Study Work

This is a selection of some of the projects I created during the first two years of my “Game Creation & Producing” study at the Saxion University of Applied Science. It is just a very small portion of the projects I worked on during the time since we often had multiple projects running in parallel per quarter, but it gives a nice all-around look at the variety of different topics covered throughout the study. This might be interesting if you are curious about the study's content of the past or my background. Although, you should probably look for some of my portfolio cases when you are curious about my current skills instead of my ancient baby steps ;)

Year One

Flash Game during the first quarter

This is a small flash game that I created during the first quarter of the course “Game Programming Basics”.
We had to learn the basics of game programming with ActionScript 3.0 and create a 2D game in Flash which includes some basic features. The game featured two playable characters who had to be used in combination with some physic mini-games by the player to capture a carrot.

I went a bit the extra mile and added a simple high score list driven by a php/mysql backend as I already had experience with these technologies. It doesn't have the prettiest graphics, since the focus was on the programming part. 

Note: I removed the originally embedded Flash player from here by now since it's deprecated by most modern browsers by now.

Concept Art during the second quarter

During the second quarter, we had a "Concept Art" course where we among other things had to create a "Digital matte painting".

We had 3 themes to pick from:

• Ancient Rome

• Renaissance

• Industrial Revolution/Steam-Punk

Even though I like all three themes, I quickly ended up with "Ancient Rome" and some different concepts of roman buildings. After a few rough sketches, I decided to use the "Pantheon" for the assignment.

Unity, 3d Design and Audio during the third quarter

During the third quarter, we got one project where we had to include the work of 3 different courses.
We had to create a Unity level (Design tools Unity 3D) and include a house that we modeled in Maya (3D Design) and also a few different sounds and music for our Audio Design course.

The setting of the level is based in the desert, where the player has to collect 10 randomly placed water gallons near an oasis and bring them back to his house. Time is running so he has to be fast.

Note: I removed the originally embedded Unity player from here by now since it's deprecated by most modern browsers by now.

I created all the models and textures that are used in the level on my own with Maya and Photoshop. For the ambient sounds, I used stock sounds from "freesounds.org" and "Ableton Live".

Audio Design Sounds

For the “Audio Design” course, we also had to create three 1 minute long soundscapes, that fit one of the photos we got for the assignment. (We got 10 to choose from.)

I picked a beach, jungle, and restaurant picture to create soundscapes for.

For the soundscapes, I used "Ableton Live" and stock sounds from "freesounds.org".

Sculpting during the fourth quarter

In the fourth quarter, we had to sculpt a human hand in Mudbox and present a low poly version of it in Unity. The low poly base mesh was created in Maya. As my first attempt at a human hand, I am quite happy with the results. (Though I have to cringe a bit looking at it years after)

Note: I removed the originally embedded Unity player from here by now since it's deprecated by most modern browsers by now.

Year Two

Project Commercial Break during the first quarter

Our first project in the second year was called "Commercial Break". We had to develop a game for a client, that provides sports facilities for mentally and physically disabled target groups. The goal of the game was to train the physical, social and mental abilities of the player. The look and feel should be positive and emphasize the player's abilities. To control the game we had to use the Kinect.

Our theme for the project was "World". We created a small version of the Netherlands, where the player has to fly a hot air balloon to certain landmarks. The kids should learn to recognize the different landmarks, to find them faster while the game is progressing.
The players have to use their arms to navigate the balloon around.
I was responsible for the creation of the 3D models and their textures. The client wanted a simple style without complex shapes or too much detail that would distract the children. So we decided to use some simple plain colors with an ambient occlusion map to give the models some more depth without blowing our time budget.

Note: I removed the originally embedded Unity player from here by now since it's deprecated by most modern browsers by now.

Cinematics during the first quarter

In Cinematics we had to develop a short story and visualize it with a video.
The video should support the narrative to optimize the viewer's experience.

Scripting during the second quarter

During the second quarter, we had a course called Scripting, in which we had to create a small Minecraft clone in Unity. The birth of Clonecraft! Readme

The course consisted out of two separate sub-assignments we had to hand in within the quarter & the Minecraft assignment was only a part of it, which limited the time I had for its creation quite a bit. But I was always a fan of procedural art and code-driven design, so I was enthusiastic about the task and went the extra mile. I added custom definable biomes to the world generator as well as a foliage system, which could add things like trees to specific biomes, and added a custom menu & loading screen to the project to give it some final polish.

Note: I removed the originally embedded Unity player from here by now since it's deprecated by most modern browsers by now.

Enhanced features during the third quarter

In the third quarter, we got back into sculpting, but this time with Zbrush. We had to learn the basics of Zbrush and create a creature using zSpheres and other sculpting and texturing tools in Zbrush.

Project Start your Engine during the third and fourth quarter

In the last two quarters of the second year, we had our first longer project in which we had to develop a game for an Industry Museum in Hengelo. The museum has a special room to display the usage of energy sources. We had to develop a game designed to teach children and adults about the possibilities and applications of those energy sources.

My team created a game about nuclear energy, which was playable at the museum. As the team leader during both quarters, I was responsible, that our team met the deadlines and requirements of the client. Besides that, I created all environment models and some of the code functions, like the procedural environment generation which we used to randomly generate our levels based on the difficulty settings.