INTO THE DEEP
As Part of the building virtual worlds class at ETC Carnegie Mellon I was to make a game within 2 weeks as part of a 5 member team comprising 2 artists,2 programmers and 1 sound designer.The guidlines given to us was that the person playing the game should not be given any instructions.The platform given was the Occulus Rift and PS move.The Idea that the team came up with was to create a diving game with a rich undersea world where the player would collect treasure and would then be chased by Sharks
My Role
For this project I contributed as a Gameplay Programmer.
Programming
As a programmer I had the responsibility of designing and Implementing the AI for the Shark as well as the Yellow fish which guides the player to their goal.While programming I had to think about design as well and how the fish would guide the player to the destination.to fulfill this I created the AI of the fish so that everytime the user lagged behind it would stop and stare at the user and wait for the user to react.This was done using simple coroutine structure and knowledge of colliders
Additionaly I also had to program the occulus and make it work as the main Camera for the user.I also had to manage paths for the other background fish in the scene which I did by creating a generic script which would refer the fish object and move based on an array of 3d points and would go to these points in a sequential manner.
For the shark I used a similar script along with a few well placed colliders that would detect the player and play the mouth opening and closing animations accordingly.
XTUNE
As Part of the building virtual worlds class at ETC Carnegie Mellon I was to make a game within 1 weeks using the Google Tango as the platform as part of a 5 member team comprising 2 artists,2 programmers and 1 sound designer.We made a Music Experience App for the Google Tango which allows you to have great visuals as you Interact with the environment and listen to your favourite Tracks
My Role
For this project I contributed both as a Gameplay Programmer and the Producer.
Producer
As a producer I had to first assess the teams strength but also finish the Ideation process quick as the deadline for the project was only 1 week.
I first coordinated the teams times so that all of them would use the google Tango and individualy assess its capabilities.
We quickly found out that the tango ,in its prototype stage was unstable and its only real advantage was the use of the infrared sensor and GPS to allow users to move in virtual space while mapping their real world movement.A simple Interaction game seemed like the best bet for making a game.
Since art was not too much I coordinated all the artists who had previous experience with Unity 4.0 to switch to programming.Both artists fortunately had experience and were comfortable with switching between their roles.I assigned 1 programmer to look into stabilising the platform by scripting the stabilisation code from scratch.Another programmer would make the beat sycnchroniser and match it to the background visualizer that would flesh out a music themed world.Finaly I assigned myself to look into bridging the Unity and Tango Together and creating a few basic gameplay elements.
Programming
As a programmer I had the responsibility of bridging our Unity project with the Tango project and making sure the Integartion was smooth.I did this by changing the existing example scene for tango in unity and then proceeded to create some gameplay elements such as the the two audio filters and making sure they interacted based on how far or close the player was to the filter control object.
LOVE IS IN THE AIR
As Part of the building virtual worlds class at ETC Carnegie Mellon I was to make a game within 2 weeks using the Xbox Kinect as the platform as part of a 5 member team comprising 2 artists,2 programmers and 1 sound designer.The guidlines given required us to make a game where Character A is afraid of Character B and the guest(player) helps character A.So the team Decided on a classic cute love story theme where a nerdy 8 year old child wants the attention of a cute girl in the class and has a limited time to do it but is afraid of his teacher and too nervous to ask the girl.The player helps him by throwing his love letters as paper planes to the girl in the front row of class.The following Video shows the gameplay
My Role
For this project I contributed both as a programmer and the producer.
Producer
As a producer I had to first assess the teams strength as well as make sure the Ideation process wasnt too long because of the short time constraint.I told the team to spend one night to come up with individual ideas and we combined the best ones and added the theme to it.
After the theme was decided upon I organized a session in our game room for all the teamates to play Dance Central 3 on Kinect.There were two reasons for this,Firstly most of the team members had little to no experience in playing Kinect games and secondly it was a good opportunity for the team to bond while playing a fun game.
We had 1 artist who was extremely efficient at 3d modeling and 1 artist who knew 3d modeling but was more comfortable and talented with 2d.So I divided the work so that the 3d artist would model the main characters and their animations and the 2d artist would do only basic 3d(like chairs and Tables) and concentrate more on texturing the 3d models themselves.I also knew that Kinect was quite unpredictable and would require a lot of attention to program properly.Since the main mechanic for the game was throwing the paper plane so I assigned the other programmer on the team to concentrate on creating and tweaking the throwing mechanism only.
I used trello to manage tasks and concentrated on using scrum techniques to make working increments and organized a number of team lunches and get togethers to continue to strengthen the teams bond which I believe contributed to an overall better performance.
Programming
As a programmer I had the responsibility of designing and Implementing the teachers AI,The Interactions of the classmates ,the girls and the main characters using Unity.The teachers AI consisted of creating an array of waypoints which mainly used the transforms of the objects I would put as part of the array.The movement would be implemented through the use of physics and the rigidbody system.I designed the animator controller for controlling animations which included the walking,scolding and staring animations.the teacher would also say random dialogues at fixed intervels implemented using coroutines.If the teachers AI detected the camera would close in on her face and the sound and animation for scolding would play.
The girls AI was easy to implement using colliders and trigger events along with camera movements to highlight the model.
The nerdy kid was also programmed to spout random dialogues at random intervals and when the plane was thrown.Other Adjustments included the Clock implementation and the pass/fail scoring system along with fading simulation for scene transitions and Integrating the throwing mechanic made by the other programmer in the team.
What The Fun(Toy factory Game)
The Toy Factory game was made as part of a 6 member team of 3 programmers and 3 artists within 3 weeks.The basic premis of the game was toy quality control where 4 players would be the toys and 1 player would be the trap controller who would "Test " the endurance of the toys by setting off traps.The input controls was Makey Makey and Phidgets for the control board setup and ps moves for detecting movement of toys.
My Role
For this project I contributed both as a programmer and the producer.
Producer
For this assignment we had 3 weeks to build the game from concept to finish.The core feature of our game was a 50 by 12 inches control board for the "Operator" which would require time to build.we also had to program a platformer game which would require numerous tweaks to gameplay.For this reason I divided our 6 man team and assigned them each roles that would help acheive this goal quickly.there were 3 programmers including myself and 3 artists.1 programmer would work on input management as we were using input from 2 devices i.e. Makey makey and a rotation phidget.1 programmer would work on the platformer mechanic itself and I would work on the various traps that the operator sets off during the game. we had 1 artist for GUI and 2d Art,1 for Character Modeling and Animation and 1 for environment art/Character Modelilng.
We had regular scrum meetings to ensure all the teamates were on track and knew what others were doing and used Trello for Project management.
Programming
As a Programmer I had to work extensively on making the traps responsive and providing as much features as possible so that they could be tweaked during the design stage as smoothly.I implemented the mechanics of the traps by manipulating the Physics engine in Unity .I also had to program the UI elements of the game which included the cooldown for the traps as well as the health bars for each of the characters.
JELLY PIRATES IN SPACE-ELECTRONIC ARTS PROJECT
Jelly Pirates in Space is an ETC Semester Long project to create an experience for families to enjoy together.The target audience are children from ages 8 to 12 and their parents.This is a game for non gamers that requires cooperation,quick decisions and a bit of skill.
The Challenge with this project was to work as part of a huge team (14 members), with half the team in Silicon valley, which brings issues of diffrent time zones and difficulties in communicating.These challenges are overcome with a clear vision,strengthening communication channels and a clear,well built infrastructure to handle the large amount of programmers.
My Role
For this project I contributed as a Gameplay programmer.
Programming
As a Gameplay programmer I worked on several game mechanics such as the ship movement,collectibles and "group events" which force players to work together to cooperatively overcome traps.The final deliverable included the mechanics that encouraged teamwork by merging the player bullets when they group togther and fire.It also included the escape mechanics for black hole and ice cream traps.We used Wwise for audio management.The other programmers worked on the mobile interface as well the server code for unity to mobile communication.
For more Information on the project you can visit the website at http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/legato/