OVERVIEW

Last man standing, Marcus must navigate through the ruins of Ephyra and fight through pockets of Drones and hordes of Wretches to survive the devastated city in order to reach a outlying park.

- As the player flees the city, buildings collapse, cars explode, helicopters crash, and monuments fall!
- Navigate through four distinct yet rich areas of the city: apartment complex, alleyways, courtyards, and a campus quad. All filled with their own danger!
- Multiple routes, 16 in total, allow Marcus to choose where to go on his own terms!

DESIGN GOALS

Flight From Ephyra was built with two very different goals. Primarily, it had to provide the play space for my Master’s Thesis so that I could investigate whether handedness influences player pathing. Secondly, it had to meet the visual and gameplay bar set by Gears of War.

The requirements of my thesis called for nine unbiased pathing choices. I was unable to use traditional methods of guiding the player (lighting, movement, enemies, sounds, and static placement). To do so would skew the results of my thesis and render the investigation into the influence of handedness moot. Essentially, in Flight From Ephyra, every path is correct and no path is wrong. However, with choices come consequences. Players often like to investigate part of a path in the hopes of discovering whether to commit to it or disregard it. In order to compensate for this reality and get the most honest results I made players commit to their first pathing choice by blocking the path they had come from. After the first few instances of this occurring, players actually remarked that they welcomed the closing of the path behind them. One player explained that it freed him from regret and from acting fickle over which path to take.

The desire to match the visual and gameplay quality of Gears of War was a demand I didn’t take lightly. I felt for my thesis to be accurate I would have to treat this “test bed” as a real level in a real game. I couldn’t settle for the whitebox quality many Guildhall thesis settle for. One of the more difficult aspects was making the combat easy, so that test subjects didn’t die often during the research, while maintaining interest. I feel that I’ve hit both these goals and player feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

OVERVIEW

Survive a harrowing chase with a Combine gunship, discover an automated barrel factory, and discover a modified Crossbow that allows the player to shoot and create staircases and bridges in order to solve puzzles and dispatch Combine!

- Evade a relentless Combine gunship and escape across the sea upon a commandeered fishing boat!
- Fight your way free of the deadly industrial complex, filled with exploding barrels and assembly lines.
- Use the new Crossbow mechanic to solve an array of puzzles and eradicate Combine soldiers!

DESIGN GOALS

The goal for Crossbow Platformer was to push the boundaries of Half-Life 2’s scripting possibilities. With that in mind, I set out to create a new gameplay mechanic within Half-Life 2 completely without coding, where the player could jump on and use the Crossbow’s bolts to interact with the environment. A coastal barrel factory set the perfect environment for the mechanic, where the player can scale walls and implode machinery to progress further and further.

OVERVIEW

As sole survivor of a helicopter crash, Marcus must fight through the Locust to reach the top of an ancient bell tower for extraction via helicopter.

- Gripping intro cinematic puts the player right in the action!
- Filled with plenty of enemy locusts, beautiful gardens, and intense firefights!
- Contains speeding cable cars, towering archipelago islands, and hounding turrets!

DESIGN GOALS

With Hard Landing, I wanted to expand Gears of War beyond the normal stomping grounds of destroyed cities, blown up houses, and underground caverns. With that goal in mind, I set out making a big and bright level that played and felt like traditional Gears of War but looked distinctly different. The result was a large soaring archipelago chain filled with ruined buildings, bell towers, and gardens that create a grandiose vista that not only looks good but also plays tight and fast.

OVERVIEW

Discover a secret entrance near Vault 101 that leads to the neighborhood of Oxford Ponds. Follow the winding road and dispatch those in your path. Learn of a neighborhood feud and take who's side you like!

- Fight through raiders as you travel on a winding road that passes through mountain trenches and beautiful gorges!
- Encounter an encampment of Raiders trying to seize the lone mansion of Oxford Ponds.
- Become the final arbiter in the neighborly feud between Oxford Ponds residents and the nearby patrons of The Dueling Cave.

DESIGN GOALS

With Oxford Ponds I wanted to make a Fallout 3-quality modification, providing the player with engaging combat and interesting characters. However, half the fun of Fallout 3 is exploring, so I also wanted to make a large open world that was worth investigating. Oxford Ponds in total is comprised of four different quests, dozens of characters, long mountain gorges, serene neighborhood lawns, a lone mansion, a dried up lake, and a dangerous cave bar.

OVERVIEW

DM17 Reimagined is a remake of the classic Quake 3 DM17 map ‘The Longest Yard’. No longer is it a cold sterile void but now a fiery hot metal foundry. Players do battle above a sea of molten metal where they rocket across via jump pads and trigger a number of interactive environments.

Still to come.