I previously worked with a project group called Rocket Shark Studios after university. It consisted of four people I managed, and we collaborated on a few projects before disbanding in 2013.
Here we originally worked on a game for the iPad called Late Runner shortly after graduating, where we attempted applying for the Digital City Fellowship scheme to get funding from the university and legitimate ourselves as indies. We were sadly not picked, but we continued till we disbanded in 2013.
Commission Work
We also worked on a few commissioned animations for little companies such as D-Ranged t-shirts. Here we were commissioned to create five animations for their t-shirt characters. I animated the following three animations with my colleague Alec creating all background art.
ZED DEAD
TITAN
HIROKI
Besides that, Myself and Alec Woods were then commissioned to create an animation about LEAN process improvements for a small company.
Due to disagreements with the customer, the project was scrapped towards the end.
For my university final year project, I chose to focus my studies in game UI design. With this in mind, I wanted to achieve creating a full RPG demo in Adobe Flash. This has been a goal of mine for quite some time and I figured that this was the best time to try. The objective was to force me to learn new animation, scripting and art skills by doing such a project.
Ultimately the project was a success, which was a nice demonstration of audio editing, animation, art and writing skills.
You can view the development process on my Production Blog. (Click Here!) Completed Project:
The following links are to the completed SWF interface in parts on deviant art.
Note:
Unforuntently Flash Player since 2020 has been disabled in most browsers.
Please select the link and download the parts on Deviant Art if you wish to view the .SWF file animations.
(If all parts are in the same folder, they should link to each other.)
During my studies at Teesside University on my final year, I participated in a group project with nine fellow students. Unfortunately George Xenitidis left the group towards the start because of personal problems. For this group, I took the role of team manager and I was also the UI designer.
The project consisted of developing a game demo using any game engine. we chosen the Unreal engine and the iPad2 as the platform. Our reasons were that we all had previous experience in UDK thanks to the Journeyman Project and UDK only recently gained the ability to develop for the IOS. In a way we were pioneering a 3D platformer on the recently developer-able UDK platform.
M.C. Escher Painting
Game Concept
One of the team members suggested a third person rotation mechanic game. After some discussion, another team member mentioned an M.C. Escher staircase scenario in a rotating room. These staircases come from all different orientations, so a rotation mechanic would allow you to walk on sideway and upside down stairs.
With this, the team would base the game on trying to get to an exit in each room while navigating through a maze of stairs. This idea was further refined to include all manner of gameplay puzzles such as platforming, dodging deadly obstacles, having to slide a loose object by rotating the level and using interface puzzles to unlock or access areas of the level.
The gameplay would consist of pitfall traps, interface puzzles, rotating the world, trying to slide objects using the rotation and dodging obstacles.
The team decided that the rotation mechanic idea is somewhat original in a 3D space, so it was chosen as the core game mechanic for the game concept.
Finished Product Visuals:
Fuzzy Edge Logo
Splash Screen / Main Menu
Credits Screen
Load Screen
Demo End Screen
HUD
Level Snap-Shots
Characters
Level Demonstration
The video above shows the demonstration of the level developed on the iPad2. This covers the interface and game-play, accompanied by subtitle narration.
Story
The main character awakes in a puddle in dark cubed cargo room. She does not know where she is or how she got there. She only sees a control console and interacts with it. This makes the room rotate and the lights turn on. The room starts to come alive with the sounds of rusted machinery. From here, she is trying to escape these unknown surroundings by reaching each room exit.
As she progresses, she bumps into a small futuristic sentient robot. This robot has mistaken her for a pest and is persistently trying to exterminate her. The robot does not seem threatening at all because it is quite small and has no weapons. It however attempts to sabotage her progression through each room puzzle in the attempt to exterminate her.
The later rooms of the game will reveal that the main character is actually on a spaceship that is storing Earth artefacts. The main character will also learn in a melted ice exhibit, that she was part of the display. This part of the exhibit depicted a 21st century human being found on Mount Everest. Here you realise that the icy prison fell through a large crack in the floor once the ship crashed. This crack lead to the first level and is now clogged by one of the exhibits. Posters littered through the corridors between levels imply that nanobots repaired your frostbitten body.
Online
there are many tutorials on how to use Scaleform for creating game interfaces,
but there is a lack of tutorials on how to use it to make interface mini-games.
Scaleform in UDK is a powerful tool that can allow a user to replicate most
mini-games seen in popular retail released games.
Therefore a University module theme became a three part tutorial on how to effetely use Scaleform
to create mini-games in UDK. Commonly used mini-game types in popular retail
released games were the target for the research stages, so that three different
types mini-games can be chosen to be replicated in the tutorials.
Popular tutorial
magazines such as Digital Arts was also be researched to help create the
structure of the tutorial documents.
[Tutorial 1/3]
[Tutorial 2/3]
[Tutorial 3/3]
The video above shows the example video created to display all three tutorials combined in a UDK demonstration.
During my game interface studies at university, I created a Front-End Menu and HUD for a fictional point-click adventure game. It was designed to be similar to the popular 2D animated adventure games, but with a Dieselpunk Noir theme. It was created for the PEGI 12+ age rating and used a cartoon stylisation for the imagery.
Scenario
The setting is in a Dieselpunk Noir New York, during the second world war. The main character is extremely patriotic and wanted to enlist in the army. He failed the height requirement, so he became a reporter. He aspires to prove his worth and get his big scoop for fame a glory.
While trying to get some snap shots of some dame in her dressing room, he stumbled onto a plot by some Nazi spies. He unfortunately thought that would be a good time to take a snapshot, which placed him in his current predicament...
For the imagery used in the Front-End Menu interface, I used dark colours, greens, browns, black shadows, silhouettes and
some desaturated colours. I also used neon lights to mimic most noir movies.
Note:
Unforuntently Flash Player since 2020 has been disabled in most browsers.
Please select the link and download the parts on Deviant Art if you wish to view the .SWF file animations.
(If all parts are in the same folder, they should link to each other.)
Journeyman was a huge group project where five large teams worked on different levels for a game set by the teachers at my university in the second year.
Our level was based around an oppressive 1984 figure that appeared on a giant TV that turned out to be an AI and not a recording at the end. The goal of each level was for the main character to get some kind of magic egg, which we did manage to squeeze in the game at the end in a underground lair, where we were the only team to have a boss fight.
I had the opportunity of being the UDK level scripter for Team E. The image above shows a glimpse of the many different Kismet scripts I did, which was my official role as Kismet Scripter.
Unfortunately like many projects at university, some students did not do their part or did not show up. This lead to me having to pretty much do a bulk of the design work, pretty much taking over as lead designer. I took charge and ended up creating the majority of the level design, managed the design team, managed our schedule and complied everything together.
The art team created superb assets and the level looked fantastic. I will need to add a video of the level being played at some point in the future.
This was probably my first real crunch before I became a games tester, but because it was so personal, it frustrated me to no end when the art team was let down by my design team.
During my studies at university, I collaborated with an old college called Mike Lawrenceon an animation. The animation concept was of a Wii Alice and Wonderland game, heavily influenced on The Curse of Monkey Island. The project was completed in 11 days for a Disney internship application.
My contribution to the animation was helping with the dialogue and concept, level designing, art directing, character design, creating the backgrounds and helping direct the game simulation aspects.
Throughout my studies during university, I have helped a fellow developer with odd jobs for his games. This varied from minor background art, brainstorming and developing animations. He is now the founder the indie company Drop Dead Interactive, which has been running for over three years. The company has produced various games for XBOX Live Arcade and is now developing for other platforms, such as PC, Xbox One and mobile devices.
When Joshua formed his company, he asked me to create a logo animation using his logo image. I accepted and the finished logo can be seen in the first 16 seconds in video below.
[Logo: First 16 seconds]
I developed all the artwork and audio, while a fellow colleague animated the character and grave hand. The collaboration was a great opportunity for us to concept a crazy animation expressing that this company's games will make you drop dead of excitement. However, we had to change the concept to conform to 16 seconds.
[Logo: First 14 seconds]
However, a newer and more polished version was then created by an old friend a year later, as you can see in the video above.
Joshua Adeloye is a regular Xblig contributor and is often an attendee at GameCity. We collaborated on a couple of projects after this and he will soon be releasing his newest game Gear Gauntlet on Xbox One.
