A Love Letter and Growth
Card games and board games were a big part of growing up in my family. I'm pretty sure I could bridge-shuffle a deck of cards before I learned multiplication tables. Nights after dinner and homework were filled with the sound of cards and dice, especially when my grandparents visited. One of my most cherished games from this time was "9 Hole Golf". When my partner and I travel, we often teach it to people we meet who are curious enough to ask what we're playing at cafes or bars; it's become a wonderful way to build connections across cultures and languages. I wanted to create a way to play this on any console, phone or PC with friends, family, and strangers across the world.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Goals and Structure
I had very specific technical goals at the start of this project that would be required in order to meet the vision: It had to have cross-platform online multiplayer, couch co-op functionality, and it needed to be playable in a variety of languages. Starting with these in mind helped me design much of the core functionality in a flexible way that made later production significantly easier such as text references that could be swapped dynamically for different consoles and regions on the fly during runtime. Releasing Chained on Steam and the Nintendo Switch right before helped introduce me to to needing this mindset from the get-go. This project also overlapped with an intense digital painting course I was taking at the time, so as visual aspects changed over time, it taught me to build efficient pipelines for updating large numbers of art assets in the project to minimize time spent updating and implementing changes on the fly.
I had very specific technical goals at the start of this project that would be required in order to meet the vision: It had to have cross-platform online multiplayer, couch co-op functionality, and it needed to be playable in a variety of languages. Starting with these in mind helped me design much of the core functionality in a flexible way that made later production significantly easier such as text references that could be swapped dynamically for different consoles and regions on the fly during runtime. Releasing Chained on Steam and the Nintendo Switch right before helped introduce me to to needing this mindset from the get-go. This project also overlapped with an intense digital painting course I was taking at the time, so as visual aspects changed over time, it taught me to build efficient pipelines for updating large numbers of art assets in the project to minimize time spent updating and implementing changes on the fly.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Building Character - Animation Setups
The dozen characters in the game all have unique animations and color pallets that players can unlock, which would be a headache to keep updated. When building out the file structure for animations and colors in Spine, a strict naming convention was put in place so that re-exporting and importing to the engine would result in not only the assets being updated, but any references to specific bones or animation sequences across all characters. This was key when it came to making final size, speed, and placement adjustments later in the project.
Profile Display Code
Swapping Color Pallets
Bone Structure
Mesh Outline
_________________________________________________________________________________________
By the Book
As the game's visual identity took shape, the menu became a culmination of all the different elements in the game and the things that lived in their pages; the characters, card backs, and emblems. Having layers the menu represented by through flipping pages
As the game's visual identity took shape, the menu became a culmination of all the different elements in the game and the things that lived in their pages; the characters, card backs, and emblems. Having layers the menu represented by through flipping pages
Version 1 of the Menu / Title Screen
Version 2 of the Menu
Version 3 / Final
Version 3 / Final - With Page Transition
Oh the Places You'll Go
-
-
Let's discuss how I can boost your project or team: CONTACT