Torn

History of Torn

In 2010, my final big assessment from University was to make a game in two Trimesters, including Holidays in small team of 12 others. Torn was the result. The first Trimester involved investigating how UDK Worked, and nutting out what sort of a game we'd make. One of our original ideas involved Time Grease, but we realised that we had no Programmers on our team, so this was scrapped as we continued searching for ideas. We eventually settled on a 2.5D Platform Game with puzzle elements.

We then proceeded to blunder into Trimester 2, after getting our core idea and aesthetic sorted out, we released a Beta presentation to a less than thrilled audience and we were forced to do some drastic rethinking under immense pressure. We then had one of those moments where a team of misfits gets inspired and becomes awesome. In six weeks, we made Torn with everything we'd learned and experienced, trimming a lot of things out and rethinking our entire tack - notably, we removed most of the puzzle elements.

When we made the final presentation, we were delighted to hear that we'd done an excellent job, and kept remarkably disciplined under pressure.

My Role in Torn

I was initially responsible for systems investigation, seeing what UDK could and couldn't do with our limited knowledge, and helping the Tech Team with testing and tutorial writing for the other team members. (Example, a document for how the Animators go about adding animations to a model within UDK).

At the start of the Second Trimester, my role had shifted into Level design, and while we were still working on puzzles, I was responsible for testing them in a grey-box scenario. However, once puzzles were hurled out the window, I was asked to create the Boss Level, and create the Kismet and Matinee sequences that keep it controlled. I affectionately referred to the Kismet as 'the spaghetti monster'.

When the level was finished in the final weeks, I was then assigned to bug testing the levels and flagging what needed correction where as a Level tester. The amount of bugs squished between us all would fill this page ten times over.

Where do I play this?

Download our Release Candidate for Free on: www.tornthegame.com