Saucer

Saucer is an endless 2D bullet hell. It was developed using the P5.js language, exclusively for web on PC. It is complete with menus and a lose condition, and has 4 different difficulties, including a hidden difficulty.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#, built and tested for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. My role included implementing all menus, including a pause and settings menu, programming audio, and general bug-fixing. There is full controller support.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript, built and tested for web, and Windows and Linux systems. My role included implementing the shop menus, inventory, scene transitions, pickups, and the base for upgrades. I was also involved in prototyping the magnet with another programmer who would do the final implementation of it. There is full controller support.

Tanks

Tanks is a top-down 3D PvE tank shooter. It was developed in Unity using C# for GPE205. It is complete with pause, settings, and main menus, audio, and lose and win conditions.

Mazes

Mazes is a third person stealth maze game. It was developed in Unreal Engine using C++ and Blueprints for GPE230. It is complete with pause, settings, and main menus, audio, particles, and lose and win conditions. It also has several levels and pickups.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#, built and tested for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. My role included implementing all menus, including a pause and settings menu, programming audio, and general bug-fixing. There is full controller support.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript, built and tested for web, and Windows and Linux systems. My role included implementing the shop menus, inventory, scene transitions, pickups, and the base for upgrades. I was also involved in prototyping the magnet with another programmer who would do the final implementation of it. There is full controller support.

Buzz Off Beezwax!

Buzz Off Beezwax! is a game of chicken where you collect honey and run from bees; with two game modes originally developed as separate titles. It was developed in Unity using C#. It is complete with pause, settings, and main menus, audio, and multiple win and lose conditions.

Tanks

Tanks is a top-down 3D PvE tank shooter. It was developed in Unity using C# for GPE205. It is complete with pause, settings, and main menus, audio, and lose and win conditions.

Mazes

Mazes is a third person stealth maze game. It was developed in Unreal Engine using C++ and Blueprints for GPE230. It is complete with pause, settings, and main menus, audio, particles, and lose and win conditions. It also has several levels and pickups.

Firefighter Thingy

Firefighter Thingy is a twin-stick firefighting game where you put out fires throughout an apartment building with a hose. It was developed in Unity with C#.

My role included providing the foundation for another programmer to write procedural generation, teaching yet another programmer how to do object pooling for the water. I wrote the audio system, including the ability for dynamic fire volume based on the distance to the nearest fire, as well as a finite state machine for game-state management, procedural generation for fire, the player using the pawn-controller pattern, and generally debugged a lot of everything.

Desiree's Lab - Deltarune Level

Desiree's Lab is a Deltarune level built using the Kristal engine, which itself is built on top of the LÖVE2D engine, which uses Lua. I found it a huge pain to write bullet patterns featuring common… well, patterns, so I wrote a couple classes that extend Bullet that I would eventually package as a library for Kristal. It implements bullets that can shoot bullets, including in sine-wave patterns, as well as bullets that are actually a generated circle of bullets that move like a single bullet and can optionally face inwards.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#. My role included implementing the title-sequence using coroutines and lerp, the credits using coroutines, a timer for an object spawner, a singleton for the game and audio managers, and linear volume changing.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript. My role included implementing the shop, which uses events for purchasing items that UI and inventory functions listen for following the Observer pattern. I also implemented singleton managers to track pickups and player upgrades, which themselves are resource files.

Tanks

Tanks is a top-down 3D PvE tank shooter. It was developed in Unity using C# for GPE205. It uses object pooling for projectiles, a finite state machine for game-state management, singletons for game and pickup managers, the pawn-controller pattern for the player, procedural generation over a 2D matrix for a random level, uses distance formula to calculate hearing of NoiseMakers, and queues deletion of powerups over a timer.

Mazes

Mazes is a third person stealth maze game. It was developed in Unreal Engine using C++ and Blueprints for GPE230. It notably implements a health component that works with an IKillable interface and spheretrace at the location of the fist socket on a punching animation for hit-detection.

Desiree's Lab - Deltarune Level

Desiree's Lab is a Deltarune level built using the Kristal engine, which itself is built on top of the LÖVE2D engine, which uses Lua. I found it a huge pain to write bullet patterns featuring common… well, patterns, so I wrote a couple classes that extend Bullet that I would eventually package as a library for Kristal. It implements bullets that can shoot bullets, including in sine-wave patterns, as well as bullets that are actually a generated circle of bullets that move like a single bullet and can optionally face inwards. When designing the feature implementation, I knew it should be easy to do as much as possible when scripting bullet-patterns, using as little as possible. Additionally, since it's a bullet-hell, it should be efficient. For example; circles of bullets move as one, utilizing parentage to the center point and a list to keep track of which bullets are in the circle, preventing the need to manually calculate on a pivot for each bullet when rotating or adjusting the circle. All features were tested as test bullet-patterns in a test scene built to allow swapping bullet-patterns to be tested in and out with ease.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript. My role included implementing the shop, which uses events for purchasing items that UI and inventory functions listen for following the Observer pattern. I also implemented singleton managers to track pickups and player upgrades, which themselves are resource files. Since this was a game jam game, features needed to be implemented quick, and since there was no tutorial, it needed to be as intuitive as possible. Since Godot's Hbox Control auto-aligns its children when they're removed, the shop implementation instead hides children, makes them un-interactible, and highlights a 'pedestal' so the player understands where their cursor is when an upgrade isn't in stock. The features were tested directly in the scene, with keyboard and controller, taking scene transitions into account separately.

Project Wardog

Project Wardog is a serious management game where you buy and sell to two sides of the same war, trying to keep it going as long as possible in order to turn a profit. It started very early development in Unity using C#, and was later moved to Ren'Py using the Ren'Py language and Python. When moved to Ren'Py, I implemented loading screens, the faction system, and the groundwork for the purchase phase and moving between the 3 main phases.

Saucer

Saucer is an endless 2D bullet hell. It was developed using the P5.js language, exclusively for web on PC. It was developed via openprocessing.org in a college computer lab. While simple, it implements it's own collision detection for the player, enemies, and the menu buttons, as well as uses some basic trigonometry to set the velocities of newly-spawned enemies. The player can accelerate and decelerate, and there's a basic state machine for managing game-state.

Tanks

Tanks is a top-down 3D PvE tank shooter. It was developed in Unity using C# for GPE205. It uses object pooling for projectiles, a finite state machine for game-state management, singletons for game and pickup managers, the pawn-controller pattern for the player, procedural generation over a 2D matrix for a random level, uses distance formula to calculate hearing of noisemakers, and queues deletion of powerups over a timer.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript. My role included implementing the shop, which uses events for purchasing items that UI and inventory functions listen for following the Observer pattern. I also implemented singleton managers to track pickups and player upgrades, which themselves are resource files.

Mazes

Mazes is a third person stealth maze game. It was developed in Unreal Engine using C++ and Blueprints for GPE230. It notably implements a health component that works with an IKillable interface and spheretrace at the location of the fist socket on a punching animation for hit-detection.

Desiree's Lab - Deltarune Level

Desiree's Lab is a Deltarune level built using the Kristal engine, which itself is built on top of the LÖVE2D engine, which uses Lua. I found it a huge pain to write bullet patterns featuring common… well, patterns, so I wrote a couple classes that extend Bullet that I would eventually package as a library for Kristal. It implements bullets that can shoot bullets, including in sine-wave patterns, as well as bullets that are actually a generated circle of bullets that move like a single bullet and can optionally face inwards.

Project Wardog

Project Wardog is a serious management game where you buy and sell to two sides of the same war, trying to keep it going as long as possible in order to turn a profit. I led the team first as Project Lead and Lead Designer, before eventually relinquishing Lead Designer to become Lead Programmer myself. I also acted in-place of missing leads; notably for the art team. To this day (March 13th, 2024), I still act as a regular mentor for several former members of this team.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#. Aside from brainstorming and UX Design, I was mostly a programmer here, where the other programmer and I communicated when we were touching certain files to avoid any merge conflicts, particularly with prefabs and scenes. On the final day of the jam, we were just implementing finishing touches and trading the controller as a team, making adjustments to various parameters as necessary, resulting in a very polished jam project.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript. The game features a controllable magnet on a rope as its main mechanic. Brainstorming happened over a virtual whiteboard, before moving to attempting several different prototypes for both the rope and the magnet. For the first full day of the jam, it was me and another programmer prototyping the magnet and rope respectively, with the other guy eventually joining me on the magnet when we thought the rope was good. For days two and three, I split off to program the other important unimplemented pieces of the game to ensure we had something while he continued to build off the ideas from our prototypes and make tweaks based on mine and another designer's testing and vice versa.

Saucer

Saucer is an endless 2D bullet hell. It was developed using the P5js language, exclusively for web on PC. It is complete with menus and a lose condition, and has 4 different difficulties, including a hidden difficulty. I started with prototyping movement methods, before eventually creating a vertical slice using the method I decided upon. From there, I started polishing the rougher parts, and added two difficulties, while getting playtesting from friends during lunch period. Emergent fierce lunch-time competition would encourage me to add a secret “Hell” difficulty mode later, along with bug-fixes.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript, built and tested for web, and Windows and Linux systems. My role included implementing the shop menus, inventory, scene transitions, pickups, and the base for upgrades. There is full controller support. We initially met over a Discord call and digital whiteboard to brainstorm and plan, moving to Trello once we had something solidified to then use Kanban for the rest of the jam.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#, built and tested for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. My role included implementing all menus, including a pause and settings menu, programming audio, and bug-fixing the main game. There is full controller support. We initially met in a computer lab with a large whiteboard to brainstorm and plan our production workflow, setting up a repository and Trello as we solidified a backlog.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#, using Git for version control. My role included implementing the title-sequence using coroutines and lerp, the credits using coroutines, a timer for an object spawner, a singleton for the game and audio managers, and linear volume changing.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript, built and tested for web, and Windows and Linux systems. My role included implementing the shop menus, inventory, scene transitions, pickups, and the base for upgrades. There is full controller support. We initially met over a Discord call and digital whiteboard to brainstorm and plan, moving to Trello once we had something solidified to then use Kanban for the rest of the jam.

Project Wardog

Project Wardog is a serious management game where you buy and sell to two sides of the same war, trying to keep it going as long as possible in order to turn a profit. It started very early development in Unity using C#, and was later moved to Ren'Py using the Ren'Py language and Python. When moved to Ren'Py, I implemented loading screens, the faction system, and the groundwork for the purchase phase and moving between the 3 main phases. We used a mixture of Scrumban and Waterfall methodologies, along with Google Docs for documentation and Google Drive for sharing files.

Phantasmagoria '42

Phantasmagoria '42 is a phantasmagorical shmup, where with each 5 enemies downed, a new thought appears from a pool of over 100 possible thoughts, often alluding to the true nature of what is going on. Before the jam; I sought out a particular programmer I knew would let me focus solely on art so that I could do a jam as a solo-artist, which is what I did here using Aseprite.

Etiam

Etiam is a space shmup developed using Lua in LÖVE2D, though I was a solo-artist here and had no part in the programming. Over the course of a couple months; I would develop hundreds of sprites and animations, many of which would go unimplemented. I started with the Piskel web-app, before eventually moving to Aseprite.

Desiree's Lab - Deltarune Level

Desiree's Lab is a Deltarune fan-level built using the Kristal engine, which itself is built on top of the LÖVE2D engine, which uses Lua. I found it a huge pain to write bullet patterns featuring common… well, patterns, so I wrote a couple classes that extend Bullet that I would eventually package as a library for Kristal. It implements bullets that can shoot bullets, including in sine-wave patterns, as well as bullets that are actually a generated circle of bullets that move like a single bullet and can optionally face inwards. Additionally; I worked with LÖVE2D's GLSL-like shader language to create several shaders to create interesting backgrounds and a blizzard effect.

Mazes

Mazes is a third person stealth maze game. It was developed in Unreal Engine using C++ and Blueprints for GPE230. It notably implements a health component that works with an IKillable interface and spheretrace at the location of the fist socket on a punching animation for hit-detection.

Project Wardog

Project Wardog is a serious management game where you buy and sell to two sides of the same war, trying to keep it going as long as possible in order to turn a profit. The serious goal of the project was to create an anti-war game where all proceeds would go to charity to support humanitarian efforts for Ukraine in their war with Russia. It was imperative that no character offend anyone around the globe, despite the necessity that ill-mannered and ill-intentioned characters would need to exist given the subject matter, and so research was done to diversify characters as much as possible, and outsiders from a variety of backgrounds were brought in to read over dialogue and give feedback on assets as soon as we were able. Additionally; I personally did lots of marketing and market research, and strongly pushed the use of a variety of compositional techniques to achieve our targeted emotions.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#. Aside from brainstorming and UX Design, I was mostly a programmer here, where the other programmer and I communicated when we were touching certain files to avoid Unity merge conflicts in Git. On the final day of the jam, we were just implementing finishing touches and trading the controller as a team, making adjustments to various parameters as necessary, resulting in a very polished jam project.

Super Meat Boy Level Collection

My Super Meat Boy Level Collection is a collection of 4 levels, spanning the first 4/6 worlds of Super Meat Boy. The process of creating each level consisted of a run-through of the target world to give myself an idea of how difficult the level should be for me to complete, followed by a run-through for mass-screenshots and analysis. Since the ideas in the set design and each mechanic is used in tend to repeat or otherwise be simple chains of other ideas, I take note of what stands out to me during this run as well. My next step was to actually block out the level, based loosely on sketches of chains of the aforementioned level design idea notes, but also with the context of jump distance, speed, and pacing, as well as making sure multiple paths existed, including a more difficult path for acquiring a collectible bandage. Once everything felt right regarding pacing, I would go through and start plotting out the set design, being careful to stay within object-count limits and use the limited layers to their fullest capacity.

VVRequited - VVVVVV Level

VVRequited is a level made for VVVVVV that effectively has 4 stages within it, totaling at 55 unique rooms and around a dozen cutscenes. Thematically; the level was to tie up loose ends left by the main game in regards to a mutual unrequited love between two crew-members, who ask their captain for romantic advice at separate points during the main game. My process involved playing through part of the game while taking screenshots at inspirational points, similar to what I did for the Super Meat Boy Level Collection. The biggest difference is that I had to take into account differing lengths of stages compared to the main game, and that my “overworld” was only 3 rooms so I could focus my time on the platforming challenges of each stage.

Desiree's Lab - Deltarune Level

Desiree's Lab is a Deltarune level focusing on a custom secret boss. I developed this alongside a friend as they were doing their own Deltarune level, so we could exchange information and both accomplish more with the time we had. I focused mostly on the boss fight itself, but also made sure the ambiance building up to the fight felt right. I dove into writing shader-code in LÖVE2D's GLSL-like shader-language as a way to make whacky backgrounds that hint towards the phases of the fight, each of which has different affects on boss and player stats as the flashy secret boss gimmick that Deltarune secret bosses have. The backgrounds themselves were Earthbound-inspired, taking from Deltarune's own inspiration, and since it was meant to be difficult, I additionally decided to lean into Deltarune's Touhou inspiration for bullet-pattern inspiration.

What Makes A Good Game?

What Makes A Good Game? is a short, general analysis of the medium that makes a statement on three core pieces that every game needs, and uses many examples spanning several genres to make each point. The three core pieces can be summed up as; interesting and consistent art, a fun core concept, and good feedback. An example of elaboration for “interesting and consistent art” could be how the simple geometric shapes from Thomas Was Alone, the stylistic choices of any Nintendo game, or how the beautifully composed Metal Gear Solid series supports their gameplay, narrative, and everything else about what each respective game's identity is.

Rethinking Death

Rethinking Death is a short write-up on removing death from three games from different genres. Specifically; rhythm game, Muse Dash, the shmup, Freedom Finger, and the turn-based JRPG, Persona 5. As an example, the basic idea behind rethinking death in Freedom Finger involves implementing immortality, but a damageable ship that slowly removes fingers, along with abilities such as the ability to grab or punch. This means less opportunity for points and more opportunity for failing the mission in other ways, but also more opportunity for practicing and listening to the music (it has rhythm game elements) and not having to redo several-minute auto-scrollers in a rather difficult, but otherwise interesting, narrative game.

Analysis: Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - City Escape

A 2-page analysis of the first level of largely linear 3D platformer adventure game, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, City Escape. It largely goes into how the level teaches the player what they can do, starting with the assumption that they don't even know how to move. It also goes into how the level leads the player along and presents options and objectives throughout the level, and how it provides feedback to the player.

Project Wardog

Project Wardog is a serious management game where you buy and sell to two sides of the same war, trying to keep it going as long as possible in order to turn a profit. I led the team first as Team Lead / Lead Design, before eventually relinquishing Lead Designer to become Lead Programmer myself. I also acted in-place of missing leads; notably for the art team. To this day (March 13th, 2024), I still act as a mentor for former members of this team, and am advising on one of their current Production Studio projects. Additionally; I wrote the initial Game Design Document, and as Team Lead created and encouraged the use of dedicated feedback channels for each discipline, giving transparency to the whole team on how things were going in each disciplinary team, as well as the ability for others across the team to give feedback of their own.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript, built and tested for web, and Windows and Linux systems. My role included implementing the shop menus, inventory, scene transitions, pickups, and the base for upgrades. Additionally; as a programmer and designer I would become a central point of communication when artists split off to do their work and come back to check in or ask about deliverable requirements for implementation that may have been missed on our Trello. We initially met over a Discord call and digital whiteboard to brainstorm and plan, moving to Trello once we had something solidified to then use Kanban for the rest of the jam.

Firefighter Thingy

Firefighter Thingy is a twin-stick firefighting game where you put out fires throughout an apartment building with a hose. It was developed in Unity with C#. My role included providing the foundation for another programmer to write procedural generation, including how it needed to function to be passed off to designers to create rooms, and teaching yet another programmer how to do object pooling for the water, including a description of how said water should appear and interact with the environment.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#. Aside from brainstorming and UX Design, where I pitched the idea of utilizing arcade graphics as a way to “deceive” the player, slowly guiding them to an understanding of where they are, while also guiding them to false interpretations along the way (Unknown → Space→ Underwater → Deep Sea → Snow Globe). I was mostly a programmer here, where the other programmer and I communicated when we were touching certain files to avoid Unity merge conflicts in Git. On the final day of the jam, we were just implementing finishing touches and trading the controller as a team, making adjustments to various parameters as necessary, resulting in a very polished jam project.

Project Wardog

Project Wardog is a serious management game where you buy and sell to two sides of the same war, trying to keep it going as long as possible in order to turn a profit. I led the team first as Project Lead and Lead Designer, before eventually relinquishing Lead Designer to become Lead Programmer myself. I also acted in-place of missing leads; notably for the art team. To this day (March 13th, 2024), I still act as a regular mentor for several former members of this team.

World view

World view is a 2D twin-stick shmup with 5 levels, where the final level is endless. It was developed in Unity with C#. Aside from brainstorming and UX Design, I was mostly a programmer here, where the other programmer and I communicated when we were touching certain files to avoid any merge conflicts, particularly with prefabs and scenes. On the final day of the jam, we were just implementing finishing touches and trading the controller as a team, making adjustments to various parameters as necessary, resulting in a very polished jam project.

Magna Fisher

Magna Fisher is a 2D magnet fishing adventure game. It was developed in Godot using GDScript. The game features a controllable magnet on a rope as its main mechanic. Brainstorming happened over a virtual whiteboard, before moving to attempting several different prototypes for both the rope and the magnet. For the first full day of the jam, it was me and another programmer prototyping the magnet and rope respectively, with the other guy eventually joining me on the magnet when we thought the rope was good. For days two and three, I split off to program the other important unimplemented pieces of the game to ensure we had something while he continued to build off the ideas from our prototypes and make tweaks based on mine and another designer's testing and vice versa.