Here I shall be putting up pages devoted to the various bits of work I do and also posting to my blog if there is anything which catches my eye, or if there are any updates/stories I wish to tell.

So, until the next post, enjoy.

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The design of Growth began with my partner. At the time, she was going through some rough circumstances and I wasn’t entirely certain how best to help her work through them. I wanted to help her express the feelings she had in some way, so I sat down in the middle of the night with a sketchbook and began to design a game, with the intent of getting some of that emotion out onto the page, and to try and work through all the raw feelings. By trying to convey those feelings to this non-existent third-party, the imagined ‘player’ of this game, I hoped to help visualise and ease through those feelings.

The design that ended up on the paper was something I then wanted to try and develop in some way, so my partner could see the product of that night, and so I began research into various subjects and eventually began working on developing the game prototype.

Based on doodles in the sketchbook I developed a 3D character model for the player’s character, a small bunny-like creature, and added mouse control and the ability for the mouse to interact with objects in 3D space to the UDK system.

Currently Growth is currently still in the prototype stage, and has switched to the realm of 2D, but is planned to be developed over time.

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We were tasked with creating a number of sample levels for a game project and writing the associated design documents to go with them and were required to use Valve’s Source Engine to create the levels.

For this project I opted to work on a third-person adventure game, going beyond the initial assignment brief which only required us to use the engine to construct a first-person action in the same vein as Half-Life 2.

I decided to begin modifying the game code which came bundled with the Source Engine SDK using Visual Studio C++ and added a third-person camera, a custom dialogue system and inventory system for allowing the player to pick up and interact with objects in the game world. I also then modified the way in which weapons in the game worked, allowing the player to switch back and forth between first and third-person views when combat was required.

This project was a fantastic lesson in designing and developing both a game’s core mechanics and the levels of a game, requiring me to look deeply into level design theory and general game design theories. I also had a chance to work with how to craft a narrative around a game’s mechanics, and how to use the environment to tell the story along with dialogue.

Finally, I also had to create a number of custom music tracks for the levels. I created a track for the title screen, one for the game’s short introductory sequence and then two tracks which the game alternated between depending on whether the player was in combat or not.

The post Project Xenos appeared first on BunIKO.

Alongside my role as editor of the website’s content and community manager, I have also worked on designing and developing various things for the Extra Credits team such as overseeing the creation and management of their merchandise and online store, working in collaboration with Daniel Floyd on the show’s introduction sequence and organising other parts of the site such as the community podcast, etc.

You can find the Extra Credits website at http://extra-credits.net/.

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I had a game design project in the pipeline for which I wanted to use a number of non-photorealistic rendering techniques to help present a specific graphical aesthetic. I wasn’t sure on what software I wanted to develop the project in, between XNA and the Unreal Development Kit and so I began research into trying to achieve the effects in both systems.

I created an outline shader, for giving everything a crisp black edge, a crosshatch shader for shadows and highlights and gave the overall renderer a canvas background effect. I then decided upon using UDK as the development software, so then I developed a third-person camera system for the engine.

The post Non-Photorealistic Rendering appeared first on BunIKO.

Design of the characters first began with some sketches on paper, which I then scanned in digitally and traced with vector graphics. Those vector graphics were then transferred into Flash and fully animated.

The post Flash Animation appeared first on BunIKO.

We were tasked with creating a game that fit a casino game theme, and for this task we were instructed to use Game Maker.

I decided to construct a single-player poker game. The player would be put against a number of AI-driven opponents and begin the game with a set amount of money, the game would end only if the player ran out of money and they could play as many hands as they wished until this occurred.

Every aspect of the game was of my own creation, including graphics, audio and programming. Using both Game Maker’s drag and drop system and it’s built-in code editor I came up with a fully functional version of the game including full AI for the opponents.

This project was a good dive into the world of game design and allowed me to cover many of the skills needed to design and develop games, such as writing design documents, etc.

The post Mako Poker appeared first on BunIKO.

You can find the article on the Extra Credits website.

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Image courtesy of Dead End Thrills, from Alice: Madness Returns by Spicy Horse

Personal Identity; Why I’m not lying when I say I’m female…

(Trigger warning: discussions of transphobia and sexism.)

When it comes to the process of growing up, one of the biggest challenges we may face is that of self-identification. We come into this world a blank slate, overflowing with possibility, and from that point on it is the world around us which helps us determine who we are as a person. Society places pressures and roles upon us, our family and friends may help or hinder our progress toward our own identity and all manner of other factors will affect our struggles. Our formative years are often a minefield of confusion, self-doubt and the battle for individuality. Even when we truly discover who we are, there are those who would seek to undermine it still.

It was during this time that I found myself wrestling with the concept of gender identity. I grew up in a family predominantly populated with females, the majority of my friends at school were girls and quite honestly, I found this to my liking. I associated with females much better than males, often finding boys to be too rough, and crass, for my liking and preferring the company of girls.

This had various effects, both physically and psychologically; the way I carried myself, the way I spoke, everything was affected in some way. In high school, I studied Spanish for three years, and often noticed I was referring to myself in the feminine form without thinking. I was internally identifying as a female and it was reflecting both consciously and subconsciously. Sadly my femininity often became a point of ridicule amongst my peers and my elders would try to force me to become more masculine. No matter how hard I tried I could not be accepted as female in the real world.

There are other tales entwined with the struggle for my own identity, but it was at this point that something magical and crucially important happened. It was at this point that I discovered the internet.

I had been a gamer since a young age and games had become a core part of my life. They allowed me a space to escape to, a place to create characters who felt more like me than my own body did at times, so when we finally got a computer with internet access it was an amazing moment of personal freedom. The internet offered me a space where I could be who I was inside, a space where I could be accepted as a female the way I wished I could in reality. I spent nearly all my free time hooked to the computer; playing online games, frequenting chat rooms and making new friends.

In the early days all that my identifying as female was met with was the occasional request for a photograph. Most people didn’t need anything more than my word and accepted me as female. It was an uplifting experience to be treated as a female unquestionably for the first time, and as I grew closer to my new-found companions I explained my situation in more detail. I explained how I was female in gender but that my physical sex was male. This was met with a mixed response; most people embraced it, explaining how it didn’t change who I was to them, some people stopped treating me as a female but still remained friends. However, others felt insulted; they attacked me for lying to them about who I was. I was stunned by this, the idea that because my physical sex was male I was somehow lying about my gender was absurd to me. If anything, I posited, I would have been lying if I had said I was male because that is not who I am. This did not quell their outrage; they disgraced me and vanished from my life.

For every person who has told me that they still think of me as a female, I have oft heard others call me a liar or outright insult me. For every person who ceases to accept me as a female, but still value me as a friend, I have had others walk out on me as though I were worth no more to them than the ground they tread.

These kinds of reactions only grew more common as time went on. With the advent of new technology, and the growing feeling that those who claim to be female online must be lying, there was a greater volume of requests for so-called ‘evidence’ of my gender. If I identified as female and refused to voice chat or show photographs, for example, I was instantly assumed to not be female. However, if I identified as female and then did voice chat or show photographs, I would promptly be insulted for it and deemed to not be female too. No matter my response in these scenarios, I could never win. I could never be truly accepted as a female. My online freedom was destroyed. My life on the internet had gone the way of my life in reality, where no matter how much effort I made I could never be accepted for who I was, only how I looked.

Every time I hear terms such as ‘trap’, ‘shemale’ or their like used in a derogatory fashion, when I am called these things by others with the intent of personal offence, I am reminded of the pain of these experiences. I am reminded that despite my greatest efforts I am still viewed as lying about who I am by those around me, when I am merely trying to tell the truth.

As I stated in the beginning, even once you truly discover your personal identity, there will be those who do not wish to listen, or those who wish to hurt you because of it. The people who insult me and call me a liar, or a myriad of names much worse, suffer from a flaw in their logic. They simply cannot comprehend that sex and gender are not intrinsically linked. This idea that sex and gender are one and the same is a pervasive concept within our society, entrenched in years of one’s sex determining the gender role that society would try and impose upon you.

When I say I am female online and when I refer to myself in the feminine form, I create an idea of who I am to the people around me. A subconscious negotiation takes place; they acknowledge that I do indeed act as a female, thus they have a behavioural confirmation of my gender and I am in return treated as a female by them, securing self-verification of my own identity. In the process of confirming my sex however, I seem to cause a contradiction in that negotiation to some people; I inadvertently contest the behavioural confirmation that they had achieved. To a lot of people this makes no difference, they understand that my gender and sex are not linked, but to those who do not understand I can no longer be perceived as female and so often they feel I must instead act male. I do not act as they feel I should though and in that brief moment of telling the truth negotiations have broken down irreparably. A psychological battle of wits takes place, where I fight to be seen for who I am and they fight for me to act as who they feel I should be. These days, as has been said, that battle often ends with me being insulted and them walking away or pushing me out.

I am not lying when I say I am female; I merely represent a fatal flaw in the way society dictates the definition of gender.

However, with each new wound I grow, with each battle my determination persists, because with exposure comes understanding. The more these people try to wound me, the more I fight back and explain the way things are, the more I hope that things will change.

One small step at a time I fight for acceptance, and hope that the people out there willing to listen can appreciate the words I say. One day I will no longer be seen as a liar and I will be accepted for who I am, without people feeling the need to undermine my sense of identity. Eventually, I won’t have to prove that I am myself.

Special thanks to my two editors; my wife and Jaclyn, for helping me finalise this article.

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