Summary
The University of Texas at Austin's esteemed interdisciplinary Bridging Disciplines Program allows qualified students in the Digital Arts & Media track to join a team-based 3D Game Development Capstone course for their Connecting Experience, rather than submit an individual research project or internship hours. The course is taken in conjunction with a list of requirements, including an additional creative project. This website fulfills that Creative Project.
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My team developed the action platformer/arcade runner Railin' Randy. The concept comes from grindrails in similar games such as Ratchet & Clank, and follows the brief tale of a mechanic named Randy. Explore the rest of his story -- and ours -- through this site.
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Railin’ Randy is set in a future world overtaken by a monster. The player navigates levels by controlling their radial position on a system of obstacle-lined rails. With good timing, they can also swing to other rails and gather collectibles that restore resources or increase speed. The design goal is to keep players engaged in frantic, moment-to-moment gameplay.
To play our game in person, see us at the SDCT Student Showcase (formerly known as Digital Demo Day) at UT Austin.
Official Demonstrations
On April 18th, 2019, UT Austin held a BDP Poster Session during the annual Longhorn Research Week. This academic poster was presented as a pitch from 2-4pm, alongside a laptop and iPhone demonstration.
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It provides a summary of the materials used to complete our game, which ranged from coding programs to digital art software to the game development system itself (and the sites used to research its use).
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The driving method for our iterative process was also mentioned: Scrum, through Trello. I served for the latter half of the semester as Scrum Master, meaning my role in the team beyond game design was to coordinate our timeline and ensure full and cooperative participation.
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It also discusses the ways our objectives changed over the semester, and progress at the time of presentation.
At the end of the semester, the team presented at the SDCT Student Showcase--formerly known as Digital Demo Day--at the UT Austin Foundry.
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There, professional members of industry as well as faculty, students, and invited guests were given the opportunity to test the final version of Railin' Randy.
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I am pleased to report that both the Research Week presentation and a showing at Zynga went well too.
Game Design Guide
This 50+ page monstrosity has an edit history reflective of the wild swings in direction our project took throughout the first half of the semester. The final product, constructed in large part by the author of this site, served as a reference for all future decisions once signed by all members of the team. To put it in the terms of my major, advertising: it was the document that kept us "on brief" after the most appropriate direction was determined.
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Scan the QR code here to see the document in full, including its drastically-varied versions. Or, see the most salient parts below. Sections covered generally comprise of overall game design elements.
There is a monster destroying humanity and their world, and Randy is the only one who can stand in its way.
The monster, who arrived in the center of Randy’s city, exudes a sickly fog called the Corruption which turns any infected humans into demons: witless minions, and then prey. Luckily for Randy, he was on the outskirts of the city and only his arm was affected; providing him a powerful tool. Randy finds that he can grab onto the tentacles of this massive monster and glide along them or swing between them without losing his grip. This is essential, as he now has a direct line to reach the monster and remove its destructive capabilities. These "rails" provide both life and death to Randy, as they are lined with a variety of obstacles but also collectible power-ups to restore his fuel and boost his speed. He is often given the choice between defensive and offensive strategies--such as avoiding obstacles on a single rail rather than jumping to another to collect the speed boosts there--but his intended personality is to go recklessly on the offensive.
Randy must traverse a dangerous environment, while optimizing his speed; but with one arm coursing with demon blood, he has enough sway over the crazed horde of once-humans to speak to his stunted and sarcastic demon companion. The player also has the option to construct parts of their own story: for example, they might choose to play the game as an athlete and focus on honing their rail-swinging skills for speed runs through the levels or achieving unexpected feats of dexterity, but they may also choose to be an "explorer" or "achiever" and play the levels with the main goal of traversing all available paths and collecting all power-ups. A large draw to Railin’ Randy is the sport of the rails: enactment challenge occurs when players are swinging between rails or collecting a sequence of collectibles, both of which require good coordination. This game also seeks to implement humor in its fantasy environment through the dialogue, which is joking and euphemistic in contrast to sweepingly dramatic game text just on the edge of satirical. Collectibles and vistas occur naturally without need for discovery.
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The world floor of Railin’ Randy is obscured by the Corruption. Half of the core gameplay takes place in a partially-ruinous city punctuated by sharp spires and lit with neon accents. The rest of the game is placed outside of the city, in a destroyed natural setting. Primarily, we want players to feel the thrill of rushing at high speeds through what is essentially a crazy playground. However, it is also important to impress upon them the high stakes of the game: humanity's very survival. Achieving this through lighting and energetic music will also strengthen our primary goal. Vibrantly glowing reds and greens, as well as spiked architecture, create a hellish atmosphere. Levels are towering to create a sense of the danger faced by dropping from the rails or swinging between them.
Reflection
Another of my requirements to earn an Emphasis in Game Development through my Creative Project was to write this Reflection Essay. It helped me to coordinate all of my thoughts and takeaways from the project, provides a detailed summary of my individual contributions as Narrative/Game Designer, Scrum Master, and Technical Artist; and may be a useful insight into our team processes.
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As such, I have linked the document through this QR code, like the Game Design Guide above. It is a much shorter read, so I have only included a couple snippets patched together below as a teaser.
From researching spherical harmonics while attempting to create a realistic billowing fog in the Unreal game engine, to coordinating my team’s weekly tasks by the letter, this semester was jam-packed with all sorts of new challenges for me. When I initially entered UT, it was as an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major; a choice inspired on paper by a high school physics teacher, but in my heart by a lifelong passion for the transportative power of video games. I left that major in favor of Advertising, which better suits my career goals, but never gave up on the thought of one day becoming a game designer. One experience that stood out was discussing the prospects of the game with McCombs BBA students. They assured us that our game was marketable, asked how far we would be willing to take the process for what is essentially a school project, and offered examples of similar creations that they had seen earn a return. Seeing the marketing department work from the view of a developer was an invaluable look into how certain terms we use in industry may be perceived, as well as our general attitudes as salespeople. I can now confidently say that if advertising doesn’t pan out I would love making my way in a game design career. The capstone had its rough patches, but they led to me taking over the mantle of Scrum Master. Later in the semester I was also able to contribute animated environmental assets. Creating level-end portals, a narrative-based fog, and coded art for collectibles and fire were highly satisfying results on a fast and furious road to briefly becoming the team's Technical Artist.
Gallery
