Quad Core
At a Glance
  • Time Frame:
  • July 14, 2017 - July 16, 2017

  • Roles:
  • Audio Engineer - 3D Animation - Level Designer

  • Technology:
  • Unity - Visual Studio - C# - Blender

Summary

Quad Core is a 3D side scrolling platformer with a twist on how the player jumps. Instead of pressing a button to jump, the player has to fire a projectile at a target; upon breaking the target, the player is boosted into the air. The player must race against time utilizing this unique jump mechanic and other interesting gameplay elements to reach the finish. Such a project was created over the course of a weekend for Mark Brown's (Game Maker's Tookit) video game jam event.

Details

Quad Core was a project that was presented to me on short notice, as such I was only able to work for roughly 10 hours out of the allocated time of 48 hours. Despite this, it still proved to be an educational experience that allowed me to hone my lesser used skills.


The Audio

While I had some prior experience with audio, this was my first attempt at building an audio library from scratch. I recorded several sound effects using steel toed boots, an old boom microphone, and other miscellaneous materials. After recording, I heavily processed the audio through audacity to create all the sound effects within the game. I also produced the music, but was left less than an hour to do so and was admittedly not pleased with the results.


The Animations

This was also my first time doing non-rigid animations, which was fun yet challenging. Thankfully the rig for the character had already been set up by a colleague, leaving me with the task of creating all of our animations within an hour. Having opted for a more stylized, "cartoony" look, developing acceptable looking animations became possible despite the time allocation. Such a feat was accomplished by using as little keyframes as possible while exaggerating the pose. This led to a fast yet effective workflow, with only one animation deviating from this approach. The firing animation turned out to be problematic due to its dynamic nature, thus a procedural approach was taken.