Magazine Article

Hello Readers!

We at The Kings are proud to announce our newest game, Realm of Spirits. This side-scroller puzzle game will be available on all IOS and tablet devices in the near future.
My name is Jason Poirier, the lead designer and modeller of the team. I am currently attending the Game Development program at Durham College in Oshawa Ontario. I mainly work with Maya, Unity, Photoshop (and other adobe products), UDK, xNormals and the Quixel package (nDO and dDo). I'm hoping that my efforts put into this game can get me ahead in becoming a great 3D modeller.


During this project, I took on the role of character design, concept art, modeller, partial texturer, level design and animations. I worked with Autodesk Maya, Unity and Photoshop. Since, i'm not a strong at C# or Javascript, I had passed off the coding to my other group member who did an excellent job setting up our game to run as best as possible. Jesse Colangelo and Shawn Karacsonyi were our programmers who got the game working with a GUI system and the character animations attached and bonded to the controller (and later modified to work on an IOS device). Kalvin was our main texture artist who helped build the aquaduct level.


One thing that our group decided on, was the fact that our character had to change colours to solve some of the puzzle situations. We had gotten the idea from a bullet storm game called Outland (out on the ps3). When I designed the game, the character was to be unique to the style of game. I designed a spirit character that was transformed into something that he never wanted to be; complicated. So his main goal is to become simple again and following the mysterious wisp from the beginning will hopefully lead him to becoming simple once more. Now, since he is a spirit, we figure he can go through certain walls; but since he is in ancient ruins, we imagined that he can only go through certain colour coded ones. With this feature, we believe we can make more and more complex puzzles. Throw in moving platforms and we can create interesting and harder puzzles to accomplish.


One of the small problems we faced was the time we had to finish the project. We had a whole bunch of other projects that had similar importance to this one, and those others were due way before this one was. So given the chance, we figured we'd finish the others first so we could have time to work on this project with our full attention. This is why the beginning of the project was very slow in terms of progress. But now that we finished the rest, this was easy to accomplish and i'm proud of the end result of our game.


So one thing i hope people can take away from this is, keep on creating. No matter how it turns out, whatever you create can always lead to bigger and better things. Also, keep on experimenting. You may learn and discover new things from personal experience, TV shows, other video games or movies.


I hope everyone enjoys our new indie game, Realm of Spirits, being released on IOS devices and PC on April 25^th.


Cheers,
Jayp0r91

Saturday April 19th 2014 - Props and Progress Blog 3

Hey everyone,

So our group had to figure out some small details with the game that would put us back on schedule.
We had fallen slightly behind in terms of what we wanted and what we can have done before the due date.
We decided to make the final boss fight a lot easier in terms of using traps to kill your character instead of particles.

This might make the player think on how to kill the boss without having to fight him directly.

I also spend the majority of today creating objects and trying to figure out how to create new backgrounds.

Here are all the props we have in the game so far:

With all of these, we will construct the three different kinds of levels our game requires: the outside area, the forest and finally inside the temple (which in the demo was the first level of the game).
With the new moving platform system, i will be changing up some of the puzzles in the last level to make it appropriate in terms of difficulty.

Anyways i'll keep you all updated.
Cheers,

Jayp0r91

Thursday April 17th , 2014 - Indie Game Details Blog 2

Hello Readers!

So progress of our game has been very slow recently.
I had gotten some more models done but they are slow to texture. Got spike traps, aquaduct system (with plain water), boulders, ferns and a palm tree done. These will go towards the outside level for our game. Since the outside is still the starting area, there will be easy puzzles created to get into the habit of the game. It will also introduce the new moveable platforms.

Here is what we had in the beginning, before the new teams.

Tutorial

First Level (will be last)

Main Menu

I'm happy to say that i'm pretty confident that this project will go pretty well. We just need to finish the last models, build the levels and get the enemies going. The final boss battle has been figured out, so we'll have to set up the arena for that. Any animations I need to fix can also be done too.

Anyways, that's it for now. I'll keep updated very soon.

Cheers,
Jayp0r91

Tuesday April 8th, 2014

Development Journal - Blog 1

This is going to be really short. Jesse and I had been working on the Realm of Spirits game for our Unity Project. I developed quite a few models that we can use across all the levels, the positions of which can be turned into intricate and unique puzzle designs.
Jesse who had been tinkering with the programming aspects got the game working with all the base requirements, but we ran out of time to fix anything else.

Now, we have acquired the help of Kalvin and Shawn. Both of which had previous complications with their game.
Both our groups merged and we have decided to continue work on the Realm of Spirits game.
We had fixed up our Trello board and organized what we wanted to see in the future of our game.
5 Levels including a final boss battle. Adding enemies to the mix, and moving platforms. We will also add a lot more visuals to the levels to create that mystical feeling I initially wanted to incorporate.
I believe that we can accomplish all the new features we want to add to the game.

This week has been busy, due to some...complications with group members in another course. No work has been done on the unity project so far, but that will change soon.

That's it for now. Next time I will include pictures of the Level Designs and character.

Cheers,

Jason Poirier (JayP0r91)

Pokemon Feels

     Ok so I finally did it. After getting the limited edition Zelda 3DS XL and wanting to play the crap out of it, (because it's beautiful obviously) I decided to get back into Pokemon X. After a few days of long gaming sessions I have managed to beat the game. This makes it the third Pokemon game I have actually beaten joining Pearl and Soul Silver.
     The storyline in this game is fantastic. I don't want to post any spoilers, even though I know the game has been out for awhile I don't want to risk ruining things for anyone. However I will say I really loved the storyline, it was very in depth and actually touched my heartstrings a little. At the ending after the Victory Parade, is when the feels really began to happen. I was very touched by this bit of the story as soon as I learned it in the game and the way they wrapped it up at the end actually brought tears to my eyes. I am very impressed at how good the Pokemon story lines are getting and this makes me very excited to see what the next title has in store!

- Young_Cricket

Game Dev

Good Afternoon Fellow Readers,

So, this is a general description of my schooling as a game development student, and for those who are interesting in knowing the ins and outs of what ive been through, keep following (things can get interesting).

So, i'm from a fairly decent sized town in Ontario, Canada. In high school, i had quite a few friends, but my artistic integrity set me apart from the variety of cliques. I was too 'greasy' to be 'cool'. I was not nerdy enough to be part of the chess club. and even though i was a good enough soccer player, i stood out because i wasn't interesting in the footwear professionals wear (unlike the other kids, who obsessed over the new Nike Airs (or whatever)). I basically was a media arts nerd...staying in the lab during lunch to catch up on work, and eventually, i was good enough as graphic arts to be chosen for Skills Canada (a competition where people compete for how good their art skills are in comparison to other schools in the district (and eventually, all of canada). Little to say, i was good, but not enough to win it all. So, over time, my best friend Chris told me about the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, and how their game development program was interesting. So, Chris and I set our plans to go. However, he went one year ahead of me (due to me staying back for a victory lap to upgrade my marks for a scholarship). So, this could have been the moment where are Chris and I's friendship changed a little..

When i finally went the year after, it was exactly what i thought it was....not what i expected. it was hard...and even missing one class put me behind. However, this was my school! i met friends who were around my age and i could relate to them! After awhile i was getting average grades, except for one class, Object Oriented Programming...which as an artist, was NOT my forte. Three days before my final exam of first year, my grandfather died...and my studying went down the drain for the programming class. So when second year came around, i took the programming course over again, but since it was a prerequisite for EVERYTHING, i had to convince my professors to allow me into the classes that i could take...and ironically, passed them all with 80's or over....but failed programming...again. I also failed another class that was so easy, you could show up, sleep through it, and get a 90...however, when we got groups projects, i would stay up all night doing them for the rest of the members, but since i didn't present my projects with the group (since i was sleeping), i failed them all. Absolutely ridiculous Dr. Leonard Nacke (still havent forgiven him, as you may notice).  So that means...oh yes...first year university...AGAIN! So i said screw it, and looked into the College Game Development program at Durham. Apparently, i was one of the only ones who had to give in a portfolio that year. But after a brief interview, i got in, and the following year, i was one of 28 students in the Game Development program for that year.


So i want to say that i learned several things i can take away from my experiences with the University.
-First, study...you never know how much studying can help, and find a group of people to do it with!
-Second, if you think you can pass something your not good at, either studying hard or don't try, its not worth summer school, or failing.
Third, don't game in class! Pay attention! you never know what you may learn that could be useful (especially in psychology).
Fourth, if you can seek extra help, do it! i had a foreign professor whose first language was arabic or something, and i wanna say that i think i failed due to the fact that he said words differently, and i got lost because i thought he was saying something completely new, ALL THE TIME! So, if you can seek extra help from someone who can speak your language (both accents and way of explaining material), do it.

More on the next blog.

Cheers,
Jayp0r91

Gaming Time

     I am so upset. Here I am admiring my play time for the year on my 3DS which I have racked up to a whopping 388:39 hours. This is almost double what I managed to rack up the first year of owning my 3DS! Most of this is thanks to Animal Crossing: New Leaf which came out early this year. The reason I am upset is because after showing my impressive number to JayP0r91, he asked how to view his play time. Now I must point out that he started playing 3DS when I got my XL and decided to lend him my Aqua Blue release date 3DS. So he has been playing since May. After walking him through how to see the number of hours he had played this entire year he laughs and shows me the number 388:06.
     How have I let myself be matched by someone who has had the system 4 months less than me?!

- Young_Cricket