When testing Rancor mode for hours at a time, sometimes you miss being able to press a button.
Title: Principal Effects Artist / System Designer
Some of my first
memories as a child was watching the original Star Wars in the theater.
Even though the game took the route of the more recent canon, this made it no
less of a treat to work on it. I was a designer developing the core of what turned into Rancor mode and Pod Race mode. I also was one of the main combat designers on the Jedi mode. Whatever mode I was on, I would often try to put myself into the mindset of my nephew who was my age when I was head over heels in love with Star Wars.
Due to the Kinect, this title had a lot of experimenting and prototyping. From the tech to make the Rancor buildings, to shaders for the artists to use on the landscape. Everything had to be documented and standardized to make them easy to use for both in-house artist and the outsources. |
Star Wars Kinect
Company: Terminal Reality
I did a mountain of work on this game, but it was all made worth it when Craig, our producer from Lucas Arts,said we had the best in game Light Saber to date.
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Design
Rancor Building
Designed a cost effective system for
the extensive building breaking in Rancor mode. I worked with a
programmer in its implementation, stress tested it, then documented and
cross-trained art, design, and outsourcing in the creation and implementation
of these assets.
Check my Demo Reel to see it in action!
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Pod Race Track Events
The Sarlacc pit severed as a
template for all track events. I am rather proud of how fast it was tested and implemented.
By taking art into consideration, and giving the pit a lip, we didn't have to worry about the connection points of
the tentacles by wrapping them over it.
This solved a lot of quality issues by not having things line up. |
Light Saber and Force Powers
I originally made a “design your own saber” mini
game, which caused me to make all the sabers out of parts. There are
proportions to a light saber: a head, body, and base. Even though it didn't
make it to the final game, the one material and all the pieces I created
allowed for an easy mass production of custom Light Sabers as needed.
I was responsible the design of the force powers as well. Designing for Kinect added an extra level to everything we did because we had to design a way for
the the player to intuitively perform the motion for every action since we didn't have any buttons.
This is the design doc for force push. |
Star Destroyer
This Star Destroyer was an entire
level unto itself. The player had to fly around and through it in an effort to
destroy key weak spots. Naturally it had to stand up being seen close up as
well as being far away.
I intended players to race down the side trenches of the Star Destroyer at top speed. Not only would this give the level a good sense of speed, but also harkened back to the Death Star Trench run.
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Rancor Mode
I was part of a team that created the Rancor mode. The whole idea for the game mode came from the idea of playing "Godzilla" and stomping on sand castles at the beach.
This was a design doc for a boss fight idea I had. Pod Racer Power Ups
When designing the power ups for pod race I wanted a weapon that tracked an opponent at close range. It also needed to be an independent structure from the racer. The iconic trainer droid worked well and was also used in the Jedi tutorial level.
When wanting to work in more Star Wars elements, I focused in on the Buzz Droid as a perfect sabotage power up. It would zero in on the player in front of the racer and start doing damage till it was shaken off.
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Droid Weapons
Doing most effects in Terminal Reality games
I have worked on, often leads me to make the weapons for them as well. When
designing the droid sniper rifle, I made it as large as the droid, so the player
could read its silhouette far away. It is a large slow moving beam weapon allowing the player to see the location of their attacker as well as easily get out of the way.
Sentinel Class Shuttle
When designing this vehicle I made it so it could be used in game to spawn in troops. I even created a variant for large vehicles so it could fly in an AT-ATs or 2 AT-STs.
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