Game Projects
2018 - 2019
These are some game projects I've worked on. I was a Game Programmer in all of them or it was a solo project where I did all the work. I am proud of everything that I've been apart of and hope to continue to grow this list as the years go on.
Enjoy my work and feel free to contact me if you have any questions about me and my work
Pinemelon Ranch
2019
2D Farming Simulation and Tower Defence
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What is Pinemelon Ranch
Pinemelon Ranch is a ranch simulator tower defense game. Gameplay has your character caring for and maintaining the cattle ranch they grew up on. Once the cattle are mature they are sold to the local townspeople.
Activities during the day are peaceful where feeding, cultivating produce and exploring the area is risk-free. However the scene changes at night where monsters spawn in to try and hunt your cattle and overrun your ranch, you must defend your ranch until morning. The cycle continues as you complete your quests to rank up in the game.
I Was The Producer
I was the producer and only game programmer. There was 4 in our team and we managed to create an entire tutorial with all the features that was 20 minutes of gameplay (Finishing quests to unlock all the farming tools).Â
In the game you could hoe the ground, plant seeds, chop trees with an axe, break rocks with a pickaxe, catch bugs, use a sword to kill enemies, place towers, sell items, shear and milk animals, harvest plants, feed animals, and that is almost everything. The game had a lot to create and It was a real challenge for me with the coding. I learnt so much about Unity in this project. My greatest takes were: Object pooling, my own A* algorithm, stats (health, hunger etc), scriptable objects, inventory system, state machines (animals and people), tile mapping, mathF, looting, and others.
Last Thoughts
Overall was a hard project with a great outcome. We had a game testing night where we had 6 computers that had people constantly coming and going playing the game giving us feedback. Our tutor said he couldn’t break the game which was a great success. We only had 8 weeks part time to create the game. I have many ideas on how to improve the game if I ever continued it and I very much enjoyed working with 2D in Unity.
Acolyte
2019
I worked as a programmer on the team Acoltye
What is Acolyte
"Inspired by a love of both storytelling and game design, Acolyte is the major graduate project that represents the development team’s final year in Creative Media Production, a degree run by Massey University. Our goal is to produce a game that can be played by a wide, varied audience, and show off the talent of the next generation of game designers coming into the industry in New Zealand. Within the scope of Acolyte, we want to explore a narrative that discusses life, death, and what comes after, whilst presenting choices and characters that genuinely engage our players within the world we created."
All art and quotes can be found on their itch.io site https://violet-neon.itch.io/project-acolyte
*None of the concept images of Acolyte are create by me
What I Did
I was a programmer for the team Acolyte. I was asked to create a working state machine for the main Acolyte in the game.
I created a blend space with an idle, walk and run animation (did not create the animations only added them in). I had variables that would change depending on the input, that would then change the states in the state machine.
I create stub animations at the beginning to have something to fill out the state machine while the animators were still making the animations.
I created breakable pots for the game and worked on physics materials so when the acolyte walking over a certain area (grass) there is sound of grassy footsteps.
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2019
VR Experience
A short game about bringing colour back into your boring life in the city.
WHO​
This game was created by a team of six individuals, in 6 weeks.
Bailey Kilmartin - Producer
Ebeney Russell (Me) - Programmer and Assistant producer
Angus Ogilvie - 3D modeling
Danielle Johnstone - Researcher and Script Writer
Sage Templeton - Researcher and Script Writer
Tyler Mc Luckie - Sound-effects and Soundtract Manager
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WHAT DID I DO
My job in this project was to create the C# and add the functionality of the game. I had to learn about HTC vive headset and how it worked. I had to work with the vive in Unity, inputting the vive controllers controls many times. I had to code three scenes, some items I had to do was create a working interactive object (coke bottle), working interactive menu that responded by where you were looking, multiple endings, event system and other game making decisions.
I found this project greatly improved my knowledge of VR games and gave me a great appreciation for game programmers. Would work on a VR game again.
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WHAT IS THE GAMEPLAY
Video under has the full gameplay
In this VR game you are out into a black and white city (wellington). All you can do is interact with a coke bottle, where throwing it into different areas (water) will create different sounds. It always re-spawns, so playing around with it (see how far you can throw it) is encouraged. Once you open up the lid of the coke bottle and drink it you are transported to the beach.
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Here It is colourful and warm. You have two options in this scene. You can either throw the coke bottle into the ocean and return back to the city with the city being dull and boring, or you can throw the bottle into the trash can and return back to the city restoring back the colour.
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If you decided to return back to the city, after returning back the colour, then after a short time the city changes into an exact replica of the room that you are playing in (This game was played in 1D08 block 1, Massey wellington). When you decided to take off your headset it feels like you never left the game in the first place.
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WHY
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The idea behind this game is when you are waiting in the city you tend to day dream. You look at the cars and they remind you of car racing, or in this case you look at an old glass coke bottle and it reminds you of the beach.
In the game it's expressing this day dream by transporting you to the beach.
VR Experience DAY DREAMER
Dragoria - Tale of Eva
2018
2D Pixel Art Platformer
This is an independent project, with everything so far being created by myself. It is still in very early stages of development with the idea still being refined.
The game is about Eva, a young Salad Person on the planet Dragoria. Her family have passed onto a different life and now she is left to run the family farm that is falling to the ground.
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The game itself is very time based with when on certain days in the world, event's happen (new part of map is unlock because an earthquake opened up a cave). These events help tell the story of Dragoria and the inhabitants.
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As you progress through the game you unlock more plants to grow and different areas of the planet to explore.
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As of 18/11/2019 this idea hasn't been developed further from the concept images as I am now putting my time into better project ideas. This project was a great starting point for ideas that were to come.
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Farmer's Nightmare
2018
Top Down Horror Game
My brief was simple, I had to create a top down shooter, However that was too little for me so I decided to add a horror narrative to the story
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Invisible Bed
2018
Low Poly Puzzle Adventure
My first ever game I created! something to be proud of as my first unity and C#
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This game sparked my passion, wanting me to create more and more!
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Learnt a lot about my limits when starting this project, but was still one of the most fun!
I created all the models myself using Maya. I had 5-6 weeks to complete this game. Our brief was we were to create a puzzle game individually.
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Gameplay
In this game your goal is to rescue the princess who is trapped in the cage onto of a giant bed.
To get to the princess you have to complete a maze. This maze is mostly vertical and and you can only open the end door when the maze is not-visible. You can practice and take notes when the maze is visible to give yourself a change.
When completing the maze the princess asks you to to search the map for all the key fragments to set her free.
Once finding all the keys and returning to the princess you find out that the cage can never be empty and the princess then locks you in the cage, that is the end of the game.
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The idea is every person that plays the game ends up trapped and then pretends they need to be rescued to fool the next player into taking their place.
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I had fun creating this game and learning all the differently functionalities that Unity has. My favorite part was writing the C# code and watching my game grow.
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