Hi, I’m Kristopher
a Designer Level Designer Developer.

The time at pax

Throughout this weekend I was able to attend the event of Pax East. With this I was able to hang out around the Clark University booth and get a good sense of how people reacted to my Studio’s game. Overall I believe that we were able to create a well rounded demo that displayed the overall gameplay and style that we wanted to show others. Alongside this information we were able to gain some tips on what people wanted or had questions about and also were able to identify some bugs from live gameplay that we would have not known of otherwise.

As this week was spent mostly at pax it allowed me to get a sense of what is going on in the event world and gave me a good outlet to talk to some new people and gain a good sense of networking. Alongside that I was able to meet various people within the industry that allowed me to grow my overall knowledge of the game industry and gain a better appreciation for how much work is put into making an convention like this.

Reflection of the Year

There has been a lot of things that have happened throughout this year. From the start I wanted to try and push myself to creating a story/design document on what would eventually become my overall studio project. Through this exploration I was able to come up with the overall mechanics alongside the story that would be told throughout the gameplay. Although I thought that this would become something that I could follow within my second year I have soon found out that the scope of the project might be too big and not fit the overall plan that I would like to follow. Going into the second semester of the year I came to the conclusion that I wanted to explore my portfolio a little deeper and start working within the program Houdini. With this I was able to create some pieces that I am overall proud of especially the building and VFX work of my procedural house.

In the end I have come to the conclusion that I am essentially moving away from my initial idea and moving towards a project that has a smaller overall vision and scope. I plan on working on a tower defense based game that will help keep the overall scope of the project smaller allowing for the overall progression of the game to become more complete while also leaning into a thesis topic of how games such as Bloons and Plants vs Zombies has evolved the overall idea of tower defense games and what we plan on seeing from this genre in the future,

The Final Presentation

With the semester coming to an end this is the best time to start the final presentation of the overall work that was done. From the creation of the modular hallway, the sword/dagger, the environment, and the creation of the house and the overall explosion I think that there was a wide range of tasks that were completed and became some great portfolio pieces.

Along the way I have gone through multiple different documents and tutorials that I believe helped greatly in trying to figure out how to create certain creations. Especially when taking a look through the environment that I was able to build out, I had to explore a majority of the documents that Houdini provided to create the water system with the scene. Alongside the water system I had to go through a few documents to help get the VFX working with my house model that would allow for all the pieces to explode outwards. This allowed for a great time when trying to trouble shoot and without these pieces of research I doubt I would have been able to create a fully functional render overall.

Within the next post I will most likely go over my overall reflections of my past projects throughout last semester and this and give a good outline in what I plan on doing for my next year. This is an important part in trying to build out an extensive portfolio and will have to keep these tasks in mind when trying to explore new and exciting things in the near future.