About

Janitor Squad Studios is four guys with different skill sets who are working together to create cool games as part of the spring 2010 version of CSCE 489 (Game Development), taught by Dr. Scott Schaefer and Dr. Vinod Srinivasan.

Janitor Squad formed with an emphasis on bringing team diversity and creativity to the fore. The first assignment of the semester was to develop a 2D game project (you can find out more about it by checking out the links on the left), which helped the team gel and find their feet in the game development process. All teams had roughly three weeks to conceive, develop and polish their first game. Being thrown into the development process gave each team a crash course in deadlines, project presentations, and new tools (for most groups, this meant their first time with Microsoft XNA Game Studio and C#).

After creating a surprisingly re-playable and challenging game with Dino Escape, we decided to take things to the next level with the second game project. While the first assignment was restricted to two dimensions, the second project opened things up to 3D and Janitor Squad decided to take advantage of the talent we had available in the group and push for a 3D game. This brought a whole host of technical challenges that made it much harder to get the development ball rolling. However, thanks to our newly-gained experience (and many hours in the lab), Janitor Squad has successfully overcome some of the big technical hurdles that previous groups were unable to pass, such as in-game skeletal animation, dynamic lighting, and real-time environment mapping.

We're currently working hard to put the final touches on our tentatively-titled second game, Cave of Shadows, and we think that when it's completed it will be a fun, exciting, moody experience that will immerse players with its 3D environment, first-person gameplay, and creative sound design.