Mage Rage (Game) – University Assignment

November 4, 2013October 13, 2014tylahheil Leave a comment

Over the past 15 weeks I have been working along with three others on our final Game Project for our Degree. Throughout this Project I have worked on Level Art, Gameplay and Technical Programming, Audio Mixing, and recorded various dialogue for different characters.

Mage Rage is a First Person Puzzle Platformer set in a world of magic and mystery, where not even the fourth wall can protect you from the alcohol infused shenanigans of the College of Sandy-Crack and its intoxicated inhabitants.

A Gameplay Trailer and Screenshots can be found on the Team Stallion Facebook Page.

Mage Rage is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it can be downloaded from here.

Awards:

I was also nominated, and won the award for ‘Most Outstanding Gameplay Achievement’ for our Year Group at an awards ceremony held after our Demo Evening on the 25th of November 2013.

Additional Credits:

Ashleigh Barrett (Portfolio Link TBA)

Nathan Jensen (Portfolio Link TBA)

Tim Horvat (Portfolio Link)

Dragonspawn (Game) – University Assignment

July 31, 2013January 18, 2021tylahheil Leave a comment

Dragonspawn_Banner

Dragonspawn is a small game project that I created for my final Advanced Game Development Assignment at Griffith University during my second year.

Dragonspawn is a lighthearted parody on many modern games, and contains a fair bit of of crude humour, it should not be taken seriously and isn’t recommend for the faint of heart or serious of temperament.

Though largely inspired by the game Berserker Quest VI: Curse of the Onyx Medallion (http://armitagegames.com/), Dragonspawn borrows many technical design choices from the Borderlands, Call of Duty, Bioshock, Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls franchises without directly trying to replicate any of those titles (except maybe in the area of the HUD). Early on the game just involved walking around shooting at a dragon that would fly through a large room breathing fire. As the game evolved through the production cycle many highly unnecessary game mechanics were violently cobbled on to ‘make it better’ (that was a joke).

This project was originally created for a University Assignment and all of the associated assets were created by one individual in an 8 week period.

Download Dragonspawn Here!

Created by Tylah Heil (http://www.tylahheil.com/).
Music by Kevin MacLeod (http://www.incompetech.com/).

Shattering Floor Tiles (Game Mechanic) – University Assignment

July 21, 2013tylahheil Leave a comment

A recent exploration of game mechanics for a University project, a series of tiles that crack when the player walks onto them and shatter into fragments once the player steps of them.

Dragon – University Assignment

April 19, 2013April 19, 2013tylahheil Leave a comment

This Dragon was modelled for an assignment as a joke, I was working on a simple interactions demo in which I’d implemented the Crossbow and a simple archery target. One of my colleagues at Uni jokingly told me that it needed more Dragons, I felt up to the challenge, so that same evening I began modelling the head of the Dragon based off a terrible sketch I drew on the hour long train ride home.

Within 3 days I had the full Dragon modelled and Textured and complete with a simple skeletal rig. By the next class (the following week) I had the Dragon traversing a simple path breathing fire every 7.5 seconds.

This Dragon was modelled in Maya 2012, and textured in Photoshop CS5.

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Additional Images:

Nuclear Bug Stomper (Game) – University Assignment

April 18, 2013April 20, 2013tylahheil Leave a comment

Nuclear Bug Stomper is a simple side scroller/platformer built in Flash using source code for what was a basic Super Mario Bros clone supplied to my class by our lecturer. The prototype for the game, including code and art was created by me using the aforementioned source code, however, for the final assignment we had to work in pairs of two and take one of our concepts (which ended up being mine) to the next level.

At that stage I was responsible for the Programming side of things, I had already prototyped a lot of the game mechanics which included the addition of the shooting mechanic, however collisions for projectiles didn’t work in the earlier build, so that was really the major element that I had to fix along with the construction of a simple reactive AI which had several elements of customisation (including: maximum health, passive/aggressive reactiveness, and patrol waypoints).

My partner for the assignment, Beth Thomas, was responsible for creating and adding additional art to the game while maintaing the already established Art style. She managed to create enough graphics to build a second level, and was responsible for the artwork of the entire second level, and the elevator at the end of the first level.

The source code for this assignment wasn’t without it’s bugs (though minor ones), one of which caused the player character to be launched across the screen at high velocities as though it were a bullet, thus breaking the game. I did however manage to isolate and amend the issue before we submitted our final build.

Nuclear Bug Stomper can be played here.

Programming by Tylah Heil.
Artwork by Beth Thomas & Tylah Heil.
Music by Kevin MacLeod (http://www.incompetech.com/).

Crossbow – University Assignment

April 16, 2013April 19, 2013tylahheil Leave a comment

During the end half of the second semester of 2012 everyone in my class group was tasked with creating playable games of some description. I had created numerous art assets for other projects during the first half of the semester among those was a crossbow.

Without the bolts the crossbow alone came in at 2250 polygon tris which was the original target budget I’d set myself at the beginning. As the project grew in scope, and the crossbow’s purpose was slightly abstracted I knew I’d have to model a lower polygon version, or at least reduce the polygon count of the existing one.

The lower polygon version was only 1000 polygon tris including one bolt (888 with no bolt), it was created using the original crossbow as a template, removing polygons in a way as not to impact greatly on the UV mapping of the model. In the end parts of the UV map were redone and laid out differently which required me to create a new diffuse map (though a lot of texture elements were pulled from the original diffuse map and recycled).

Sword and Crate – University Assignment

April 15, 2013April 19, 2013tylahheil Leave a comment

Early in 2012 I was tasked with modelling two assets from a pool of various concept art.

The models I chose were a rugged looking sword and a large wooden shipping crate, both had a polygon budget of around 1500 tris, and required diffuse maps to be created to match the art style of the concept art, consequently I never bothered to create a specular, or normal map as they were not part of the assignment criteria.

This crate was modelled in Maya 2012, and textured in Photoshop CS5.

This sword was modelled in Maya 2012, and textured in Photoshop CS5.

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Additional Images:

VF-1 Valkyrie – University Assignment

April 8, 2013April 19, 2013tylahheil 1 Comment

A VF-1 Valkyrie from Macross/Robotech that I was tasked with modelling for a CGI Modelling course at University in 2012. The model contains around 13600 tris which falls short of the allocated 15000 tris. Given more time I would have fleshed out the cockpit section a lot more and improved the under section of the body of the craft.

This was my first time modelling an aircraft based on concept art, I’ve learned a lot since modelling this and if I had my time on it over again, I can think of many things I’d have done differently.