I've been working on this game with seven other individuals for about a semester now. The concept behind the game is that the player controls a patient in a mental institution. As the player progresses through the game he/she is directed by a narrator in the form of text appearing on the walls. The game is titled "Monophobia" as the character has a fear of being alone. His schizophrenic tendencies will kick in (mostly) when no one else is around. The help at this particular insane asylum seem to be a little off their rocker as well.

In this demo we attempted to showcase what we wanted to implement within the game. Specifically, I worked on making the text appear to be glowing across the walls, as well as animated a character being dragged off into a room. At some point this week I will get a render of that animation and upload it to YouTube, but until then you can sort of see it in the build.

This first build of Monophobia was presented at the Ohio University Creativity & Research Expo, alongside several other games, animations, psychology experiments, engineering projects, and more. Monophobia was deemed worthy of a 2nd place title at the Expo, being beat out by an animation team who had been working on their project all year. I was a little surprised we placed; we were informed that media related projects hardly ever place at the Expo. I'm glad I could be a part of such a hard working team of individuals who are not only eager to learn and help with every aspect of this project, but also understanding when production gets rough.

The feedback we received from the Expo was invaluable. As soon as the first person started playing the game we could see all the little things we needed to fix. We made every transition way too long, players were already trying to move and run around, but the first few seconds of the game are a cinematic of sorts. We need identifiers to inform the player when they can move/look around. Additionally, the text on the wall that says "Look there" is misleading, as the action is happening off to the right, but the camera focuses off to the left. The patient across the hall starts screaming but it seems unwarranted as the player never sees the other character. The faceless man takes too long to stare at the player. There should probably be sound effects for the food tray window slamming shut. There should probably be different lighting when the faceless man reappears in the cafeteria and maybe a visual effect every time he teleports.

I'm sure there's plenty more for us to work on. We want to redo the wall textures; I could go on for days about "things that would make this game better", but that's the point of a first build/playtest, right? This is the part where I let you see for yourself how it looks. Sorry the file is fairly large, we'll work on fixing that too!

TL;DR Try out Monophobia Build 1 and let me know what you think!

I was having issues running it, make sure you check "windowed" when running it! Enjoy!

With GDC being less than a week over, I decided to rush right into projects as soon as I got back. A lot were animation-based, but this one is for my Structure class.

We made a hanging structure out of chicken wire, paper mache, and broken glass

So here's a quick example of the first walk cycle I completed. If I go back and work on it some more I would probably add motion to the back and hips.



 http://youtu.be/8Xd68KpXP5I

I had a few school related projects on my previous blog: Forever Rambling. I'll attempt to revisit this blog and a few posts to reflect on what I think I could improve on, or bring up interesting thoughts to the rest of my readers.

First one can be found here: http://4evrrambling.blogspot.com/2011/09/finding-your-howl.html

Truthfully, I haven't read any Lovecraftian stories lately. I would like to go back and begin reading his works, hopefully using them as inspiration for my art projects and game concepts.

GDC has been nothing but a giant learning experience for me. I am extremely glad that my fraternity brother Steven decided to accompany me on this journey. Through shared positive and negative experiences, this trip has made us both realize that there are a lot of things we want to accomplish and that we should probably start working more towards our goals.

None of the evenings in San Francisco panned out as we had planned them, but each turn brought about our reflection on how much we learned over the course of our trek. Currently, Steven and I are working on group projects for classes, but are beginning to share and construct concept documents for projects we would like to work on together. Our hopes is to have a few games shipped to the android market under a joint name; this way we will both have several things to present to potential employers who would like examples of the type of work we've done.

The most important thing this week has taught me is that no one is perfect, and I should not necessarily be modelling my pathway through life based on what worked well for other people. Sure, what's successful for many might be an indication as to directions I can take, but it doesn't mean those decisions are the perfect fit for me.

Be on the lookout for concepts and concept documents that I'm working on to be published here in the near-future.