Projects

Semester 1 - Blockhead

Blockhead was my first team project at DigiPen.  The requirements for the game were that it be a text based puzzle game.  Naturally, we took our liberties with the entire "text-based" bit, resulting in an ASCII based puzzle game.  Not knowing what we were getting ourselves into, we promised 90 levels spread over 3 difficulty levels, a tutorial mode, multiplayer on a single keyboard, and an entire help system.  Fortunately, the complexity of the game design allowed us to finish the engine quickly, and devote the rest of our time elsewhere.  In the end, we had produced a complete game that was actually challenging and fun - all with simple text characters.

Semesters 2,3,4 - Beyond Extinction

With heads full of ideas, and a great love for real-time strategy games, the next team I was a part of decided to jump into the realm of real-time strategy.  We were foolish at first with our skills, trying to make a game of the hardest 2-D genre off of little or no experience.  After we figured out the DirectDraw code and the basics of the style, semester one was over.  Unfortunately, the entire game was written poorly in spaghetti C code, so in the Summer of '99, I made the decision to restart the project using a better C++ structure.  Though our team had dwindled in size to 4 people for the second of three semesters, we persevered, adding path finding and AI to the new engine.  Finally, with two new members and a strong base, we added networking and fixed the game up considerably to be a near-finished product.  Though the game does have problems, it is possible to struggle against the AI, which of course always wins.

Semesters 5,6 - Gunsha

Licking our wounds from Beyond Extinction, the remaining 5 people on our team started a new game.  The main requirements included AI and networking, with encouragement to venture into the 3D world.  We decided to make Gunsha, a 3-D quasi-futuristic hover-tank arena style game.  Early in the process, we determined that the design would be simpler to allow us the time to finish the game.  Going into semester 6, we lost a team member - we were back to the core team of Beyond Extinction in the summer of Semester 3.  Persevering, we were able to finish the game which is remarkably good for five months of work.

Semester 7 - Gekisen

Gekisen, no matter how much time we put into it, just didn't ever get off the ground.  Our team was first of all too big, with the entire Senior class collaborating on the single project.  The game had great prospects - a 3d team capture the flag type game, but unfortunately we just had too many problems staying on the same page.  In the end, we had all the requirements for a first functional prototype, and we were exactly where we needed to be to finish it by the end of the year, but it just wasn't fun working on it anymore, since nobody had a clear sense of what direction it was going in.  So we dropped it like a bad habit.

Semester 8 - Gunsha

In my final semester, I am working on Gunsha (again).  The game was very nice the first time, but there are a few things that just aren't quite right, like the physics and framerate.  Anyway, this semester Scott Judson and I are working hard to complete the project, but things such as our job hunt and the GDC are severely hurting our chances of actually completing the game here at DigiPen.  Hopefully we will get to a point where we are proud of our efforts and can leave DigiPen on a high point in our game creating careers.