Bad Drop

For the past two semesters I've been product owner on a third and fourth semester game design project. Originally it was meant to be created using the Unreal Engine. By the end of the first semester's worth or production we had something very near a complete alpha. However, at the start of production for the second semester it was determined that we would switch from the Unreal Engine to the Unity 3d Engine. The change was made in large part due to the need of our programmers and animators to be able to have an easier way to import assets into the game. In the following 16 weeks we met and surpassed what we had in the Unreal Engine and now have the game at a beta state.

During the first semester of production on Bad Drop I was the environment guy. I created the map, outposts and environmental props. I also spent time placing the default Unreal enemy 'bots' around the map and setting up the pathing that they would follow.

A large portion of the time I spent on the project during the first semester was spent on creating the full design wiki for the game. It includes all enemy stats, the placement of enemies, the types of augments, the variations in power of the augments and the original concept of the game.

When we switched over to Unity during the second semester of production I needed to recreate the map that the player would interact with. Before my idea had been chosen by the group we had to create a short design for our game and present it. Out of the three design that had been presented mine was chosen. During that time when I had been creating that original idea and design I had created a simple mock-up using 3ds Max. It was relatively simple to import that file directly into Unity, saving myself, and the rest of the team, time on getting a working map up and working.

Early in the project I also model, rigged and unwrapped the medium enemy used in the game. This gave us a simple enemy that we could begin testing animations and importing with. The original design for the medium enemy was created by Evan Thompson, an intern that we borrowed from the 2d department. The enemy was later textured by Luke and then animated by Brett.

Out of the many things that I worked on during the project, creating the main weapon, the BFG, was by far the most fun. The game became based around what the player could do with this weapon and needed to reflect that. It was during the process of modeling this weapon that I decided that, in regards to creating assets in game production, I am a low poly modeler. Even though the BFG seems to be highly detailed the final weapon has less than 2k polygons.

Caesium - 2011, Semester 2

During the second semester of classes I worked on the Caesium Project with the second semester class. My main role in this was Animation Lead and much of the time I spent helping out those animators on my team which needed it. Task wise I was always busy working on various models and textures as well as making a large number of the game screens.


As Animation Lead for Caesium I ran the animation team, trouble shooting and solving as many animation and art impediments as I could. My early tasks included creating one of the simple enemies that had been approved through concept and creating an art pipeline document. To that end I modeled, rigged, animated, and textured the BombBat.

This allowed our programmers to being testing code and troubleshooting a large number of the problems that always arise with importing assets and code to an engine. I also modeled the main boss that the player would end up fighting against at the end of the game. During the first sprint I worked on him, the BombBat, the various gameplay screens, and created the art pipeline.

Most, if not all, of the concept art for Caesium was create by Jose, as was the texture on the final boss.

During the second sprint I was mainly focused on rigging a number of characters, modeling the Tri-Pod enemy and creating the in game tutorial 'thought' bubbles. As a team we began to see just how big the game was going to be, but we ended up having more than enough time to get all of the animation assets into the game.

When we began porting to the Andriod during the third sprint it turned out that we were unable to use the terrain editor in Unity and were forced to create the map in 3ds Max. I recreated a near copy of the terrain we had in Unity in 3ds Max and we then used that mesh in the engine. I also created the animations for the main boss and added armor to him per the design request from Seth, the product owner. As the player dealt damage to the boss he would lose pieces of armor to visually show that he was growing weaker.

One of the last things that I added to the game was the set of statues for indicating where the power-ups were located.

Overall this was a good experience for me. Serving as a lead was a challenge for me since I prefer to work alone and would rather be given a task than hand out tasks than be in a management position.