Project Type:  Student

Release Date:  May 2013

Resources:  Website, Facebook Page

Role:  Programmer (Graphics, Audio)

Details:

Evac was my junior game project at DigiPen and what I was working on when I started this website.  When I joined Team Fizz, we were all excited to make something amazing, although what that was changed a few times over the course of the project and caused me to have to discard and rewrite huge portions of the graphics engine as a result.  So, it was fun!

We originally worked on a concept that involved scaling, translating, and rotating objects in the game world both on a micro and macro level.  The macro level added an extensiveness to the game world that had me developing tech for LODs, content streaming, and extensive outdoor shadow mapping, all of which did not get used in the final version of the game.  While the concept seemed very cool, we eventually abandoned the idea because none of us could concretely figure out what the actual game experience would end up being.

We then worked towards a concept that was basically just the micro level of the initial idea, but with a narrative story shoehorned in; this was what The Colony was going to be.  However, no one could agree on exactly what the story would be, who would voice act the characters, or how we would present the exposition during the game.  Playtesting also showed that the mechanics had some promise, but that it was just too slow paced to really draw people in.

Despite all of the changes and all of the “wasted” time on features that never got used, I still had a blast making this game.  I wanted to take my graphics knowledge to the next level and get a good foothold into current rendering technology and I definitely did that here.  While my rendering system needed a fair amount of cleanup and refactoring before it was ready for my next project, it provided a great stepping stone into the next year, which was a new experience for me as the last two years had seen me starting a graphics engine from scratch.