University Projects
An overview of the various game projects I worked on while at university.
JumpGuy, 2021
JumpGuy (don’t look at me like that, I didn’t name it) was the group project developed in Unreal Engine for 3rd year Game Programming and Victoria University. The game is a third person platformer where you play as a test subject trapped in an evil government training simulation. It has surreal environments along with platforming and combat encounters. The player character has special jump based movement and combat skills. I received an A+ for my work on the project.
The game was developed by three programmers, me, Ford Leins, and Matt Jay, as well as two artists Kei Shoji and Shane Xiaobai. There was another programmer assigned to the team, but he didn’t end up doing any of his assigned work (typical university group project stuff), so I’ve chosen to not credit him here.
I was responsible for programming UI, collectables, level transitions, scripted events and environment interactions, player health and damage, tutorial messages, and audio systems. The project had quite a few issues with the division of labor, so I ended up in charge of everything that wasn’t specifically player movement or combat. The unbalanced workload was partially my fault, after an initial underestimation of the work required, I didn’t re-delegate later in the project as I wanted a high grade and wasn’t satisfied by the turnaround time and work quality of other programmers on the team (everyone was very busy with end of year assignments). In addition to coding, I wrote and recorded voice over and sound effects, was responsible for half of the level design (my test-bed level ended up becoming the first half of the game), and did some of the texturing and modeling (floating platforms, central tower, Truman Show sky walls) as well as the particle effects.
Misc Projects, 2020
In second year I worked on two group game projects for software engineering.
The second was a remake of Chip’s Challange called Chap’s Challenge. Again, I was responsible for rendering and UI, and this time, along with manually coding all the vector graphics, I added manually coded animations and a sound effect system. This game was also coded from scratch in Java, See screenshots 1-3.
The first was a digital version of Cluedo (Clue, if you’re from America), for which I did all the GUI and graphics programming as well as coding all of the vector graphics manually in Java. See screenshot 4.
Desert of the Digital, 2019
In first year computer graphics I made a small game for the final project built in Java. It’s a side scrolling platformer where you play as a digital entity trying to escape from computer viruses.
This one featured a custom particle system for the player’s point based design and death animation. It also features a custom camera system and two types of basic enemy AI.
Misc Projects, 2014
During 2014 I worked on three group projects in Unity. These projects were all created by the same team consisting of me as a generalist, Alex Denford and Michael Green on code, and Slava Ovsyannikov and Peem Anakakul on art.
The main one was a first person horror point and click adventure style game (see screenshots 1-9). Another was a first person timing based boss battle with a musical theme where the player had to jump between platforms floating around the boss (see screenshot 10). The third was a tower defense game where you had to solve maths problems to spawn defensive units (no screenshots). I was responsible for sound design, music, 3d modeling, and game design.
Vapour, 2013
Solo university project made using Game Maker. Vapour is side scrolling platformer controlled entirely by mouse input; click on the screen to move to that location, click above the player character to jump. The game also features a mechanic for making non collidable objects solid by clicking on them. I went a bit overboard with the post processing effects with this one, but it looks a lot better in motion. The enemies run on a custom AI script that follows the player when it is in line of sight and patrols if it isn’t visible. I was responsible for all aspects of this game: art, sound design, music, and programming.
