Blocks and Bullets
Posted by Michael | Filed under templates, internet
Blocks and Bullets serves as the first game I ever worked on. It was created using Game Maker since it was made during my freshman year and at the time I had very little experience with programming. The whole point of this game was to create a unique mechanic that had not really been done before in games. As a result this game became a puzzle platformer where in order to progress past the enemies you had to move these blocks to shield yourself from their attacks. You could also use some of these blocks to stun or even eliminate your enemies. As a result every level became a little puzzle game.
Unfortunately due to the loss of my GameMaker license this game is not playable at the moment. Overall as a learning expereince making this game was pretty fun. It showed me just how great it can be to make games. This game was made in conjunction with one other person named Austin Schmidt.
Guise
Posted by Michael | Filed under templates, internet
Guise was an action platformer made using both Javascript and HTML. It was made by a team of four including myself. My teammates were Mitchell Allen, Andy Lin, and Kristen Ho. For this game we wanted to
create a story line that was just a little creepy. Hence the art style and animation reflect this goal. I personally focused on the combat system and the level design. I originally wanted to create more complex levels,
but with an 8 week time frame that goal did not really come to fruition. Nevertheless, it is a fun little game with an unexpected twist.
This game is the story about a poor little girl who lost her favorite Teddy Bear. It's your job as the player to help her recover her bear. The only thing is, the world is a more dangerous place that it would appear. By the end of the adventure you may question the notion of reality all together.
PowerUp Pong
Posted by Michael | Filed under templates, internet
PowerUp Pong was a game developed using Unity's 2d engine and the C# Scripting language. I helped Kayvan Boudai on this project as it was my first foray using both Unity and C#. The game was designed to be played with the Microsoft Surface
but it also can be downloaded for devices running Windows 8. I personally worked on a few of the power ups and getting audio into the game. This game served as my biggest intro to these particular dev tools and environment and even more importantly into
Scrum development.
PowerUp Pong is a modified version of the classic game Pong designed to fit both modern play styles and aesthetics. Since this game was originally made for the Microsoft Surface is features various control schemes. It features a single player mode as well as a local competitive multiplayer mode. Although the game starts off like Pong it quickly becomes a different beast entirely. Go ahead and give it a try.
You can find the download link here.
The Devils Eight (In Progress)
Posted by Michael | Filed under templates, internet
The Devils Eight is a rhythm based action platformed built with Unreal Engine 4. I serve as Project Manager/ Lead Producer on the project in addition to working on various functionality such as the game state manager and AI behavior for future bosses. I work alongside Ruben Telles, Milan Gurung,
Aaron Jauregui, Sean Mendenhall, Weston Mossmon, and Isabella Lee. This project has roughly a 6 month development cycle starting in January 2015 and ending in June 2015.
In the Devils Eight your goal is to defeat Eight bosses each with their own different attack set. Each boss is meant to personify one of the eight circles of hell and their move set is actually based on the soundtrack that plays through each level. Again this game is expected to release in June 2015.
You can watch a gameplay video here.
UCSC Class Search (Non-Gaming)
Posted by Michael | Filed under templates, internet
This project was developed with Max Laumeister and Jesse Smith. This project is the first real project or application I have worked on using the Android SDK or a mobile device in general. Despite that, the simplicity of the project simply adds to it's beauty.
Our application is designed to help UCSC students get information about classes on their mobile device because the school did not really have a good interface for mobile devices. I personally spent a lot of time getting the bookmark functionality in place as well as some
back end code for the individual class detail activity.
This application has turned out to be quite well received by everyone at the University who have either seen or used it and I'm pretty excited to see how it can grow. It may even be supported by the university. For now it remains a useful tool that really helped me learn my way around the Android SDK.
You can download the apk file here.
Computer Vision Project (Non-Gaming)
Posted by Michael | Filed under templates, internet
This project was worked on in conjunction with Gerald Brown, Justin Lardinois, Katherine Barsaloux, Derek Donahue, John Kang, Brittany West, Alfred Young and Jiayu Zeng. Our project was about creating new ways to look up data using computer vision and crowdsourcing. We were
working to help a few Graduate students from Stanford and UCSC build a User Interface to help users tag these images that would then create JSON data and send it into a database. Ultimately this project was split into two implementations to accomplish the goal, including a slightly gamified
approach.
I helped the bring some gamification to the project by adding both scoring to the project as well as adding in some audio. I also did a few things on the back end to get the project functioning. Ultimately this was a fantastic project and I am very glad to have worked on it. You can browse through our presentation to learn a bit more about the project and what we did.