As my last solo project for College, I wanted to try my hand at designing a creature for Rainbow Six Extraction. Going into this project I knew I only had a few weeks and wanted to make a creature that had unique gameplay mechanics compared to creatures already in the game. To begin I started by doing research I learned the abilities and mechanics of all the creatures in the game so far and compiled them into a set of slides. After doing this I started to compare the composition of units to other games such as the zerg from Starcraft, and the holy trinity of rpgs. After doing this I determined that the Archæan line up was missing a flying unit and a healing unit. So going to the designing portion I started with playing with verticality. I began with the concpet of flight and after brainstorming it into many different scenarios I determined flight in open air would be too free, while flight in a corridor would be too restricting. So to account the map design yet still playing with vertciallity I looked at the nests and how they are attached to the walls. With this I desided to have this new Archæan be able to climb walls. Next I focused on the gameplay. With the concept of a healer I looked to the Doc, a playable character and his ability to heal. To do so he fires a stim pistol at an ally healing them. Taking this mechanic I could then justify the verticallity as well as this would allow this "healer unit" to hit units in the front lines while it can sit in the back. being high up also allows the player to focus it with the risk of being swarmed from the ground. After this I came up with some concept art and made some small tweaks along the way.
Study Document Short Video Longer VideoOver the course of 3 weeks, I researched an old game called Clash of Dragons, and created a set of 50 card for the game. For this task my first step was researching this old game. Being the game had died and there is almost no video gameplay footage, I had to resort partially to my memory of the game, and more so the wiki which still exists. Through this I researched the game mechanics and card concepts. once I had laid out a set of guides for myself, I started by making some basic card concepts to playtest with to make sure I hadn't missed the mark. After that I looked for inspiration and after some time, I came up with character thematics. Each class in the game had some theming, so I decided to lean into that and create cards based around a theme of each class. beyond that I tried to relate these themes to in game mechanics. For example, a druid deck might involve lots of summoning of creatures and so the NPC card type which tends to involve bringing in outside characters stood out. After designing 45+ cards and playtesting a few iterations, I put my pencil down and moved on to another project. This project had taught me much about linking creative processes to game mechanics.
Rules Document Paper Prototype Cards Document A short (cringey) video of the final paper prototypeFragments of You is a Unity based 2d platformer where the main character loses their own limbs and abilities, in an attempt to combine the parts of their partner. This game was worked on by a group of 12, with general roles for everyone. In this project I took on a general programmer role, an in-engine cutscene designer, and later on a design adviser role. In the beginning, I focused on programming the core movement mechanics. This included left right movement, jumping and eventually wall jumping. These mechanics went through multiple iterations starting with unity physics, and eventually ending on using Unity physics as a base from more complicated physics on top of Unity’s physics resulting in a refined, snappy movement system. Beyond movement I also worked on a couple of the interactable objects in the game. The box, button, and door where all objects that I created as prefabs for the level designers to play in the levels. The boxes need to be pushed on to moving platforms and thus required complicated collision detection to determine parent and unparent boxes stacked on top of moving platforms. Buttons and doors go hand in hand as to create these I made a set of parent classes, for which the button, door, and in the future other objects could be built from. Once the parent classes where linked one could inherit a child class and have it communicated with the buttons and doors with no extra code beyond features. As for the in engine cutscenes, these were made using Unity’s timeline manager. I used my prior experience in animation to learn and animate these cutscenes using the actually game objects being used in game. Additionally, I worked as a design adviser when nearing the end of allotted time. During this process the level designers, playtest organizer and myself, would get together and go through each part of a level a tweak them to make for a better experience. In this case I focused on what the level designer was intending to have the player to do and why the player was or was not performing in that way. After this, we would modify the levels with the goal of keeping the level designers intended interaction, while assisting the player in either difficulty or direction on what the intended design was. As of 3/24/2022 I finished work on this project to pursue other interests.
Fragment's of You - Itch.io Fragment's of You Studio - LinkedInThe goal of this project was to make more than a generic level generator. We strove to make a generator, that would tailor levels towards player performance. As a result, levels would be made easier and harder based on not only the player’s health and upgrades but also their play style. To do this we added trackers to the player and enemies. This recorded all kinds of data about the player involving how much of the level do they explore before leaving, or how many enemies they killed versus how many spawned, or simply how much time was spent on the given level. Once we found all this information, we needed to translate this data to what that meant for level design. In this case having a very simple game that we based this off of helped to minimize the potential complexity of what the data could represent. An example would be the player was only able to attack left or right, but able to move in up and down as well. Thus, narrow vertical corridors, were very dangerous to the player as enemies where simply based on collision. Thus, in finding the player completing the level healthy and killing all the enemies, the generator would prioritize levels with more vertical corridor generations. This was a fun project to work on as I haven’t seen this style of level generation in most commercial game to date.
Level Generator - GitHubThese games were made using Kenta Cho's crsip-game-lib. In this project, I learned how to use a game library to develop 3 games over the course of 2 weeks. The first game I created is called Swoop, in which the player is a bird flying in a circle trying to catch fish that jump in the center of the circle. I developed this game solo and it served as my main testing ground for learning the library. In the second game, I worked with a partner to create ItemDrop, which was finished in just one hour. My partner and I worked very well as a team to write the code over a discord call. The last game created was IdleCats and I was responsible for the main code structure for this game and the version control setup. I functioned as the lead for a team of 7 and focused on setting goals for the team to work towards. This involved brainstorming game ideas with everyone as well as helping determine gameplay features and how they could be implemented within the library.
Swoop ItemDrop IdleCatsThe goal of Alien soccer was to create an infinite runner game. The final product was a game where the aliens sacrificed themselves to try and kick their precious ball away from a blackhole. In the project, I developed the physics and main gameplay of the ball mechanics such as kicking, collisions, and attachment to the aliens. Additionally, I developed the mechanics of falling into the blackhole in the center. Though this project was completed in a group, I led the team. I learned a lot about hosting a GitHub repository for multiple people through this assignment.
Alien SoccerThis program demonstrated my ability to write a game in C++. This was my adaptation of the classic Battleship board game running in a simple text terminal on a PC. In this project, I created everything from the ground up including examples of classes, class inheritance, state machines and other object-oriented programming methods to make a working game. The second part of this project was to create an AI opponent. For this I implemented a heuristic based on the state of the game, and had the AI choose the best move based on the heuristic.
During The winter quarter of my senior year, I was hired to be a reader tutor for the introductory game design course. This course teaches the basics of what a video game can be, how games can express ideas, and some basics on how to make them. As a tutor for this course, I helped out during section to answer question from students and offer insight into ideas and concepts that could potentially benefit the students’ games. Alongside this, I graded and gave feedback on assignments mainly game turn ins offering feedback like a play tester would. After the winter quarter, I returned again for the spring quarter.
During my Junior year of college, I worked at Home Depot as an associate in the Electrical Department. My job was to help customers find products including everything from lighting, to wiring, conduit, switches and outlets. I also helped and informed people on the proper approaches to electrical tasks. This job required a lot of teamwork with my fellow associates and taught me how to ask for help on things I didn’t know. This included knowledge of store policies and where products were located.
I have played 200 hours of Risk of Rain 2, and completed 100% of the game. In trying to accomplish this, I learned how the game worked on a deep level and how each item stacks in different ways. I learned how maps were designed, where secrets were hidden on levels, and how every character works. I am proud to say my profile shows 100% completion.
During my last quarter of college, I took a course on UX design. Through this course, I learned the principles of user design from beginning to end. Starting steps being identifying problems and researching solutions to the issues. After this I learned how to prototype our site design all the way from paper prototype to hi-fi prototype in Figma. After prototyping, usability testing is also a major part of the project where I learned how to write reports on the user tests. Along side the production of this I also learned how to use the agile framework to maintain the project.
During the winter quarter of my senior year, I took a course on game audio. During this course, I learned how to generate audio using in game interactions to modify and augment the audio.
During my last 2 years of highschool I took courses on 3D modeling and animation. During this time I studied animation and and 3D modelling in Autodesk 3ds Max.
During my last years of highschool, I joined MESA (Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement). In this club I worked with Aurdinos to create a small mapping robot, and won the regional first place.
During my highschool years, I took courses on construction. During these courses I developed skills and knowledge on most aspect of home construction and maintenance.
David Mayfield — davidmayfield1818@yahoo.com — (510)-358-9779
Updated as of August 1, 2022