Lord of the Rings: War in the North (2008 - Present)

I've recently wrapped up The Lord of the Rings: War in the North. It is a hack-and-slash action RPG with a strong emphasis on 3-player cooperative gameplay, set in the northern reaches of Middle Earth, where the cruel ally of Sauron, Agandaûr, plots a vicious attack.

My responsibilities on this project have included grayboxing, gameplay and encounter implementation, and scripting of several large levels and setpieces in the game, including the ruined city of Fornost, the Dwarven fortress Nordinbad, and the two challenge maps: Osgiliath and Lothlórien.

Key levels I was responsible for in the shipping product included:

• Fornost Wall
• Fornost Inner Wards
• Fornost Citadel (Exterior and Interior)
• Nordinbad (Hub and Siege)
• Lorien (Challenge Map)
• Osgiliath (Challenge Map)

Two of my maps for this project - Fornost Citadel and Siege of Nordinbad - were featured at E3 2011 and GamesCom 2011. I handled the design documents, grayboxing, extensive scripting and gameplay implementation from beginning to end on these two.

The game released on November 1st, 2011 and is available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC (retail and Steam).

My work was featured at E3 2011! Check out this YouTube video walkthrough of the Citadel of Fornost.	Up to 3 players must work together to stop Agandaûr's forces. Here, Farin the Dwarf attacks a Feral Goblin while Eradan the Ranger watches his back.
Andriel the Elf is dual wielding a melee weapon and a staff while Eradan kills Goblin Archers with his ranged attack. Using melee and ranged attacks effectively is a key to survival.	Farin stares down a ferocious Stone Troll. When things seem grim, the party can call upon Beleram the Eagle. He eats Trolls for breakfast.
Ranger, Lore-Master and Dwarf all rush in to save the Dwarven fortress Nordinbad, which is under siege by Agandaûr's forces.	Andriel kicks one of the invading Uruk-Hai. The siege takes place at night, as fiery arrows and siege towers are constantly assaulting the fortress.
All three players must work together to bring down the Olog-Hai. Otherwise, they will break down the inner door and Nordinbâd will fall.

Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon (2005-2008)

Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon was a sci-fi open world sandbox game released in November 2008. It was built using Unreal Engine 3 and follows the alien protagonist, Crypto, on a quest to save the Furon Empire. The game did not do well critically. The studio began phased layoffs that April, right as post-alpha work was to begin, leaving the final product horribly unpolished.

In the 1970s, after 20 years of pillaging the Earth, Crypto and his bumbling superior Orthopox have gone soft. A posh existence in the gambling mecca of Las Paradiso has ensured a steady stream of DNA and brains for the Furon homeworld. But when a group of mobsters start to muscle in on Crypto's turf, it's time to take action! Soon, a larger conspiracy is revealed that will take Crypto across the world - and beyond - to expose a Furon traitor.

• I was responsible for overseeing and implementing the design of 3 of the 5 city environments. I originally wrote high-level concepts for the missions in Shen Long (Hong Kong) and Belleville (Paris). I developed Shen Long from its original graybox to the final version with multiple fully implemented missions. I inherited Belleville and Sunnywood after the departure of their respective designers, which involved dramatically rescripting some missions and simply upkeeping others.
  
• I scripted dozens of missions using Unreal Kismet of varying complexity. Some of the crazier things I scripted were:
  
  • A boss battle involving a three-story tall alien walker using Unreal Matinee and Kismet. The boss fired plasma, rotated to face the player, and had a death ray.
    
  • Scripting a variant of that giant walker to move down the road to accompany Crypto. It smashed through cars and humans and anything else in its way.
    
  • A pattern-matching minigame in Sunnywood meant to ape the classic scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The UFO allowed players to fly around the city. This is an image of air combat amidst the daunting towers of Shen Long.	Crypto also has the ability to destroy virtually everything in the world. From cars to entire skyscrapers, nothing is permanent.
Crypto uses his Anal Probe against a cop in Belleville.	Crypto deploys a Venus Human Trap with the skyscrapers of Shen Long in the background.

Evil Dead: Regeneration (2004-2005)

Evil Dead: Regeneration was a third person action game for the Playstation 2, Xbox and PC, built with proprietary tools in Maya, Renderware and Lua scripting. Based on the cult classic B-movie series, it chronicled the continuing misadventures of Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his battle against the legions of Deadites.

The game envisions an alternate ending to Evil Dead II where Ash is blamed for the massacre at the infamous cabin and committed to the Sunny Meadows Asylum. As fate would have it, the asylum director, Dr. Reinhard uses Knowby's diary to unleash the evil once again in a classic attempt to take over the world. It's up to Ash, armed with a chainsaw for a hand, his trusty boomstick, and a neverending supply of one-liners, to stop the mad scientist. But this time, Ash won't be alone as he is joined by his immortal half-Deadite midget sidekick, Sam (Ted Raimi), the twisted byproduct of Reinhard's occult experiments.

• I was responsible for scripting 3 of the game's 10 levels: Sunny Meadows Graveyard, the Forsaken Mines, and the Swamp.
  
• I prepared detailed documentation for these levels to communicate the design to the larger team.
  
• I placed gameplay systems, including props, spawners, triggers, and pathing using Maya. I also used Maya to produce collision hulls for level geometry and set up in-game cinematics.
  
• I scripted dozens of battles and scenarios in Lua. Some of the more interesting things I had to implement were:
  
  • A sequence in the Graveyard where Ash's Deadite sidekick, Sam, finds a way to hop onto the head of a giant Deadite and drives him through skeletons and everything else in his way, eventually smashing a gate that blocked Ash's progress.
    
  • A chaotic series of conveyor belts, crushing pistons, and grinding sawblades that Sam had to negotiate in the Mines.
    
  • A confrontation in the Swamp where a giant Deadite repeatedly summons bloated Deadites to his aid that rush toward the player and explode in a cloud of noxious gas.

The one-eyed gatekeeper of the Graveyard, several missions circle around Sam collecting spirits to feed the gatekeeper.	The maze-like, multi-tiered central chamber of the Mines was no friend to our AI pathing, or to the poor soul who had to make the simplified collision hull for it *shivers*.
Here in the Swamp, Ash uses his Harpoon Gun to snare a Deadite. The Swamp was a fun level to do, as it provided a short and brutal free-for-all in between two of the larger sites, the Shipyard and the Town.	Creating compelling combat scenarios was vital. While it's possible to take out perched enemies with a pistol, you could use the Harpoon Gun to bring them down to your level... or punt your sidekick onto their heads. That works too.