Fall 2012 - CS 4510 (EAE Senior Project I)

Now to the present...

The next two semesters I am going to be working on a team that eventually releasing a XBOX Live Indie game. Our first assignment was to come up with a game pitch.

The only thing I could come up with was a version of Mario Party or Fuzion Frenzy. I looked up the top 100 video game sales of all time, and three of the titles are Mario Party games, but I needed another hook, something else. After hearing from a fellow student that our Avatars can be used in our games, I have been looking into the possibilities. It seems like use of Avatar's is popular, and from the little I looked over the documentation on how to code them, it doesn't look all too difficult.

So last night I came up with this one page pitch and presented it in class today:



Every student will pitch an idea, and then we will all vote on them. We will narrow the list of game ideas down to 10 and then break up into 10 teams. Those teams will build another pitch with prototypes.

Summer 2012 - HEML Research Project

This summer I had the pleasure of working in the Haptics & Embedded Mechatronics Laboratory as an independent study. I worked on the research project that focuses on Shear Feedback. Using XNA I created a game demo to show off the ability of this Shear Feedback built into a game controller.

Video Showing off the controller, not my game demo:

Spring 2012 - Film 3720 (Game Development II)

This class was a second part to the previous game development class I took. This class followed the same format, with a different twist. Instead of making mobile games, we would be making web games, and instead of just working for our professor, our professor went out and got us real clients to work for.

I am not sure if I can show any videos, photos, or even talk about the game that we worked on. I have sent off an email to check on this, and will update this or another post with an update when I hear back from them.

Fall 2011 - Film 3710 (Game Development I)

This class was an introduction to the whole development cycle of game development. Starting with the IDEO design process (Umbrella Team), one page game pitches, prototyping, getting to the fun fast, having beta testers, and eventually locking all code and art content for a final mobile game product.

The class broke up into 3-4 teams and had to come up with three different game pitches based around a theme / category. I ended up being the lead programmer on the "Balloon Cargo" team.

Our first game pitch was a side scrolling, horizontal scrolling game where you would control a hot air balloon through different levels, avoid obstacles, picking up cargo, and landing on a platform to end the level.



Our second pitch was a water balloon toss game. You would play as a kid behind a fence tossing water balloons at people, cars, anything that you wanted. Whenever you hit something it would drop something (cargo), and you would collect them to earn higher scores.



Our third pitch was a puzzle / sorting game. You played as a balloon factory worker that had to sort balloons into the correct baskets. Obstacles would be in the way causing the balloons to pop, or be blown off in the wrong direction.



This ended up being the game that we made. The game had 5 themed worlds (City, Cave, Haunted House, Factory, and Forest). Each world had 6 levels that increased in difficulty. The game had a star scoring system similar to Angry Birds.

At the end of the semester we were the only team that successfully had our final product working on a mobile platform.



Some more screenshots can be found here.

Balloon Cargo


To see some of the production process check out these two blogs:
Balloon Cargo Blog
Thaddeus Beck Film 3710

Fall 2011 - Film 3500 (Film Production I)

This class was an introduction to basic film production. With this class, on one hand I had the pleasure of making a fake bomb prop for my one scene "Pumpkin Patch Surprise". And on the other hand, the sheer terror of going nose to nose with a Carolina wolf spider for my narrative "Karma".

Pumpkin Patch Surprise (First Version)


Pumpkin Patch Surprise (Second Version)


Karma


You can also see all the footage I collected of the spider here:

Summer 2011 - ART 1020 (Basic Drawing)

As part of my EAE (Entertainment Arts & Engineering) track I needed to take ART 1020. This was a studio class that focused on the fundamentals of drawing using pencil, pen, charcoal and ink.

Pencil


Pen


Ink


Charcoal


Powdered Graphite


Final (Pencil)


To see all my drawings from the class, and some progression through my final, it can be viewed here

Spring 2011 - CS 3660 (Machinima)

"Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation."

In this class Computer Science students were paired off with Film Students and set out to make cinematic productions. Both "Walking into the Ark" and "First Contact" were produced by another student and myself. We both worked on all aspects of the films. "Eden" was a 13 student team, in which I worked on character animation, scene design, and special effects.

Walking into the Ark


First Contact


Eden


To see some of the production process check out these two playlists:
First Contact
Eden

Spring 2010 - CS 3505 (Software Practice II)

This class was devoted to learning C# and XNA. It involved; writing a network protocol, making a pinball game that I had working on both Windows and the XBOX 360, and working on a 4-5 person team game that also worked on both platforms. Our game was a mix between Brick Breaker and Asteroids.

Pinball (First Version)


Pinball (Polished)

Who am I?

My name is Thaddeus Beck. I am a husband, a father, a sports fan, but at the end of the day; I am a geek. Growing up I was always fascinated with computers, electronics, and video games. It helped that my Dad worked in the IT field, and we always had a computer in the house.

After graduating High School I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my career. So instead of going to college, I just started working. I moved into some Technical Support jobs and started to play around with batch jobs. After running into limits with what batch jobs could do I expanded to scripting languages, and found that work was as much of a hobby as it was my career.

I expanded into writing GUI applications using AutoHotkey.

Inventory / Order Fulfillment program with a SQL Server backend



Stats Wizard


PR Printer


But at this point I knew I wanted to pursue a formal training in programming.

In the fall of 2007, I registered in the Undergraduate Computer Science program at the University of Utah.

With the start of this semester I will be starting my senior year. This blog will catalog my work in the EAE (Entertainment Arts & Engineering) Senior Project I class. But before I talk about the present I will first talk about what I have worked on in the past...