Semester 2: The Pre-Thesis Introduction

Right now in our Projects 2 class we're working on prototyping some games that were pitched (7 were chosen).  After this month long prototyping is done, 2 games will be selected for full development for our thesis project!

I'm working on the prototype for a game called "Nanograte."  The idea of the game is to use your Command Nanobot to collect nanobots together into a swarm; once a swarm is aggregated, the player attacks the enemy swarm in an attempt to destroy the opponent's Command Nanobot. 

The original designer wanted to simulate murmuration within the swarm:


Some other suggestions the group came up with are to make it a 2.5D view (similar to most real time strategy games where the camera has a tilted view down onto a plane), swarm formations, and allowing customizable formation shapes (rather than have a list of available formations).

Now for the good stuff (the technical details):
We're using the Unity3D engine for developing the prototype.  Our target system is the iOS and/or Android.  The nice thing about Unity is that it has a lot of functionality that we don't have to create (best thing for a prototype!) so we can focus on the two most important aspects/features of the game: murmuration and formations.

I'm really excited about this game! It should be really fun and have really great effects, if we can pull of the programming.  Unfortunately I don't have much experience with Unity, so some time and energy will be spent on learning the engine well enough to manipulate it.  More details such as problems, achievements, and updates will be posted as they come up!  Any comments, questions, and/or suggestions are welcome, just leave a comment.

Go to the official blog for Nanograte for more details: Nanograte Game Development

Welcome To My GameDev Blog!

In case you were wondering, this is a blog about game development (gamedev), which is a field I have been interested in for a long time and it will serve a couple of purposes.  The first is to keep track of what I'm doing throughout grad school (and probably even after I finish with school).  Another reason is to be able to relay things I find interesting during my personal "research" or in class.

I'm currently attending grad school at the University of Utah in the Entertainment Arts & Engineering: Master Games Studio (EAE:MGS) program on the Game Engineering track.  That means I'm going to grad school to acquire skills for programming video games.  School started last Monday (August 22nd) and we're working on a couple of projects for a couple of classes.

In my Projects 1 class, we're working on a rapid prototype (a way to find the fun quickly) dealing with a serious topic and using Power Game Factory (a program on the Mac OS that is used to make sidescrolling platform games).  My group has decided to prototype a game geared towards children in elementary school that teaches them the importance of washing their hands to prevent the spread of germs and sickness.

In my Engineering 1 class, we're programming a game (and the engine for it) called Monster Chase, a 2D game with the player and monsters chasing each other around a board.  The gameplay mechanics are up to us, but the important part of this project is to help us figure out how to sort out components of games into their proper categories (is this part of the game or part of the engine?).  The project will be written in C++, a popular programming language in the software industry as a whole.

I'm excited to see how these projects turn out and to develop new skills in the field!