A dedicated software technologies graduate that has completed a Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments at Queensland University of Technology. Games developed throughout studies include: Farout, Lime Rider, Tippy Shippy, Sploosh!, Indespectus and 'HunGrrr!'.
The video below is a film created by a small team with motion capture technology. The world was built in Unreal Engine and the mocap data was imported for recording inside the game engine. Each person in the group was assigned a few different scenes to work on.
The video below contains the scenes that I worked on.
If you would like to see the full process and read more about how the film was made, please look at the devlopment blog below: Motion Capture Scene Development Blog
This assessment required the completion of a simple set based off a popular Indiana Jones scene. I created all models and textures within the scene. I wanted to stay faithful to the source material while also giving my own creative flair within the environment.
If you would like to see the full process and read more about how the scene was made, please look at the devlopment blogs below: Creation of the Altar Creating the Environment
Below are some photos of the process undertaken to model a Golem for my minor in graphic design. I did all the designing, modelling, texturing and rigging myself.
If you would like to see the full process and read more about how I made this model and what it was inspired by please have a look at the development blogs linked below: Modelling and Texturing Blog Rigging and Rendering Blog
This video showcases a scene I created that is inspired by the planet Tatooine from Star Wars. I created all the textures, models and animations within the scene.
If you would like to see the full breakdown behind how this scene was made please take a look at the blog below: Tatooine Scene Development Process
Indespectus was my group's Capstone project for university. It's a multiplayer VR game where the player is pitted against other players in an arena. The twist is that the faster you move your body, the more visible you become. Players must be careful how fast they move their body in the game if they wish to sneak up on their enemies and eliminate them.
HunGrrr! is a mobile game developed in Unity and published to the Google Play Store by me. As the player you control a horde of hungry zombies with only one goal - destruction. You must chase down and infect more humans, destroying all buildings and structures in your way. Upgrade your horde and take over the city! Please watch the trailer for the game below.
All the programming, sound effects, art assets and level design were created by me for the game. The footage below is what a typical playthrough of the game might look like.
The Mech AI Tournament was a fun way to inspire students to think creatively and competitively for our final assignment for AI for Games (IGB383). I successfully created an AI that uses behaviour trees in order to make human-like decisions during combat. My AI successfully made it to the finals of the tournament by using a resource-focused strategy before it perished in the final round. The video for the tournament is below:
"Sploosh!" is one of my larger projects that was worked on by myself and 3 others. We were tasked by our industry partner, Starlight Foundation, to create a game for 4 - 6 year olds that would teach them how to use a controller. We decided to make a platformer game with a paint theme similar to 'DeBlob'' that could teach children how a single joystick and 5 button inputs can affect the game world. We wanted to keep the amount of inputs required to play the game to a minimum so that children would not be overwhelmed. Below is some game play to showcase our final result.
My contributions to this game include:
• Advanced player movement
• Sourced, altered & implemented paint shader
• Coloured platform interactions
• Player material changes at runtime
• Respawn system
• Player model & animations
• Paint meter system
• Power-up systems
• Colour lerping
• Respawn, squash & enemy death animations
• 'Collect-a-thon' paintbrush system
• Level design using Pro Builder plugin
• Functionality of UI
• Interactable main menu
• Basic music playlist system
• Music & sound effects volume adjustment
• Music sourcing & implementation
• Sound effects made using 'BFXR'
• Main menu design & creation
"Tippy Shippy" is a small project made by myself and 2 others that revolved around key words 'spam', 'rows', and 'balance'. These words were provided during the assignment to encourage us to think creatively about how we could incorporate these words into main mechanics or visuals for the game. Our group created a game where the objective was to balance a cargo ship, while boxes are 'spammed' toward the player. The player prevented the ship from capsizing by stacking the crates in rows on either side of the ship.
My contributions to this game include:
• Player movement
• Camera controls
• Box interaction and visual effects
• Box delivery system
• Level design
• UI Design & Implementation
• Ship capsizing
• Score tracking
• Sound effects sourcing & implementation
• Particle effects
• Main menu design & creation
"Lime Rider" is a small project that was worked on by myself and 2 others for a mini-game development class. It is a game inspired by the trendy, new Lime scooters that were recently released for public use early 2019. As the player you must avoid pedestrians and other lime scooter users as you traverse a procedurally generated city-like environment. The goal is to travel as far as possible by collecting batteries to recharge your scooter on the go. The player must be careful though because hitting anything will greatly deplete battery life.
My contributions to this game include:
• Vehicle-like player controller
• Procedural/random generation
• UI design, functionality & implementation
• Sound effects sourcing & implementation
• Basic AI behaviour
• Battery & recharge system
• Collision handling
• Score tracking
• Main menu design & creation
"Farout" is the first title I worked on during my university studies.
The project was made entirely by me from scratch in Unity3D.
It is a top-down zombie shooter game where the player is focused on
fighting off waves of super fast zombies while also trying to find
the extraction zone. The game focuses on fast-paced combat and there
is a plethora of weapons that the player can find and use to defend
themselves. There is also a simple AI detection system in place,
so zombies actually react to sound and sight. This means stealth is
also an option! The illustration on the right was also created by me
as a logo for the game.
During my short development period all of the time was spent on the many in-depth systems within the game, so the visuals are very dull. However, my focus was not to create a visually pleasing game but rather one with fun and meaningful mechanics. The following mechanics shown in both videos below display a high attention to detail within them.
My contributions to this game include:
• Advanced reactive AI behaviour
• Pathfinding using Unity's NavMesh system
• Basic large scale level design
• UI design & implementation
• Advanced weapon spray system
• Tutorial design & implementation
• Basic weapon inventory system
• Item drops
• Sound effects sourcing & implementation
• Health and stamina system
• Interactable doors
• Preventing objects from blocking camera
• Throwable grenades
• All models & visual effects
• Collision handling
• Main menu design & creation
"HunGrrr!" is the latest game that I'm creating for IGB400 to expand my portfolio for future employment. I thought of the game concept and name during the semester break. IGB400 would give me the perfect opportunity to refine that idea into a fully-fledged game that I would release onto the Google Play Store. Having a commercial game to add to my portfolio would be advantageous for job prospects.
To discover the perfect portfolio piece I had to research current job applications for game programmers. I needed to find out what the requirements were so that I knew exactly what was needed to refine my portfolio. After much research into different jobs that fit within my description, I found myself stumbling upon a lot of mobile game companies. I have never made a mobile game before, so I thought that was the perfect platform to create this project on. I also wanted to expand my artistic talents and ability to create more complex AI. In summary, the skills I wanted to refine during this project are:
• Mobile Platform Development
• Advanced 'swarm-like' player system
• 3D Voxel Art
• Player and enemy animations
• Advertisement and release of a finished title
In "HunGrrr!" the player will control a horde of zombies using a single touch-screen joystick. Controlling a horde of zombies as opposed to controlling a human survivor makes this game a more unique and fresh experience among others in its genre. The goal of the player is to infect as many humans and destroy as much of the city as possible before the timer runs out. The idea behind this game draws inspiration from games like 'Katamari', 'Donut County', and 'Agar.io'. This is because when your zombie horde grows larger you will be able to destroy larger buildings and monuments which will score you more points and allow you to infect the people that are seeking refuge inside. The twist behind this neat mini-game is the player will have a hunger meter that slowly drains. The more zombies you have in your horde, the faster your hunger meter will deplete. The only way to refill your hunger meter is to keep infecting more humans, so you have to be quick!
If I manage to implement the above and I still have time remaining, I would like to create additional systems to assist with replayability value. Replayability will play a huge role in this game as standard play sessions will only last a few minutes. The standard game loop I explained above will keep players entertained, but not for long term play. Other systems I hope to implement are:
• Short skill / ability trees
• Random events
• Fast day / night cycle
• Achievements
• In-game store with cosmetics
Obviously, this is a large project to take on with about 7 weeks remaining until it is due.
So, the question remains, will I be able to complete everything in time?
Lucky for me I have already got a headstart as this was an idea I have had since the start
of the semester, so I have had a long time to refine my ideas. I have also had some
time to think of all the visual assets required, as well as how the game world will look.
I have pretty much covered all design elements of the game before the assignment has even
started, that is a pretty helpful headstart! I plan to follow a strict schedule during
development. This means that if a feature is not working as intended after a week of
development, it will be cut from the game. If there is extra time at the end of the project
this feature may be worked on again.
Having only 7 weeks left it is important to allocate that time properly. A broad outline of the development timeline is as follows:
Week 5: Visual asset development
Week 6: Level design
Week 7: Horde functionality & animations
Week 8: Hunger meter, timer & building destruction
Week 9: Develop human AI & animations
Week 10: UI, Early alpha testing
Week 11: Bug fixes & VFX
Week 12: Beta testing
Week 13: Advertise & publish final build
Obviously being a mobile game, there are significant hardware limitations in comparison to PC, which is the platform that I am used to building for. I have decided to use Unity3D to develop the game as that is what I am most familiar with optimising in. This is extremely important as a steady 30+ FPS is important to maintain for smooth and enjoyable gameplay experiences.
Unity3D also offers tools and well-written documentation that make development of a mobile game much faster. In addition to this Unity3D also has a tethered option to stream the build from the editor directly to the phone via Unity Remote 5. This tool does not represent actual performance on mobile, so throughout development I will be constantly playtesting builds on different phones to check performance. If any major issues are found during these tests, they will be assessed and redesigned accordingly. Complex lighting, textures and 3D shapes are out of the question if I wanted to build the large map illustrated earlier in the post. This will make picking simplistic, but stylised art extremely important.
The game world and everything inside it will be made up of small voxels that follow a 'vector-like' structure. What I mean by that is that shapes represented within the game world only use 90-degree bends. The colour palette will be bright and vibrant as opposed to the usual dull colours you would expect from an apocalyptic zombie game. This not only makes this game more unique in its category but also keeps players entertained. The game will have a very simple 'box-like' art style, similar to popular mobile game 'Crossy Road'. This is important because a simple and clean art style that is easy to read is the perfect match for a game that is tied to very strict hardware limitations. The models pictured in the images below are a few assets I have been working on this week to showcase the look and feel of the game.
Email me at alexnorth.dev@gmail.com
