Videogame Design
A game designer needs to create games. Here are some of the videogames that I've worked on.
Unannounced Project - Lead Designer
At Santa Cruz Games, I wrote the Game Design Document and have been doing level design, asset list creation, interfacing with several external groups, working with and building a small team, pitching the game to external groups, and striving to keep this unannounced project within budget and under a strict deadline. We are currently on target to ship on time.
Golden Axe (Xbox 360) - Level Designer, Design Specialist
On Golden Axe, I drafted level designs using Word, Maya, and paper.
I got onto Golden Axe during an early development stage and was able
to define many of the game systems.
I came up with many of the subtle world interactions
that would make Golden Axe a next-generation game.
Early in the project I mentored and trained entry-level
designers on tools and design fundamentals. Later in the project, I transitioned into a tools design and support role. I designed a GUI interface for level management in Maya and a plain-english scripting language called GLEE, which as of GDC 2008 they are still using.
Master Of Elements (PC UT2004 Mod) - Lead Designer
This started as a project for school. In Master Of Elements, each player starts as a elementless Cypher and collects elements to grow to a massive Elemental. The player can be one of eight different elementals each with differing abilities. The object of the game is to be the first player to build a Monolith and become a god. This project is still in development so has some bugs and balancing issues, but feel free to check it
out.
Beta Demo
(113MB, requires Unreal Tournament 2004)
Chronicles of Annor: Quest for the Crystal Shards (PC, Pocket PC, Linux) - Lead Designer
This is a personal project of mine. I have been leading a small team, doing most of the design work for it as well as all the art myself. It's a 2D game that borrows from the days of 16 bit action adventure games, but designed with touch screen interfaces in mind. That said, it controls unlike any action adventure game before it.
Demo Video:
Sarge's War (Gamecube) - Game Designer (3DO)
I was on this game for the early design work and level layout. While on it, I scripted and designed all three Helicopter Boss battles as well as the final boss battle. I also did general scripting and object placement for those levels. Here are some screenshots of sections I worked on and some video.
Trailer:
Gameplay:
Portal Runner (PS2) - Game Designer (3DO)
On this game, I was in charge of designing and building all the multiplayer levels and built a few test level meshes. I also did the scripting and design work for a few single player levels as well. Near the end of the project, I was doing extensive game testing and bug regression. Here are some pictures and video of the sections I designed and worked on.
Level walkthrough:
Game Maps - Level Designer
These are a few level design maps I've created for various projects. The first is a Siberian Missile Silo for a survival horror team-based assault game. The second is a massive canyon city in ruins for the game Master of Elements.
One-man Projects - Artist/Designer/Programmer... everything but the audio
I love to make games. Not sure if that's been made clear, though. Here are some various projects I did as gameplay prototypes.
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Games Galore is a collection of various classic board games designed for a touch screen device with Shockwave. I spent three weeks designing, programming and animating it. I put lots of effort into the visual style here.
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Jedi Duel is a 2 player Jedi fighting game prototype I designed, scripted and animated in Flash. I spent about seven days programming and animating it. This game is for two players on one fullsized keyboard.
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Speeder is a one player arcade-style '3D' game loosely based on the speeder bike sequences in Return of the Jedi. This was my first program in QBasic, and took one and a half days to create. I wrote it in 1995.
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Tabletop Game Design
Tabletop games are games where concept and gameplay is paramount. Here we have no fancy physics engines, no HDR lighting, only what you can fit on a page, in a box, or on a card. Here are a few examples of my tabletop game work.
Dungeon Escape! - Lead Designer/Lead Artist/Director (Stone Tablet Games)
Dungeon Escape! is the first game I created for Stone Tablet Games. The game idea came up as I was conceptualizing a way to create content procedurally for a 2D action adventure game. In Dungeon Escape!, the players create the dungeon as they play the game. It is an excellent casual boardgame for 2 to 6 players. Now available at Stone Tablet Games.com!
Dungeon Escape! Infest! - Lead Designer/Lead Artist/Director (Stone Tablet Games)
Dungeon Escape!Infest! is the first expansion pack for Dungeon Escape!, nearly doubling the number of room tiles, adding a few new mechanics, and expanding the scenarios to include more flavor and add several new gameplay styles. Both the expansion and the original have been Stone Tablet Games' biggest sellers. Now available at Stone Tablet Games.com!
Acceptable Losses - Lead Designer/Lead Artist/Director (Stone Tablet Games)
Acceptable Losses is a strategy board game of very intense strategic choices for 2 players. The game explores the concept of escalation in combat. If one player uses the massive Big Boy bomb on his opponent's pieces, it means that the opponent will have access to similarly gigantic attacks. The game explores the idea of what is an acceptable loss. If you take out 9 of your opponent's pieces and 3 of yours, is that acceptable? What about 2 of your opponent's pieces and 1 of yours? Now available at Stone Tablet Games.com!
The Ten Condiments - Lead Designer/Lead Artist/Director (Stone Tablet Games)
The Ten Condiments is a card game about balancing your resources in hand (condiments) to maximize the amount of points you get for playing them on meals. Now available at Stone Tablet Games.com!
Monkey Business - Producer/Design Consultant (Stone Tablet Games)
Monkey Business is a card game about developing products with monkeys. I ended up managing the production details for this one and consulting on design details to ensure a fun game every time. Now available at Stone Tablet Games.com!
Swami: The Gathering - Lead Designer/Director (Personal Project)
There are 300 different cards I designed for Swami: The Gathering, a spoof of Magic: The Gathering. I did the graphics for all the icons and graphic design elements on all 300 cards, as well as the majority of the card art themselves. This is a sampling of some of my favorites. This never went on sale, but is a fun Christmats gift for friends and family. Who doesn't want to see their D&D character on a Magic card?
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - Game Design
Since I was a little kid, I have been a Dungeon Master for various incarnations of the D&D system. I have always been a fan of making my own character classes and game content, so here's some of the content I've created for my players.
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Game Maps: Here are a few maps that I've created for adventures over the years. The first two are the middle and upper floors of a temple to the dark god Koron. The left side is all my notes for the floor and the right side of course is the map itself. The second two are maps of the Davine Provinces in the world of Annor. The first map is the pretty map the players picked up. The second is from my mapbooks, note the two bracketed areas with page numbers next to them, those are areas I have in more detail elsewhere in my mapbook.
Geneses RTF: The pantheon of Annor, my homebrew world I run game in. Includes an excerpt of scripture for each of the different viewpoints, often containing that god's particular view of Genesis, the creation of the world. And in case you didn't know: the plural of Genesis is Geneses.
House Rules DOC: The recently-drafted House Rules doc for games I run. It details a few special rules I have for flanking, criticals and fumbles, and the seventh stat Mind Power. It also goes into detail on the two meta races for my game world. Fae-touched provides the players with the ability to be half-animal (a frequent request) and gives quick rules for creating and customizing one while remaining in flavor with the game world. Dragonkin allows the players to create a character of dragon blood (another frequent request [Ha! Wizards of the Coast just recently revealed that they are ALSO including dragonkin in fourth edition as a base class]), anywhere from half dragon to one sixteenth dragon, and to customize the character with various types of dragon heritage and abilities.
New Wizard DOC: I rewrote the Wizard class to have a heavier emphasis on spell components and casting times, doing away with the flavorless 'spells memorized' (aka Vancian casting) version that Wizards perpetuates.
New Wizard Spell List RTF: The big list of all-new spells for the New Wizard. The spells are more unique than just 'Fly', and have much more flavorful effects. Note that Spider Climb (and a couple others) had enough flavor to make the transition with a few tweaks.
Elementalist DOC: This was an experiment in a minimalist design for a spellcaster class. The Elementalist fits all in two pages, including the 'spell list'. And with just those two pages, a clever and creative Elementalist is extremely flexible.
Chaos Mage DOC: The Chaos Mage is a mage whose magic is wildly unpredicable, but effective. I have massive charts for most of the spells filled with various effects waiting for a hapless Chaos Mage to roll them up. It's always fun to have one in the party as they bring lots of interesting fun into combat and adventuring in general.
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