Available on the iOS app store as of July 29th 2013!
Pitch Jumper is 2D platformer where gameplay is derived from the music you choose off of your mobile device.
This is an 8 month graduate Capstone project where I have had the opportunity to work extensively on many aspects of a game with larger scope. A musical analysis is performed both before and during game play to affect the level, mechanics, and even Coda, the player's character. Producers have worked tirelessly with the programming team to constantly refine the analysis so it will work with any song that user chooses from their device.
This is an 8 month graduate Capstone project where I have had the opportunity to work extensively on many aspects of a game with larger scope. A musical analysis is performed both before and during game play to affect the level, mechanics, and even Coda, the player's character. Producers have worked tirelessly with the programming team to constantly refine the analysis so it will work with any song that user chooses from their device.
Some of the tasks I have performed include:
Mechanics Design The biggest challenge on PJ was to design mechanics on a music analysis system that hadn't been built. At the beginning of the project no one knew exactly what information we'd be able to pull out of a song except for the title, artist, genre, (if those happened to be in the file info) and the beat. We are currently using those, as well as song length, volume, and music density.
Prototyping and Pitching mechanics in Flash and Unity During preproduction of PJ prototyping mechanics meant using a song we knew our early stage music analysis would work well on, and playing with different ideas in Unity. Using Unity allowed a fast iteration time and was very easy for producers to use, and even perform some of the scripting in C# while programmers continued to work on the framework. During this stage we developed much of the games foundation including auto scrolling screen, collectibles, character abilities, and how platforms should move. Later prototypes were done as scripted sequences in Flash with a much better knowledge of our music analysis capabilities. Ideas generated from this later phase include our ending dance platform, pipes, and high and low point geometry changes.
Scripting Early on in production I was responsible for setting up our Unity prototype. This included some scripting in C# as I modified one of the free Unity demo's and converted it to our prototype. I worked on player controls, and camera scrolling.
Midway through the project I worked in XML to implement any songs/playlists we needed. Level loading was also performed using an XML interface. I scripted all missions in Pitch Jumper using a tool one of our programmers set up for us. It generates a base LUA file dependant on which data I select from the tool. After the file is generated I am able to fill in any logic scripts needed for the mission to function. |
Level Design and implementation Level design on PJ is fun and relatively simple to implement. Producers can help speed up the process and taking some of the work load off of artists by gathering all finished sprites and putting them into sprite sheets. We then import the sprite sheets into the Tiled map editor, which has been modified by our programmers, and either use XML to load maps into our Cocos2dx framework (deprecated), or we can simulate the game straight from Tiled. If an image or animation needs to be switched out with something of a similar size we can simply update the old .png sprite sheet to a new version, Tiled and Cocos2dx take care of the rest.
Design Front End User Interface User interface is something I like to take special time to focus on in any game. While UI is generally worked on at the end of a project, players spend a large portion of time navigating, reading, and watching vs playing a game. Integrating the UI as part of the gaming world and making it function well and be aethetically pleasing are all goals during my design process. I concentrate on Information flow and important information during the throughput design process, and a full content list per screen are the main documents produced. I work heavily with both the artists for visual design, and at least one programmer to make sure functional design is within scope of the project. For more UI design on Pitch Jumper navigate to the User Interface page under Docs.
Marketing Lead As Marketing Lead on PJ I must lead the other 4 producers on our team to accomplish our marketing goals on a small budget. Our development director/mole and I have been gathering metrics to target the best demographic for a tactical advertising campaign as PJ is released on the IOS app store. We are also in the process of creating print materials, a full length trailer, and a social media campaign.
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The following are game play videos that show progress at different stages of development from latest to earliest. If the embedded videos are unavailable you may find them on my You-Tube channel.
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Media
FIEA and Pitch Jumper have been recognized by local news and University of Central Florida.
Additionally I was asked to produce the following developer diaries for FIEA. They are used by UCF and FIEA marketing. I was responsible for:
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Lead Artist - Jen Melnick
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Project Lead - AJ Walker
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Programming Lead - Alicia Cano
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