1, in a system that’s only supposed to be binary, it’s only supposed to be 0 or 1, but it will give you a 2 or a 3. Unity actually broke basic computer language, and of course it had to happen when I needed to implement controller support.
This project taught me how to implement controller controls into a game. It was a lot harder than expected.
—Video Soon—
Expansion on “2nd Person” Platformer:
The idea for this game came to me when I was wondering what to do for my final. We had complete freedom to do whatever we wanted. So I thought back to my platformer with two player characters, and decided to do the concept again, but different/better.
And according to the first three pages of multiple Google searches, it certainly was a unique idea, since at the time, there were apparently literally no games that had even tried such a thing.
And that’s probably because it’s based on a narrative style that inherently makes it harder to tell stories, or to not confuse people.
But then I thought to myself “If a 2nd person perspective can confuse people, then what if I just roll with confusion as a motif?” So I did.
I got trippy music, visuals, made a weird looking model, and made animations for said model that were just slightly “off”. That all took a week and a half in total, leaving me with three and a half weeks to get to coding.
Made in spring semester, 2018.
I didn’t have a team for this.
This project taught me that the camera in a platformer is actually extremely important.
So halfway through, I made adjustments by angling several platforms, so they player could better tell when they were over them.
I also gave the player a cube hitbox, rather than the usual pill one, to prevent them from sliding off these platforms.
Game Made In 5 Hours, Total:
Here we have my first major project of 2019. I was given 3 weeks to make a game that forced the player to physically react, and which was also extremely unique and/or creative.
This was made in fall semester, 2019.
I didn’t have a team for this.
So I initially intended to create a break-dancing game, where the player could click and drag the limbs of a character in order to make them do unique tricks. I unfortunately realized too late that this simple concept was far too challenging.
So, at the literal last minute, with only a week left, I decided to change it into a “Hole in the wall” style experience. And that last minute change in direction does show
For it being the result of a last minute complete overhaul of what I had initially intended, and a complete lack of time during that 3rd week, I think it turned out O.K.
But this was a learning experience. It’s very likely that in the future, I’m going to be working on games, only for the entire concept of the game to change right before the deadline. It’s unfortunate, but you always hear stories like that from the game industry, so it’s best to start preparing for it early.
This project taught me that sometimes, games take massive shifts at the last minute, and this can lead to varying effects.
Single-Player “MMO”:
This was the solo final I did for my Junior year Game Systems class. I made everything in this game myself, every character, every animation, every piece of armor, all in a total of roughly 3 weeks.
I decided to dip my toes into Blender for this project, as I had never worked with the program before, and I felt having experience with it, as well as Maya, would be good to put on a resume.
I consider this project to be almost perfect, in terms of achieving what I intended, when starting it. And I had a lot I had intended for this project at the start.
The scope and polish of this game is a far better representation of my skill than any of the other games so far, and I wish to eventually have time to go back and work on this one some more. I don’t know when that would be, though.
Made in fall semester, 2019, as my final project for my game design class.
I didn’t have a team for this.
This project taught me that individually coding every aspect of every item in your game is extremely time consuming, and finding a way to do it automatically, would be very helpful.
Level Made In Source Engine (Hammer Editor):
This was a small side project. I had time to start experimenting with the Source engine, so I made a small level set in the “Half Life” universe.
I don’t have a video for this one, but I do have the LDD, if you want to take a look at that.
And if you would like to play through the level, the download is a simple .vmf file. If you have any Valve game, you should be able to run it through the hammer editor.
Made in fall semester, 2019, as a final assignment for my level design class.
I didn’t have a team for this.
This project taught me that different game engine’s really have very different strengths and weaknesses, which was important, as I’d only worked in Unity and Unreal at this point.
Blacksmithing Simulator:
This was my major project for my first semester of my Senior year. Me and a team of four other seniors worked on this for the entirety of the semester.
We had absolutely no restrictions with this game, we were simply told to make a game, and get it to a decent place by the end of the semester, to show that we could all work well in a team environment.
This was also made during fall semester, 2019, and me and my team worked on it for the full semester. Had it gone to pass, it would have been a blacksmithing simulator, where the player created and sold weapons, in order to afford better materials, to make better weapons, with a day/night cycle where they had to use their weapons to defend their resources from enemies.
Because of our limited time, we decided to cut any work on combat until the second semester, giving us time to focus on the trading, sound design, etc.
Since it was a school environment, and professor’s want you to have something to work on, we had hoped that having combat be the focus for next semester would give us, and any new recruits, plenty of things to work on in the second semester.
Sadly, as we feared, the opposite happened, and our game was cut because everyone judging our game, felt that combat was too huge to only have one semester to work on.
So our game was cut, and our team members were assigned to new teams, based on who they needed.
This project taught me how important teamwork is, even more so than I’d already known.
If you want to see where we managed to get to, you can watch the video below:
More to come…