It’s game time: Game development students at Algonquin College finish year-long projects

Many programs end the school year with a barrage of assignments. Even more with tests. Some programs end the year with a showcase of the work students have accomplished.

Only a select number of programs end the year with a bang: releasing something made from the ground up by students alone for the public to enjoy.

Inspiration came from all kinds of places for the students of the video game development program: from the simple desire to make a fun game to a frequently remembered childhood memory inside a Montreal museum.

“There’s a museum in Montreal (the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History) that had this room with 50 people playing this game at the same time,” said Martin Lemieuxcodere, lead artist for the team behind Operation: Phoenix. “I remember there was a dinosaur game. As a kid I loved it, of course. It was just a game about aquatic reptiles; you could evolve into a bigger dinosaur and all that.

“I remember that really gave me a super immersive, super interesting experience.”

For the whole school year, third-year students of the video game development program at Algonquin College have been planning, designing, programming and now publishing their very own games.

No matter how a program ends, each is meant to set students up for success.

“We learned a lot of C++, C# and JavaScript which are essential programming languages,” said Dawson Racine, a third-year game development student. “We’ve been set up for a potential programming career in general, not just game development.”

Racine was a member of the team behind Hustle on High — a fast-paced rogue-like game encouraging quick but fun “runs” through the game.

For the past eight months, Racine and the team behind Hustle on High have been hard at work on all aspects of their game, beginning the process with one goal in mind.

“We decided day one that our number one task when designing this game was fun above everything else,” Racine said. “A lot of the other teams wanted something easier to feature at a showcase. We wanted to focus on getting anyone coming up to our game to just have fun.”

Racine said the whole first half of the eight-month development cycle was spent on programming the framework for the skill system featured in the game. The other half was dedicated to coming up with ideas for — and creating — the skills themselves.

Any project begins with a brainstorming stage. It’s a time where all ideas are welcome to set a course for the final product. Game development is no different.

While the development process often causes changes in the end goal of a product, Azzy Pope, a third-year game development student, didn’t expect to discover the process had also changed them.

“I expected myself to be considered more of a technical artist,” Pope said. “I thought I’d be more on the programming side of things, but going through the art side of this, shifting my focus from the 2D art to 3D models, helped me realize that I enjoy doing 3D models a lot more than I enjoyed the concept art and illustration stuff.”

Pope was a member of the team behind Going Once, a management simulator in which players run an auction house selling pieces of art to the highest bidder.

Gameplay is largely in the tools the player uses to determine the true worth of each painting, making for an interesting loop of trying to maximize the amount of money gained for each positive trait a painting has.

Game development isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. Sometimes developers have an idea they want to pursue but must eventually back away from, disappointed as they may be.

Pope said their team initially wanted to make a game based around art appraisal, with the player’s goal being not to sell paintings, but to spot clues and do detective work to spot forged pieces amongst legitimate ones.

“As we went on, we realized the challenges that would come with that system,” Pope said. “We realized it just wasn’t something in line with our vision for the game.”

Tristan Anglin, another student developer, faced a similar challenge during the planning process for his team’s game.

“In the very beginning we had three or four different main ideas for our game,” Anglin said. “At first, we wanted a party game; then we wanted a survival horror game. Eventually, we finally settled on making a role-playing game. This is what we came up with.”

Anglin was a member of the development team creating Blood and Lineage, a role-playing game set in the ancient Greek pantheon. Players control a lone demigod attempting to make their way to Hades to regain their powers.

Anglin said most of the team’s inspiration behind the art and gameplay came from other well known “musuo” (hack-and-slash) games such as Hyrule Warriors published by Nintendo.

While many teams looked outward for inspiration, some like Lemieuxcodere’s chose a more introspective approach to coming up with their creative vision, falling back on the museum game experience from his childhood.

Operation: Phoenix is a game which was designed to provide more than just a fun experience for players. Through its real-time strategy–based gameplay centred around controlling a fire-extinguishing fleet of drones, Lemieuxcodere and his team wanted to make a change in the world.

“One of our goals with this game was to look to the future and see what fire prevention might look like in 10 or so years,” Lemieuxcodere said. “If everything gets greenlit, if the government doesn’t stop funding, what would it look like?”

Operation: Phoenix is set in a countryside sized at roughly four square kilometres. Forest fires start periodically over the course of time — it’s up to the player to stop them using a fleet of drones.

In all, 20,000 trees can be found across the map. They weren’t placed by hand, something Lemieuxcodere was relieved to say.

The team had to go through several rounds of “rapid prototyping” to find the right way to place the foliage.

The easiest way the team tried to solve the problem was with a simple paintbrush. By “drawing” the trees in certain areas, they would be automatically placed down exactly where the team wanted them.

The team encountered an unexpected problem, though.

“With that type though, you can’t really set them on fire — there’s no interaction,” Lemieuxcodere said.

The team eventually settled on a chunk-based solution.

Chunks communicate with one another to see what needs to happen over the course of time. Lemieuxcodere said this method made interactions easier for the team to program and gave the game the realistic gameplay they wanted it to have.

With the game’s focus on the realistic destruction of a forest during a fire, lots of work had to go into the appearance each type of plant took on at each stage of destruction.

Some parts — especially the programming — proved to be a challenge, one which Lemieuxcodere looks back on fondly.

“My favourite moment of the team working together was with the foliage,” Lemieuxcodere said. “For the final implementation of that, we had three people — half the team — working together on one feature.

“We were all sitting at one computer taking turns programming one after the other. That was a really unique experience that I appreciate.”

Lemieuxcodere said the most important part of the journey for him was showing off his team’s work.

“We went to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum twice a week and showcased our game to the public there,” Lemieuxcodere said. “That was a pretty big deal for us. At the start, I was nervous, but I think I really appreciate the opportunities that gave us, the people we got to talk to.”

“It felt a lot more legitimate.”

Even before its release, Operation: Phoenix has seen great success.

“Our game is actually reaching the industry experts,” Lemieuxcodere said. “Apparently, they’re liking what they’re seeing. They see the potential in our game. That was very validating, for sure.”

For other students, the most important part of their journeys as fledgling game developers has been the experience of working together in teams.

“These are people we’ve known for a few years now. We’re friends,” said Félix Turgeon, a third-year student and leader of the team behind Honk! Ranger Rush. “It was really fun to deepen our friendships while making something that’s truly unique.

“Things didn’t always go according to plans but looking at where we started versus where we are now, I’m really proud of what we did.”

Turgeon is pleasantly surprised with how far the games have come since their inception, his team’s especially.

“As a passion project made in about eight months,” Turgeon said, “I’m really proud of all that my team has done.”

A full list of each team of student developers in addition to their games can be found here.