Summer 2015 “Pro” Camp at Game-U
(Scroll to the bottom to see the complete student gallery.) By the time students attended this camp, some students had been taking classes at Game-U for over a year, working on various aspects of game development, but never really building a complete project. So for our most dedicated students, I developed a deep and intense week-long curriculum that culminated in their first full game. The camp sought out to teach, in-depth, a variety of skills necessary to building the complete, functional racing game, while leaving it open enough so that each student could make it their own. We covered a wide variety of topics across several software packages. Topics in Unreal Engine 4 included: BSPs Terrain & Foliage Setting Up Materials Setting Up Input Bindings Scripting with Blueprints Assembling Actor Blueprints HUDs Networking Topics in Blender included: Manipulating Sub-Objects Geometry Resolution Modifiers UVs, Texturing & Baking Topics in AwesomeBump included: Physically Based Rendering Generating & Tweaking PBR Maps Through these software packages, the students were able to establish a simple pipeline that allowed them to go back and make modifications to any asset and bring it back into their game with ease. Some of the mechanics we built included: Difference […]
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Game-U
As an Instructor & Curriculum Developer at Game-U, I had many responsibilities geared towards preparing our students for making the games they are interested in. We aimed to create a fun, educational environment for students (including those with special learning needs) to explore the various disciplines of game development and pursue the topics they enjoy most. Some of my responsibilities included: Develop engaging curriculum that encourages students to delve deeper into any given topic. Lessons are designed to have students explore the topic of the day, learn how to build it, then practice what they have learned with less guidance. Research topics relevant to each class' interests. Our classes are structured so that students with similar interests are grouped together so that the topics covered are of interest to all students. After researching the topics, any assets and scenes necessary to teach are created and tested beforehand to ensure students will be able to grasp the concepts and have the skills needed to practice on their own. Instruct in a manner that efficiently portrays the knowledge necessary to master the workflow and articulate it in a way students, who may or may not have relevant prior knowledge, can understand. Additionally, I developed and taught curriculum […]
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Primitive
I have always been fascinated with the idea and potential of procedural generation. I also have been interested in exploring more simplistic games that are void of story, violence and external motivation, but instead are driven by natural competition with others and one's self.
Primitive is an ongoing experiment based on those two interests. It is an arena-styled survival game where the player controls a sphere attempting to survive as long as possible against constant swarms of other basic 3-dimensional primitives. Each shape represents a different class with individual movement types and attacks. The name Primitive is a play on both the shapes that build the game and the simplistic, straight-forward nature of the gameplay.
The first map -- called Arena -- is randomly generated at the start of each game. The process begins with creating a grid of a specified size, filling each position with one of two prefabs, staggering each one on on each axis, then placing one of two lights spaced evenly throughout the scene: either a static blue light, or a red one that will change colors to represent the current obstacles the player is facing.
The second -- named Dash -- is built of an array of static panels that, as the player moves around the playing field, will rotate and translate into their final position. As the player leaves the area, they will then return to their starting point. The array will procedurally determine different gaps so that, as players race around the field, they have to adapt quickly to the missing sections that only become evident just before they arrive.
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