Game Jams

This page contains some of the Game Jams that I have been a part of. During game jams, I prefer to work outside my comfort zone to try and develop new skills. I also work in teams when participating in game jams, however, I plan on doing some solo game jams in the future.

Unexpected 

The Unexpected Game Jam was a group project where we had 72 hours to complete a game that related to the word "Unexpected". We decided to do a third-person shooter set in a church. The player wakes up in a dungeon and fights their way through demons, to discover why they were imprisoned there only to find out they were the true villain all along.

Genre: Third Person Shooter

Engine/Software: Unity, Mixer, Maya

Team Size: 5

Duration:   August 2020 - August 2020

Platform: PC

Role(s) and Responsibilities

Enemy Scripting - I was tasked with scripting the enemy attacks and mechanics. I programmed the arches firing, the teleporting enemies and the melee attacks for the enemies.

Enemy Design -  I decided on and designed what enemy types we would have within the game. I settled on four basic enemy types due to time restraints and conferred with the other designers on the concepts.

Rigging - I was given models by our artists and using Maya I rigged a skeleton for each enemy type and the main character.

Animating - After Rigging the character models I took them into Mixamo and chose animations that would suit the gameplay. I chose to use Mixamo once again due to time constraints and this was my first time properly rigging and animating a character.

Animation Scripting - Once the characters were rigged and animated I took them into unity and used the animator controller as well as simple scripts to have the animations play at the appropriate times.

Better Together

The 'Online Together Jam' was set up by Abertay University in partnership with YMCA Scotland. The goal was to create a 2 player online game that a mentor from the YMCA program could play with a mentee. We decided to make a co-op puzzle game where the players played as robots with different abilities. The player would have to utilise their own abilities along with the other player to solve simple puzzles.

Genre: Third Person Co-op Puzzle Game.

Engine/Software: Unity, Photon

Team Size: 3

Duration:  September 2020 - September 2020

Platform: PC

Role(s) and Responsibilities

Player Design - Working alongside the other designers we discussed the different mechanics the robots would have. We thought simple mechanics would work best as the target audience for the game could potentially be inexperienced players.

Animation Scripting - After my first game jam I felt more confident to once again script the animation for the player character. After I was given the character and animations I was able to use Unity's animation controller and simple scripts to add movement animations for the walking robot.

Network Programming - This Game Jam was the first multiplayer game I had made so I had to learn how to set up a network so players could join and see each other within the game world over the network. I chose to use Photon as it had easy integration into Unity and it was free. I watched a lot of tutorials and was able to get players to set a nickname, search for a lobby and join a lobby so they could see and interact with other players across the network. 

I also had to make sure this was easy to do for someone who might not be technically minded, so the UI was simple and required minimum input from the player to join a lobby and choose which robot they were playing as.

Movement Scripting - I was also tasked with scripting the basic movement of both robots. This was the first time doing this with an online game so was a challenging task to learn, however after doing some research and watching tutorials, I was able to get both of the robot's movements sent across the network.

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