A game developer
Building Virtual Worlds is a semester long project course at the Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center(ETC) where interdisciplinary teams build desktop and immersive interactive virtual worlds. Each world had to be built in two weeks from nothing: code, assets and platforms were assigned at the beginning of each "round".
During this course I had to work in 5 different teams on various platforms to create the assets and code that are needed for the virtual world. I served as programmer on the 5 worlds, plus technical lead on one world.
The objective for this world was to use Indirect Control to guide the player. This means that the world should be designed to indirectly tell the player what to do. The platform for this world was an analog joystick input and a telephone, using an USB phidget board. This world featured a nuclear attack scenario where you had to get to the shelter A.S.A.P
This world was an experiment in cooperative-competitive game design for the ETC's Jam-O-Drum. The Jam-O-Drum is a top-down projection platform that features 4 simultaneous stations, each one comprised of a spinning wheel and a hit pad. The objective of the game was to take the ball in the maze and get it to its home (the rotating "target" in one of the cube's "walls"). The game was designed so players must cooperate in ways that go against each other.
This was a three player, co-operative game that had to have a complete story of galactic proportions and shrewd enemies that talk back intelligently. The player could intimidate or bribe any in-game character to continue and complete the game. We made use of 12 computers, 23 monitors, one projector and a steering wheel and pedal set for this world. The complex AI was played by my myself and Manoj Anand who developed tools that gave us god-views over everything and could control all in-game characters(NPCs)
Special thanks to Joey C.W. Yeh, a fellow CMU alumnus who worked with me in this project and facilitated his Flickr feed with pictures from the BVW Adelaide showcase!