Aspiring Game Programmer Extraordinaire

Current Side Project

PC, Mac, Web

Summary

amalgam is a real-time strategy game designed for casual gamers that I am currently developing with Tom Peterson.  Many RTS’s require significant mechanics skills (“leet micro” if you will) in addition to heavy strategy elements.  With amalgam, we’re trying to create a more approachable strategy game for casual gamers.  The key compontents of amalgam include (ripped verbatim from Tom’s description):

• Suggestive Commands and Autonomous Units – You are in command, but should not have to make the most minute decisions. Suggestive Commands allows the user to give general, broad-stroke commands to their units and they will carry out these orders after weighing them against the more pressing needs of your forces that you might have overlooked.
• Less is More – amalgam bases its artistic and unit design upon geometric shapes and the color wheel. This approach allows for a very simple, stylistic look that doesn’t strain most systems. On top of that, there are only six basic types of units, derived from the primary and secondary colors of the color wheel.
• Time Window – The Time Window feature allows the user to set their ideal match length, perfect for commuters who would like to squeeze in a game on their subway ride. Users can choose to play bite-sized matches as short as three minute or a sprawling, epic hour-long battle. The Time Window is not simply a cut-off on the length of the match, it actually tunes the size of the map, number of resource nodes, and other factors carefully to create an ideal play session for the user in which victory or defeat can be obtained in the time window of their choice.

My Role

Currently the game is in it’s planning stages, so specific roles and distribution of work has not been decided yet.  We are currently working on a design document in which we will flush out specific mechanics and technical requirements.

Current Status

Currently the game is in it’s design phase.  We are planning on creating the game using Unity3D with an initial release to Mac, Windows, and the web.  After the initial release we may bring it to the iPhone/iPad.