In RAD you control the Efusjonaut, and must absorb eFusjon to neutralize free radicals while avoiding toxins. The Efusjonaut is controlled with the mouse, and can switch between an offensive toxin-eliminating mode and a passive free radical-neutralizing mode.

I came up with the gameplay concept and led the project. A graphic designer came up with the look and feel for the menus and an animator/artist created the main game art and sprites. I incorporated everything into Flash, set up the overarching code structure, and programmed the gameplay and scoring. Other developers worked on the leaderboard score submission, some of the menus, and the instructions. After some testing showed that people were confused about how to play, I came up with and implemented the idea of adding pop-up tutorial messages in-game explaining things.

Links:

• eFusjon Gaming is the official game website, including details about the promotion
• eFusjon RAD is the page where you can play the game. Registration is required because the game is part of a contest.

Let’s Shooting Love is a Geometry-Wars-style arena shooter about a lonely robot looking for a girlfriend. It was created in Multimedia Fusion, which we decided to use since one of the team members (Sebastian Jansiz) was an expert in it and promised even faster prototyping than Flash.

I was responsible for designing and implementing the enemy behaviors. I brainstormed a lot of potentially interesting behaviors and played other arena shooters for inspiration. Then I had to figure out how to implement them in Multimedia Fusion, which I had never used before the Game Jam.

I created both enemies and enemy generators, setting them up so that Sebastian could easily adjust parameters such as speed, hit points, and generation frequency. I made a wide variety of enemies, including ones that travel in V formation, ones that circle-strafe the player while firing shotgun bursts, and ones that break apart into smaller enemies when defeated.

Links:

• Gameplay Video
• Official Website
• Download

The goal of the Real Video Gaming project was to create an interactive Flash prototype of a casino interface for a handheld touchscreen device (the Samsung Q1 UMPC). The intent was to allow casino patrons to continue gambling away from the physical tables.

The prototype presents three games: baccarat, roulette, and a slot machine. In baccarat and roulette, bets can be placed by dragging and dropping chips onto the appropriate locations. After the bets are placed or the slot machine is started, a video plays showing a casino dealer playing out the game. In roulette, the user can use the “Languages” menu to change the dealer to one speaking the appropriate language.

I was lead developer for the project. I researched and wrote specification documents, and created the class framework for the program. I also programmed the bulk of the project, excluding the slot machine and drinks menu.

The prototype can be viewed here.

I functioned mainly as a programmer, implementing most of the user interface. I also composed music for the game and created and placed the sound effects.

Links:

• Project website
• Game download (58 MB ZIP) – requires a graphics card with a 3D accelerator. To play, unzip contents to a folder, and run Endo Patrol\game\runWorld.bat

Music:

These are the files used in the game, so they’re set up to loop.

• Chemical Gradient
• Hydrology
• Inflammation

The goal was to make an online version of the game show with new songs available every week. In addition, the game would allow players to upload videos of themselves performing the songs featured for that week. The video upload functionality was provided by Brightcove.

I was responsible for the overall structure of the code, as well as implementing the initial framework and several of the sections. This included the main game interaction of listening to the song and inputting the answer.

Play the game

Play The Admirer’s Secret (Be patient–the SWF file is 7.5 MB, and there’s no pre-loader since it was meant to be played locally)

The structure of the piece is basically a choose-your-own-adventure. Players choose which of the five suspects to visit, and after visiting them all, the culprit is revealed. There are five endings.

Implementation Notes

Streaming

This was my first experience with streaming media in Flash. There’s a lot of audio and video in the project, and I didn’t want to have to wait to load all of it at the start, so streaming was the obvious solution. It does make it a little more difficult to move the files to different directories, since the directory the SWF file is called from has to be the same as the one all of the media files are in.

Templates

Since the structure for each of the suspect visits is the same, I decided to create a single template with slots for suspect portrait, description, audio, and transcript. I used a naming convention and the eval() function to pull the correct files and movie clips in when requested.

Ending Mechanic

The ending a player receives is determined by which suspect the player visits first. Since the ending is revealed only after all suspects have been visited (with one exception), most people have forgotten who they visited first and the identity of the culprit comes as a surprise. On the other hand, it means that anyone trying to systematically get different endings by varying the order of visits will take a long time to see them all.

The goal of the project was to design and create two variants of a game in order to test gender preferences. We decided to look at the violence/destruction vs. gathering/nurturing split. We created a space shooter with two modes. One mode is a typical space shooter. In the other mode, you gather ore and dodge asteroids.

I was responsible for the graphics, music, and final game balance.