Character Design – P. Extreme!

P. Extreme started off like any other pile of dough ready to be moulded into just another pile of bread but before that could happen, cosmic lighting struck the dough ball! This made the once lifeless dough into the mighty (but tiny) super hero called P. Extreme! He’s taken on the role to fight off evil Mad Baker Baxter and his evil doers from the small beach side town of Dough Vile who threatens to take over the town with his evil confections!

Author Notes: P. Extreme’s idea originally came to me while going to the men’s room and looking at the men’s sign. It was a small idea at the time and I didn’t think much of it, but then after watching an anime clip while some classmates in the lab mentioned they wanted Pillsbury apple flips P. Extreme was born! He’s a blend of anime fashion, doughy goodness and a men’s sign. To see a flash animation walk cycle of P. Extreme click here. I really like how his walk cycle came out and his overall design.

Also you’ll notice in the flash walk cycle he has pants. Those were given to him last minute to help with animation with his legs and lower torso. I think they were a nice style choice to go with the rest of his clothing.

If you’re interested in learning more here is the Design Document for P. Extreme.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hieronymus Station Screen Captures

The Hieronymus station is my attempt at making a little sci-fi first person shooter adventure puzzle level using the unreal engine. It was a lot of fun to design and create. The level and artwork was designed, modeled and textured by myself. Clicking the pictures below will also give you a writen walkthrough of each area, enjoy!

For more information on the Hieronymus Station, click here.

Author Notes: Lighting my level was alot of fun but at times rather challenging. A good example of challenging would be the hallway with windows. Orginally I wanted the windows to give off a hard light so only that would like the hallway, creating nice eerie shadows. For a moment I thought I had the proper lighting with the dynamic lights but every time I rendered/baked the lighting it never achieved the desired effect. I instead used point lights that I placed within my light static meshes. This turned out nice enough but lead to blobby shadows between each set of lights so to counter act that I placed dim point lights on the pillars between the windows to soften the shadows given off by the other light scoures. This helped alot and gave the hallway a nice feel, the the orginal one I wanted but still I’m happy with it.

Scholar Dollar Screen Captures

Here are some screen captures from my educational mini game, Scholar Dollar. This mini game is designed to help first year students entering post secondary schooling learn the value and importance of money. The game is designed to take place in a small town that the player and roam freely around and complete in any order they feel.

Authors Notes: I also managed to dig up a screen cap of the game in its prototype phase, talk about a big change. I also designed all the sprites like the sidewalks and curbs to be sectional so I could easily build custom sidewalks for each building in game which shaved off a lot of time.

For more information about Scholar Dollar click here.

Angry Dwarf 2D Art Assets

Here are some of the art assets I created from the Angry Dwarf using Promotion and Photoshop CS4 and screen caps of them implemented in the game.

Author Notes: This was my first breaking into series sprite creation and hard work but it befitted me greatly on future projects. I created most of the environment art as well as machines like the boiler and furnace. I also created the main menu for our game, from background to buttons.

For more information on the Angry Dwarf click here.

The Angry Dwarf

To play the Angry Dwarf hosted by Yoyo Games, click here.

The Angry Dwarf is a 2D puzzle adventure game where Players take on the role of Angus, a hot tempered dwarf whose special ale has been stolen from him by his evil cousin Jeb! It’s up to the players to guide Angus through the many different areas Jeb has created with the help of his Hench men to stop him! This game contains many different puzzles, players will have to solve to progress through the games 40+ levels. This game was created under the rules that it could only use the four directional keys, spacebar, and one other button.

To look at sprites and artwork from the game click here.

Authors Notes: Looking back at this game I had a lot of fun making it! It provided a distraction from winter, an accident involving a car, a snowplow, two of my friends and myself. As a result of my injuries moving during that time wasn’t without pain to say the least but that didn’t stop me from working at something I enjoy.

This game was also my first attempt at making music and sound effects. I created all the music with a keyboard plugged into a computer, recording single tracks of notes and layering more onto of each set to create a song in the audio editing program REAPER. It was a challenge but good fun and I think I created some fun music that suits our game!

Choice – Inspirational Card Game

This game was developed soon after being inspired by Train. The attempt with this game is to simulate moral gray areas of choice, when a person must make a choice when both options appear equal.

For a printable PDF of the playable game, click here: Choice by Wesley Ahrens

Author Notes: This game was a challenge to create from the very start. The original idea started with western concept of Karma. After much iteration on how to get karma to function for a gaming platform, the diverging paths that formed a choice seemed to be at the root of karma in my research. Even with all of this research involving the option of choice I still had to create meaningful gameplay. This is when I started researching the morally tough choices, the gray areas of choice, came into play.

At this point I started to write up short stories which would build up to the dilemma and pose two choices from which the player may only choose one. It was also at this point I realized that the ‘choice’ while hard, needed something more. This when I introduced consequences that followed each choice the player could make. But while the choices are clear cut I believed that the consequences were not so I introduced a rolling system into some of the outcomes to symbolize luck or chance to give the player some hope that things may still turn out for the better.

For a copy of the Game Design Document click here: Choice Game Design Document by Wesley Ahrens

Hieronymus Station – Unreal Level

Download an executable version of my level at here: UDKInstall-Hieronymus.exe

For a PDF copy of the Game Design Document click here.

For a picture walkthrough of my level click here. For a video, scroll to the bottom of this post.

The Hieronymus station is my attempt at making a little sci-fi first person shooter adventure puzzle level using the unreal engine. It was a lot of fun to design and create as well as a lot of hard work, but it was worth it. This is also my first attempt at creating a story driven environment that uses audio, voice recordings, and a little music to build the kind of eerie atmosphere I was aiming for. This document lists and outlines many different areas such as story, asset lists, puzzles, character actions, mechanics, obstacle highlights, and much more.

Author Notes: To keep myself up to date a log was kept of all the constant changes and versions of Hieronymus Station during its creation. The log outlined the version, date of version, and any changes that were done with that version. This helped keep bug fix times to a minimum as any changes that caused bugs in the current version of the map either were created in that version. The log allowed me to look over the logs and quickly pinpoint the cause of bugs and fix them without wasting too much time guessing what may be causing a bug.

Creating this level also gave need to actively looking up many different texture and particle tutorials to help flesh out the station. A portion of the levels textures where procedural textures created in Photoshop by myself and completely self made textures using the tips and tricks I learned from doing the procedural trextures. Making this level was always a constant learning process as with any of my future projects I bet! After creating all the textures in Photoshop I then took them into Crazy Bump, a program that creates texture information such as normal maps, secular maps, and occlusion maps.

As I created a texture for the models of the level I would always put them through crazy bump and import all of that into the unreal engine. This ended up being a wise choice, in the end when the polish phase arrived. I found it was only at this point most other people in the room working on their projects were only now trying to create their additional texture information maps which ended up taking allot of their time. Since I had mine already in I was able to focus more on ascetics, fixing scripting bugs, adding additional script, and importing audio and sound effects into my level.

Walkthrough:

Sell Sheet:

Super Fun Happy Slide!

Here is one of the very first games I’ve ever made, Super Fun Happy Slide! It was really challenging to make but a lot of fun as well! I think it’s very important to have created a non-digital game like this. It helps you learn game mechanics that are the foundation of every game out there today. This game was also my first attempt at using Maya 3D modeling program, I think I did well for my first attempt at making a slide.

I created the game to be played with only 2 and up to 4. If you’re interested you can download a full PDF below with the game, rules, and set up guides inside.

For a printable PDF copy of my board game you can play on your own click here!

Bioshock Level Idea

As a project in the Video Game Design course we were asked to create a Bio Shock themed level as a expansion idea. The focus was not the overall look of the level but it’s design. The level was mocked up with blueprints and then created with just BSP objects in Unreal 3 Editor and then one white box shot was taken and then painted over to give an idea of what the final product may have looked like.

Capture the Flag Level Design Document

Here is my LDD (Level Design Document) for the capture the flag level I created using the Unreal 3 engine. It was a great experience and fun to design! My LDD outlines all the important aspects I needed to create a fun and exciting level such as: Art Style, Setting, Objective, Challenge Highlights, Thumbnail sketches, and concept art! The document contains art by other skilled artists I used as reference and inspiration while creating my level for unreal!

Author Notes: I really wanted to do an artistic style with this level through the textures on the static meshes. I really enjoyed the look and texture of oil painting, especially when paint stuck out a little when the painter pulled the brush off the canvas. This level was also my first time going out with a camera and taking photos for textures which was a really awesome experience because I found at times it was easier to go out and snap a picture and edit it to how you want then sit down and try to create it from scratch. A great example of a photo texture in my level would be the bases; the original picture was a sewer grate with concrete poured into it.

Making this level really showed me the importance of lighting and how just a simple change of light color can make something feel completely different. Originally I was aiming for more of a fantasy take on my level and had no intention of creating a more cold winter mountain top feel. That all changed when I dropped a dynamic light into the level and changed its color to a light blue. I was shocked to see such a dramatic change in my level. It went from a nice sunny day where everything was bright and vibrant to cold and eerie with a real sense of being forgotten.

The Level Design Document contains screen caps of my finished level and white boxing but if you can’t wait to download the pdf check out the screen caps of my capture the flag level at this Link!

To download my Level Design Document in pdf form click here.