Magazine Article

I wrote an article about the development process of Follow Fred
There will be a lot of pictures and reports about our experiences.
It can be read in the next issue of the making games magazine!

My first very own game

Currently I am working on my first very own game. I am planning a textadventure that is mixed up with elements from classic point and click adventures, like an interface and collectable items. It will be a criminal murder story with different adaptions from the english literature.
For this plan I am using Blitz Basic, a very good language that was developed especially for game development. It is easy to learn and you can see first successes very early. Pretty rewarding.

Settlers 7

Since 1st october I am working at Ubisoft Bluebyte and am able to take part at the development for settlers 7 in the Game Design department! Great game and will be even greater until the release!

Follow Fred Trailers

The new trailers are on: www.project-followfred.blogspot.com
here is one of them:

Leveldesign with Unreal III

New Blogs!

I finally graduated at the Games Academy Frankfurt


See the two new Blogs for my Games Acadmy Projects on
www.hellinvaders.blogspot.com
www.project-followfred.blogspot.com

Modeling with Maya is fun, especially the paint effects.

Leveldesign
At the moment I am working on my Unreal Tournament 3 Map for my Leveldesign Exam
Pretty much work but also a lot of fun.. I choose to do a Capture The Flag Map.

Understanding Movement
Look and draw!

The secret roomThe library
The parents' room
The endless floor
The children's room
The labyrinth hidden in the closet



Follow Fred
Our project Mindbreaker was renamed to "Follow Fred!". Here are some screenshots of the actual version of the rooms. They are still untextured though.
Currently I am working on placing all the assets, sounds and lights in the level.

Movement
It is hard to capture a movement but a good practice is to observe situations live.

The Crytek Sandbox
I am currently working with the cryengine 2 and the editor, the sandbox. A very clever and easy to learn editor! Right now I am composing the level interiors and a sound athmosphere with the sandbox. The finished game can be seen at the Games Convention 2009 (Games Academy stand)

Animations Pt.2
In the second lesson of animation we learned about the principles of squash and stretch, anticipation, exaggeration, arcs and timing; And that animation is a lot of fun!
1. A magic Trick


2. Smashing

Monster Concepts
Here are some monster concepts for our project. These shadows should only be seen during a flash in the windows.

Mindbreaker
Here is a first impression of a prototyped version of our new project Mindbreaker by Team Puppeteer Entertainment. It will be finished in about 3 weeks and is the second semester project of our Team at the Games Academy.

Animations
Together with Karsten Härle we animated a character today with 3Ds Max

Concepting Characters
Together with Eric Desideriu we had a workshop on character development. We trained how to make different concepts of one character pose we created in the beginning.

Storyboarding
Drawing quick sketched storyboards is a good way to visualize an idea. I made this one for an introduction movie for our project "Hellinvaders".

Working with 3D Studio Max
This axe was sculptured by me in my lesson with Sascha Henrichs of Piranha Bytes

Character monster concept

Another character scribble

Wallpapers
Here are some wallpapers I made for Hellinvaders

Scribbling
Even though I spend most of my time with writing documents I love to scribble some characters. Fast character scribbling is a good excercise to visualize a concept of an idea.

Mindbreaker
Mindbreaker is the new project of my team PUPETEER ENTERTAINMENT. Here is the story of the game told in a classical hero's journey. The book the writer' journey by Christopher Vogler helped me to develop it.

Emilia is travelling through the classical hero’s journey on her adventure. Everything begins with her being forced out of her ordinary world. Her parents are killed and she falls into a traumatic shock state. The next moment she finds herself in a strange and unfamiliar environment, the eerie manor the game takes place. The first thing she encounters is the bunny backpack. It functions both as a mentor and a shapeshifter. Two archetypes are embodied in the ambivalent personalities of the toy rabbit. Moreover he is the one to explain the tutorial and teaching her the rules of the foreign world. Emilia receives her call to adventure through a photograph lying on the floor (the herald). Hesitating and scared she picks it up and finds the first disc, the first hint of the murderous mystery. Investigating it closely, she is suddenly evocative with the blurred memory of the murder. Furthermore this is the final push that causes the change from hesitance to cross the threshold to the adventure.

Throughout her journey she encounters various tests in form of riddles and enemies. She has to figure out the true nature of her ally the rabbit while he changes friend to foe frequently. The actual murder scene is her way into the innermost cave. Proceeding in the story Emilia will start to believe that she killed her parents, which leads to a great despair and a will to give up for the girl, the ordeal. But this state is just for a short period, because the last disk reveals the real murder, the stepsister. In addition to that Emilia has to encounter her bad Ego, the sister in a final battle. Passing this final test is the resurrection for Emilia from her despair; she became very grown up and was able to shake off her fear. The metaphorical kill and knowledge of the real murderer is Emilia’s elixir. She is now able to wake up and return to her real life, the ordinary world.

Moddings
The Unreal Editor is a pretty easy tool to make quick and cool maps with. Here are some textured and untextured screenshots of some maps I made.

Hell Invaders

This is a trailer I made for my first semester project "Hell Invaders". It was an Arcade Game based on the core features of Space Invaders. The player adapts the role of priest, an invincible priest that fights the eerie creatures of hell to defend his community. I made the Game Design and some menu arts.