The step into Indie

    After completing our major Capstone projects in FIEA, I joined a group of fellow students to create an indie game studio within our program. This was for what is known as the Venture track, where our curriculum changed from the development side of the industry to the business side. We were only evaluated on our business plans so essentially we became a small company with the task to create the game Oracle: Threads of Fate. The initial prototype of the game was a strategic RPG like Fire Emblem but the player's main character could predict enemy moves, allowing the player to better plan against overwhelming odds. 

    When I joined the team, I had set out to be a writer and designer only. Most of my previous worked involved programming, and while I do enjoy coding, I wanted to flex some creative writing skills. There was a basic set-up of a story in place involving the Oracle of Delphi, but other than the theme of precognition, there wasn't a plot. Using the theme and my love of history, I wrote out a plot that revolved around the inevitable rise of Rome and "takeover" of the Greek gods. Since Roman deities were practically the same, why not explain why the gods left Greece for Rome in our game? So I wrote a story in which Ares (who was more loved in Rome and Greece) leads an exodus of the gods to Rome leaving our player's party to fend for themselves during a Roman invasion.

     Unfortunately, a key programmer left the project early in development, and the programming team was down to two. I already knew I would have to help them, but now the need was so great that I had to step down as a writer and take on programming full time. I created some tools in the Unity Editor for the designers to create complex gameobjects with components by editing excel files and running it through the tool I made. This increased productivity from the team and enabled us to create more items for the player inventory. I also did a lot of work on the UI, primarily in the shop and player inventory systems. Using a variety of design patterns I had to dynamically create a way shop to display the info of the items and read the player's inventory. I wouldn't say UI is my favorite thing to work on, but I learned it value my new programmer role on the team.