Maya 3d Modeling and Texturing

I made this.

It's basically a Jetson-esque hover car, modeled after a 2015 Honda Accord, and made for my final project in an 11-week summer course. I have to say, I'm only an average modeler. I'm better at texturing, but since I'm not much of an artist I use a lot of procedural or pre-made pieces. In any case, I know now that I'd be happy to pay other people to do this kind of work for my games. I think I already knew that, but now I know what to look for, what to ask for, and generally how to communicate with 3d modelers and texture artists.

Also, many of the best individual pieces of a game, like the character model for a FPS, and how it animates and moves as a cog in the overarching mechanics, stem from how the model is textured and painted. My appreciation for the time spent making this stuff has dramatically increased. As always, I think the process could be improved, but I have a feeling that most of the people working with these tools know that, and are actively pursuing better methods!

I also made this!

Insurgency - Review

I snipe. It's what I do.

Title:
Insurgency

Platform:
PC

Who:
You the special operations soldier. First-person.

What: 
Tactical player-versus-player and player-versus-bots combat.

When:
Released 2014.

Where:
Various middle-eastern looking cities. Maps are limited by restricted zones and invisible walls, but otherwise large maps provide for interesting bottle-necks and long-range encounters.

Why:
Battlefield 4 is expensive, and doesn't have bots.

Significance:
Only a few first-person shooter games in the counter-terrorism category allow for cooperative combat against a common enemy.

Pros:
Fantastically challenging A.I. Intricate maps and nice visuals. A good use of weapon sounds. One shot kills.

Cons: 
A.I. gets to cheat by seeing through smoke, fire, bushes, pitch-black darkness, and dead bodies. An appalling lack of weapon choices. Game design choices around respawn time, loadout limits, and map boundaries is disappointing.

Drive Forever

Ever play F-Zero? Ever play Midtown Madness? Respectively, speed and driving in a sandbox are two great characteristics to make a game out of. Drive Forever uses procedural generation to allow players to experience the best of speed and environment. Each time you play, no two environments are the same. There's no learning the track and committing it to muscle memory, no following the same boring road. Go fast, don't crash, and enjoy the scenery. Drive Forever.

There is also track mode which allows players a more traditional way to test the controls and the hover car's ability. Split screen allows multiple players (right now two, but four is what were aiming for) to race, explore, and generally goof around with each other. The car's engine and thrust is highly based in physics, and having multiple different car options will make this game exponentially deeper. I personally would like to see the procedural generation used to create lush forests and monumental cities to drive through. There's also a full day cycle currently, which will be followed soon by a night cycle.

Other possible features include destructible structures (with weapons of course), an antagonist, probably a wall of fire or something else equally menacing, that chases you around, prompting a de-facto survival mode, multiple various tracks, and hover jousting.

We plan on developing on PC, and then porting it over to Mac, Linux, Xbox, and Android mobile. IPhone and IPad support may also come depending on accessibility.

We want to have beta ready mid-September and release by the end of November.


Credits:

• Jordan Black - Programmer / Project Manager
• Dan Modesto - Programmer
• Zach Checkeye - 3D Modeling
• Natan Golynskiy - Level Design
• Josh Donnelly - Sound Design