College Chronicles Part 5: Veiri

This post is about the fifth game I made while in college. To see the other posts just check out the section on the side titled "College Game Archive". I'm going to keep these final chronicles much more brief so that I actually complete them (and lets be honest, what do you care :-P).

We've now reached essentially the middle of my time at Full Sail University. I believe the class was Structures of Game Production (SGP) and at the time it was taught by Dustin Clingman who was backed up by Keyvan Acosta. In this class we were taught how to organize, schedule and execute a game project with a team of around four programmers. We could also make asset requests to a team of paid artists, but most of us just stole classic game sprite sheets because we were stupid/anti-social. Everyone on the team assumed some sort of role and worked on a game for two months.

I was the "Project Officer" which means I scheduled everyone's tasks and made sure we stayed on target. I also at this point had a lot of "decent" code that we used for the basis of the engine used to make the game. I improved my particle engine from past games and created an editor that we could use to make effects. The remaining of my tasks were odds and ends and anything we forgot to schedule (lots of things).

These two months were the hardest for me mentally out of the whole program. How the hell do I estimate how long it takes to make a particle editor? I've never made one before...I've only been coding a few months!!! AHHHH!!! /headexplosion. After some loud screaming in my car and conversations with my then lady friend (now wife :-D) I started winging it. Particle editor? Five days, sure why not, NEXT!

Looking back it was pretty damn impressive what we slapped together in two months. All I can recall is working every waking moment and consuming a lot of Little Debbie and Monster Energy Drinks. I also remember staying up for the longest time in my life. Before beta turn in I stayed up five days in a row working, only taking short naps (about an hour or so).

I'm going to wrap it up here. Below you will find a game play video (and my "awesome" video editing skills). You'll also find a link to a zip file with the game, editors, documentation and complete source code. Oh yeah the code sucks, I had to spend a decent amount of time getting things running again...so yeah don't use it.

Love,
Aaron

Game Package(Windows):
Veiri - Game, Editors, Source, Documentation

Game Video: