The Chosen Ones

I need to remember to update this more often. So, here is a recount of the prototyping phase. After careful consideration, seven games were chosen to be prototyped. My game, Shade, was one of them. I was paired with Pace Sims, Abhinav Gurram, and Josh Lee. The first thing that needed to be established was how to make the shadows of an object act as a trigger. Our temporary solution consisted of me making shadow objects in Maya that would be attached to a cube and would act as a trigger to reveal other objects. The second thing that needed to be tackled was level design. We needed a compelling level that would show off the main game mechanic. Sadly, our attempts were met with very simplistic designs but they did show off the shadow revealing mechanic. We decided to white box the art and focus more on making the game mechanic work. The engineers did a terrific job of creating cool scenarios, the best being a ramp that was invisible and unusable until the shadow moved over it. After a few weeks of working, it was time to show off and pitch our prototypes to a panel of industry professionals and our professors. Josh did a terrific job presenting, but sadly our poor level design, limited concept art (which was my fault), and an implausible game mechanic cut our game from the lineup. Three games were chosen to be the thesis games of 2012: Zodiac Racers, Flyboy, and Last March of the Dodos. I was put onto the Zodiac Racers team along with producer Brandon Karratti, game designer Josh Lee, fellow artist Misha MacArt, and engineers Pace Sims, Anurag Bhagwat, Kevin Smith and Jorge Elola. Next post will be an in depth look at Shade before I continue into the current game, Race of the Zodiac.

New Game

Here it is. The thesis project for the EAE:MGS program at the University of Utah. I will hopefully be one of the six pitching my game at the end of this week and then we will enter the prototyping phase using Unity. This week is mostly prep for the prototypes and getting familiar with Unity. I am considering pitching my shadow game Shade where shadows reveal objects and obstacles that help the player escape. Update later this week hopefully with good news.