Dan Regan - Game Designer
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Aztech | 2012 - 2013

  • Action Game
  • Survive a Futuristic death sport, an Aztec-themed trap gauntlet
  • Play single player, Free-For-All or 2v2 modes
  • Run and fight your way through a dynamically changing arena!
  • Team Responsibilities: Producer, Designer
  • Team size sixteen, Junior Year
Aztech is a competitive multiplayer sports game for 1-4 players.  Their goal is to score 10 points before the other players/team does.  To add to the mix, players can pick each other up or attack each other.  As the game progresses, the arena starts changing right before the players eyes and deadly traps begin to litter the field.  The players can change the layout of the arena at any time, rotating the arena to shift the position of traps.

Aztech was developed entirely from scratch in C++ by our team, Ozone Games.

Responsibilities:

-SCRUM Master
-Scheduling Milestones
-Weekly production reports
-Game Progress documentation
-Game presentations
-Regular One on Ones with team members
-Maintaining scope and team expectations
-Lead meets
-Stand up meetings and Sprint scheduling


What went right:

  • I, personally, got to focus on learning the production skills I wanted to that year
  • Aztech was as easy to pick up and put down as we wanted it to be
  • The game's announcers gave it a sense of humor which kept players coming back.

What went wrong:

  • I was too slow in asking for help when I needed it
  • The team was more bloated than what we needed
  • The UX was unpolished
  • The editor frequently crashed, making iteration difficult
  • Communication with the artists fell flat near the end: simple things, like normal maps, were never utilized in the game due simply to communication issues

What I learned:

  • Ask for help.  My desire to prove myself to my peers on this project hurt it in a big way.
  • Cut the fat.  I spent too much time organizing members on a team whose contributions I knew would be minimal when I should have focused on making sure the team members who were contributing were doing so to the best of their ability.
  • Digitally documenting bugs and team progress is hugely important to making sure the same five bugs don't keep popping up over and over again.
View the verbose postmortem here

Screenshots:

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Concept Art:

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You can download Aztech here:
aztech_setup.exe
File Size: 62108 kb
File Type: exe
Download File

Work published with permission of BI Simulations k.s
  • Home
  • Professional Experience
    • Splash Damage
    • SCS Software
    • Bohemia Interactive Simulations
  • Resume
  • Simulations
    • VBS
    • Student Project
  • Selected Student Games
    • Relocator
    • Aztech
    • Guns with a Z
    • Narwhal
    • Blobby
  • Tabletop Games
    • Last Place->
    • Ride Out
    • New Territory Roleplaying Game
    • Team Fortress 2 The Sequel The Board Game (The Unofficial Version)
    • Tea.Raid
  • Outbreak