The Latest

So, it's been a long time since I made a blog post. I think it's partially because nothing exciting has really happened and partially because I haven't felt the need to write a whole blog post about anything. In related news, I made a tumblr because it seemed like a better way to make quick art updates rather than posting here. You can find mine here: http://chrixeleon.tumblr.com/

Let's see, what's happened since last June... Last summer mainly consisted on working on the Virtual Joust project for the Higgins Armory and searching for jobs (which, I admit, should have been done before the summer!). I feel like I used the end of college and this project to prolong job searching and working on my portfolio, which was a big mistake! Towards the end of the Virtual Joust project, which was completed in October and is now installed in the museum, I buckled down and started really working on pursuing my goal of getting a job in the game industry.

For the month of September I decided to make at least one piece of art a day and post it to tumblr to practice my skills. I also worked on making a game called God's Tower for the Super Friendship Club forum's Mysticism Pageant to get more experience with flixel. In October I ordered some nice business cards from 123Print.com which I am very happy with. Also during this time I kept working on making my website better and now I'm finally satisfied with it (you can check it out here: http://chrixeleon.com/). November was pretty uneventful and December was full of holiday preparation and celebration. Starting in October and continuing through January I was in (and got pretty far through) the hiring process of a local game company but didn't get the job. I was pretty bummed but it was my very first job hiring process experience (and real job interview) ever!

With New Year's 2012 came new resolutions and an increased desire to get a job. My resolutions are mainly about increasing my skills and breaking into the game industry: get better at art, get better at networking (and talking to people in general), get a job! In mid-January I remembered iD Tech Camps, of which I had been a student at one point, and decided to apply for an instructor position. By February 1st I had a job offer and some definite employment later in the year. It was great to finally have something, but I still wanted to be working sooner. Also in January I participated in the Global Game Jam (GGJ) at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. I met a bunch of new people, got some excellent game jam and art experience, and helped make a game called Canopy of Shadows in a weekend. It was a great experience and I can't wait to do it again next year!

GGJ was sort of a confirmation that my life was moving in the right direction. I got introduced to a small game company in Boston that was looking for an art intern and someone looking for a pixel artist for their indie project. Shortly after GGJ (and completely coincidentally) I saw a job posting for a position at a game company I applied to in August but was put on file because they weren't hiring then. Long story short, they offered me a job! It's a contract position that starts at the end of March and I'm excited! Since the beginning of February I've also been doing some concept art work for the company I was introduced to after GGJ and can hopefully provide some more help until I start working full time. As for personal work, I made a small game called Proximity Mime for the GDC Pirate Kart.

That brings us to right now. This month will hopefully consist of working on more art, starting my first game industry job, and getting ready for PAX East and it's preceding Made in MA party. Any personal art I make will be posted on tumblr and PAX East will get recap posts here as usual. I might make a post just about preparing for PAX, too, as I'm planning on doing some hardcore networking this year. It looks like a lot of great people and companies will be there this year and I'm greatly looking forward to it!

So, long story short (or TL;DR), things got better, things are going well, and things are looking up.

Global Game Jam: Day 3 + Conclusion

With only about 6 hours left we put (almost) everything together and packaged it into a game. Like usual, scope was an issue with out limited time and resources. Despite lacking some of our desired features, we do have two levels with enemy dodo birds and collectable eggs along with the basic movement of a platformer. The psychology aspect we were hoping for is absent at the moment, but we'll hopefully be able to add it in later.

On the last day I created a few more assets as they were needed, such as a title screen, background image, and "to be continued" screen. Some of the time was more or less wasted because there was more art than tech due to having two artists and one programmer. I wish I could have helped code some of the game but I am still not that familiar with how to make games with flixel. This game jam has definitely sparked my desire to finally buckle down and learn it, though.

Although we submitted an incomplete game to the Global Game Jam site, we will be fixing it up and extending it in the hope to submit it to the Intell AppUp store to win $200. The deadline for submissions is February 28th, so we have a decent amount of time to finish and polish our game. I'll try to post some of my work on the game and our progress in the coming weeks.

And with that, go play our game! You can find it here. You can also play it in your web browser here but probably only for a limited time (as my only storage space may expire tomorrow D:).

Global Game Jam: Day 2

Saturday was our longest work day of the game jam, and we got a decent amount accomplished.

I finished up making tiles for our platformer and also created the player character and animations. Later, I worked on a base boss sprite and animation that we can recolor and decorate to make different bosses. So far we have one boss and four total design ideas. Josh came up with the idea to name them all after US presidents, so we have Dodoham Lincoln, George Washington (or Dodoington), George Bush, and The Dodo Formerly Known as Taft.

Jeff has been working on all the code himself using some platformer code that he has been working on before. I'm not sure the exact status of that, although I'm told we have basic platformer mechanics and jumping on enemies implemented. Hopefully we have a decent amount to show at the presentation at the end of the jam!

I'll be writing a Day 3 and wrap-up combination post later to recap what happens today and to hopefully show off our game!

Global Game Jam: Day 1

And we're off! I meant to write this last night but the beginning of today is good enough.

After watching the keynote and getting our theme, we started discussing game designs. Our theme this year is "extinction," which leads to several obvious routes. Two obvious ones are "everyone is [going] extinct and you have to prevent/solve it" and "make [insert species here] extinct." There's also the psychological definition which is to make a certain behavior extinct by gradually removing positive reinforcement to a stimulus or giving negative feedback to a stimulus that was once positive. Our group decided to do a combination of both the biological and psychological definitions in one; a sort of double-extinction.

The basis of our game is that the player is told that they are to make a species extinct while our game design [hopefully] makes a certain behavior of theirs (collecting coins, for example) extinct at the same time without them noticing. After throwing ideas back and forth we decided that our game would be a platformer that consists of a vengeful man in a dinosaur suit (dino-Batman, as he is currently being called) who travels back in time to kill all the dodo birds, one of which who traveled forward in time and killed his parents. The player will be told to kill all the dodo birds and presented the option to collect dodo bird eggs, which make tasty omlettes. Ultimately, the player will be killing dodo birds and forgetting/subconsciously choosing not to collect eggs.

Our current plan is to do a little research into the psychology behind extinction so that we can successfully implement it in our game. The platformer "game" part that the player sees and comprehends as the full game is fairly straightforward. It's a basic platformer with movement and jumping, enemies, and hopefully bosses. The player can jump on dodo birds to kill them and can only progress when all the dodos in an area are killed. Levels will be broken up by highly-characterized bosses that will be entertaining and fun. Dodo eggs will be placed in easily accessible areas but not right in the player's path. There will be environmental hazards like death pits and potentially one other that the player should avoid. The game will keep track of score as an aesthetic classic game feature, but lives will be infinite. The art style will be happy and colorful, and also somewhat comic. Our hope is that the game will be silly and fun enough that the player will keep playing until the end, where we reveal the psychological extinction that has hopefully occurred.

I think that's it for now. I'll try to get another post up tonight or tomorrow morning to summarize Saturday's work.

Global Game Jam 2011 Begins

I'm going to be on top of the ball this time and actually update my blog as stuff happens! This time, I'll be blogging about my experience at this year's Global Game Jam. The Global Game Jam is an event that takes place worldwide, where sites around the world host a game jam at roughly the same time as everyone else who's participating. Jammers have about 48 hours to complete a game and submit it online for the world to see. Last year there was a theme and some constraints, as well as some fun achievements for jammers to shoot for. As far as I know, there aren't any constraints this year, just a theme and optional achievements.

Anyways, the WPI Global Game Jam site will be in the IMGD Lab and we will begin at 5:00PM tonight. I've already talked to someone about a game jam idea (one that sort of fell through last term) so hopefully we'll be able to crank it out and put it online by Sunday! I'll be writing a new blog post each day of the game jam to detail what we got accomplished and hopefully have a playable game on my portfolio by the last post.

D-Term Game Jam

(Just pretend like I posted that PAX East post when it actually happened and this one wasn't written directly afterwards... >.>)

Anyway, the WPI Game Development Club had their final Game Jam of the year this past weekend and it was AWESOME. 48 hours of pure game making and lots of pizza really makes for a great weekend. Technically it was my first ever game jam and I regret not having participated in one in the past. A bunch of guys from 38 Studios came by and were able to play our games and offer advice. I love having contact with the game industry, rather than just being hidden under the wing of game development academia.

Although I am an exec of the Game Development Club and was staffing the event, I set aside the weekend (school work can wait!) and made it my main focus to make a game. And it was sweet. I worked with Elliot Brodzki and Andrew Tremblay making QWERTY Madness, a platforming game where each letter on the keyboard (well, most of them) gives you a different power or ability once, and you have to use all your powers to be able to use them again. Andrew devised the main idea, Elliot did most of the programming, and I made all the art. We used Adam "Atomic" Saltsman's Actionscript 3 library, flixel, to make the game; I used GraphicsGale to make the in-game art, although I used Photoshop to make the menu screens and backgrounds.

I really like using Flash/flixel for several reasons. For one, it's extremely portable; we made it on Windows Vistas machine in the lab and now it can be played in almost every browser. The flixel library also has a ton of game-specific funtions, so even a sub-par programmer like myself can make a game fairly easily. It is also very conducive to iterative design, of which I am a fan. You can run the game at any time to test it, change a few lines of code, and run it again in a matter of seconds. It satiates my need to fix things and then see the results instantly. I plan to fool around with it when I have some free time, probably after the school year is over. I may even try to make a game with it on the plane ride to/from Japan!

Once again, you can play QWERTY Madness right HERE! Play until your keyboard breaks! (But don't blame us!)