Christopher Eppes Bio

Hello,
I am Christopher Eppes

    I am an African American Male

 I went to Mergenthaler Vocational Highschool(Mervo) from 1999 to 2002 with a diploma in Carpentry. My birth is October 10-25-1983 born in Maryland general Hospital. I live in Baltimore Maryland a address is 1619 Abbotston Street.

I have an A.A. associates Degree in Computer Drafting and Design program at Baltimore Community College. I did most of my work with programs in CADD, Microstation, Inventor, 3ds Maxx, and Weather map creations to add to UB. I started at BCCC in 2004 and graduated in 2009.

I am a undergraduate student at University of Baltimore that is working on my Bachelor Degree in Simulation Design and Entertainment (SDE) major. I will be graduating in the Spring 2014 which is next semester proudly. I have created a game with my group recently for Capstone class this semester and will add the finishing touches next semester.

I am a employee at McDonald's restaurant as a crew trainer, cook, and register worker for my employers. I train employees to help with the work around the job. It is learning how to make the items of food on the table and screen, learn how to cook and lay food items on the grill, and clean up after themselves. Teach them how to work on the register to bring food up for customers. Show them how to take the trash out to the location it's at and clean the bathrooms, lobby and tables. I also help to lead them what need to be done and serve the customers if they the managers are doing something else when there not around.

I like to play video game on all the systems like PS2 and 3, Xbox 360, and the Wii and Wii U consoles ,which I only own a PS 2 and 3 but my nieces have the rest.I play football and sometimes basketball and look at both sports when they're on at different time. I enjoy anime and cartoons that are mostly action. Movie i enjoy too from all kinds of genre if it interest me.

I like to either work in making video games or I would like to be back in CADD again. I would like to see if I can put them together and have the best of both worlds.

Christopher Eppes thoughts and production on Oneshot

My thought this semester for the Capstone class came out good but was still frustrating in at the same time when doing the work. I was the OneShots 3D model designer to make the assets and level creator with one other person, Ossman. Brian was the music creator in the game, Jeremy was a designer in 3D models too and Ernest did most of the programming in the design of the game. I mostly did the 3D models from each level we were suppose to make, but I jumped to many levels that assigned to create. I created many assets then others that were big. I probably made 16 assets and one level. We wrote some of the documents for the the showcasing of the game over the course but I didn't offer much because I wasn't around the team much because I had other classes they didn't and 3 of my people in the group had other class together. There were so many assets that we still didn't finish seem to be to many to do that doesn't really need to be touched, but I will.
One problem I had was the lack of communication from all of us. We didn't really contact each other on the web or phone. I eventually did but should have been more. Another problem was no one really listen to other ideas I had and felt like I was under a blind sheet, so I stay to myself until something need to be address. It also felt like the game was made by one person giving ideas to the others. We all should speak and give our thoughts. I Also had work form other classes that I had to put in time for those projects.

I like the game we have now because I accomplished a step to make games later on. I want to be a 3d modeling but I would like to advance my in coding to. I have become a  3d modeler because of this and hope that it will help me to be better when modeling soon.

Ossman Malik-Thoughts on the Semester

Posted on behalf of Ossman Malik,

  Overall, I think our group accomplished a lot of hard work. We each put in effort to create the entire game. Our group consists of five members including Brian, Jeremy, Ernest, Chris and myself. Chris and I were the 3D modelers, Brian was the sound editor, Ernest was the programmer, and Jeremy was the storyboard writer. As the semester is approaching to an end, I think everyone did a good job to make everything look more realistic. For instance, when I am modeling objects, heavy machinery, and ramps I look at images for references and I have to make sure when creating the models they look clean and presentable enough to be put in the game. When a 3D artist models objects, he should rotate around the object enough times to make sure that he created each and every corner perfectly. Even though it does take me a few hours to build each object, I think I am beginning to enjoy modeling because it this is specifically what I want to do when I get a job. As I finished modeling an object such as a stack of palettes, it looked exactly like a stack of palettes because I spent hours working on that object. Along the way, I know it is taking a long time to model everything and it does not quite look anything like a game yet but when this work along with everything else is completely finished it will look a lot like a real video game and everyone will want to test play it.

  In my opinion I think the most difficult part of this project is programming because with programming you cannot make a single mistake when writing code. When you debug your code you have to make sure the code is written perfectly because if there is just even a slight error in your code the program will not run at all. Also, I think that programming takes the most amount of time to build a game because you have to understand where each and every line of code needs to fit in a proper place whereas, with any artistic jobs in the field you are given more creative freedom such as animation in which you have to see how to get the pixels moving frame by frame in order to get something like characters moving in the game, or even sound because with sound all you would really need to do is get the appropriate effects into the specific enemies, character, or objects and you would need to edit the speed of the sound. For instance, you need to make a splashing sound if a character jumps into the water. The splashing sound should last about 3-4 seconds, or if the character makes a smashing sound the smashing sound should be about 8 seconds. Overall, when we get into next semester I am hoping that when we are working on our game we will have all the models put into the game and the game will start looking like a real game when we get closer to the finishing touches.

Ossman Malik Bio

Posted on behalf of Ossman Malik,

  My name is Ossman Malik. I am a Pakistani-American. My parents emigrated from Pakistan in 1986 but I was born in the U.S. in 1988. When I was about 4 years old I started playing video games and my first system I started playing was the original Nintendo. I have enjoyed playing video games so much that when I got to near the end of high school I wanted to also create video games as a profession. I started this major first at CCBC went there for a few years and then got my associates degree. I then transferred all my credits here at UB because this program is over here and I am hoping to finish my education by 2014. After I graduate from UB I am hoping to get a job in 3D modeling because I enjoy art in the gaming field so I will have to practice the skills in my spare time in order to get the 3D modeling job.

Ernest's Thoughts on the Production of One Shot

This semester was stressful cause there were so many things due at the same time. I couldn't devote too much time to any one project. For this project, I played the role of programmer which gave me a lot of work to do early in the design process. The engine for the game is not all the way finished but it has come a long way from milestone to milestone. Getting the Unity 3D engine to work on a 2D plane proved to be difficult. I had to stop and go back to things I got stuck on many times. For example the arm rotation of the player character wasn't always perfect. First I tried to use Input.GetAxis(MouseY) to affect the rotation, but it would just constantly add or subtract from the rotation based on the mouse’s vertical movement. This caused the arm to not follow the mouse cursor correctly. After a lot of research and about a week later I found Quaternion.AngleAxis() which gave a one to one aspect ratio of following the mouse. Another challenging aspect of this semester was communication between group members. Sometimes I didn't always know what was needed for a certain milestone or what everyone else was working on. Most of the time I was working with objects made within the unity engine. Getting things to work when models from other group members were introduced took more time than I thought it would. Lack of communication also prevented something from every group member showing up in the build. I believe only work from three members showed up in the build for the final milestone. Getting this project done will help me fulfill my portfolio goal of building a game engine. I coded everything including the character movement, enemy AI, physics, and more. Hopefully after completing the engine I can dive into other design aspects of the development process. With the winter break and a whole second semester ahead of us, I hope the group and the project will come together nicely after a much needed break at the end of this semester. Also I am looking forward to building my portfolio next semester for potential employers.

Ernest Roberts Bio

Current Student in the University of Baltimore's SDE program. Previously studied game development at Full Sail University. I've made applications using Visual Studio, Adobe Flash, Processing, and Unity. Utilizing C++, C#, Actionscript, Java, and Javascript. My main roles while studying games have been programmer and designer. No online portfolio.

Jeremy Lanham-Thoughts on the Production of One Shot

  Hello once again this is Jeremy Lanham but now with a more serious post concerning the actual production of our game, One Shot. Before anything I would like to mention that I fill a lot of the groups/productions rolls. So far I have been the leader, animator, character artist and even helped with the environment assets so far. This might seem a lot like I am bragging and I would say it is a little but one person can not do everything alone and thanks to my group we managed to have a pretty successful first semester on the project.

 Overall this past semester working with Brian, Ernest, Chris and Ossman we have done pretty well with making progress and understanding each other as a group. Brian was awesome working as an additional pair of arms for other classes and this project, which I was extremely grateful for. Ernest was a star programmer who managed to do ninety percent of what ever I asked from him with no problem. Chris and Ossman definitely demonstrated a lot of potential towards what they were doing with 3d modeling and we should see a lot more from them next semester.

  This past semester has had it's ups and downs we started off fairly strong with everyone handling their own things and brainstorming ideas to take the One Shot idea to the next level. It wasn't until we got half way through the semester is when we truly started to have problems. These problems came in the form of other classes and emergencies, most if not all of our vision of the One Shot project started to become scattered or diminished among the group. Luckily we some how were able to make a final break for the end of the semester and finish decently enough

  If I had to highlight the one main problem our group had it had to be communication, even though every one in the group answered to me and I sent out the mass emails highlighting different subjects and dates. Every one in the group was not talking with each other. Actually for the whole of the semester Ernest, Brian and I remained particularly buddy buddy for lack of a better word, where as with Ossman and Chris I did not see much from them in terms of openness and communication. Yet that just isn't Ossman's and Chris's problem but the groups. I realized that to late to remedy the situation and have started to contemplate solutions for this.

  The best thing however I have found about this group is that even though we have five people we may have the biggest diversity I have ever worked with. This is not diversity in the form of race but of skill level, interests and even personality and I am sure once we fully realize this next semester we can utilize it to bring more flavor into getting our project done better then every one else.

  All in all I am looking forward to next semester and I think we can over come all of our short comings from this semester and deliver what I know will be a game that will make every one say, wow!

 

Jeremy Lanham Bio

  Hello there the name is Jeremy Lanham, I am currently a 3d simulation and digital entertainment student at University of Baltimore. I transferred to Ubalt about one year ago with an Associates of General Studies from the College of Southern Maryland. My specialties include 3d modeling, animation, game design, brain storming and critical thinking.
 
  Now that the pleasantries are out of the way here is what you should really know about me. I am an average enough guy but I am on who gets stuff done and I do not just mean stuff I have an interest in, pretty much put me in front of a task with some tools and instructions and I will figure out some way to get the job done. After all if I am going to be known for one thing across all of my references, friends and family is that I am some one you know will get the job done.

  This is pretty much who I am in summary form I have included a list of other trivia about me  below to kind of fill this post up.

Favorite Game/Series: Kingdom Hearts

Career Goals: I aim to have a career within the game industry, currently I am aiming high and would love to become a lead designer or producer.

Software Experience: Blender, 3ds max, Rhino, Solid Works, AutoCADD, Z Brush, Photoshop, illustrator, Visual C, Unity.

Programming Experience: C#, php, my sql, java, html

Portfolio site: None yet I will have one next semester.

Awesome News and Rounding up the Semester!

  Well the semester is now done which feels amazing but before this blog sort of goes silent for quite a while I would like to share two (what I would consider awesome logos).

  First of which is our actual team logo you can see at the top, the globe is not necessarily a real part of it yet but may become part of it in the future. For now we like the minimalist stamp style.

  Second logo is the title for the game we are working on OneShot: One Shot at Revenge. We have some plans for the final logo in the future but once again we prefer the minimalist style to keep it clean. I will hint however those two spheres which look good the way they are now are actually going to be a little something bigger when we start to roll down to the final weeks.

  Lastly what I want to touch on is what we are doing now that the semester is coming/is/was at an end, if you follow us you should have noticed our blog is a little bit more fancier and the other group members have started to post a small bio of themselves and their thoughts on the project thus far. I will actually be posting mine shortly after this post along with some words on behalf of other members.

  Finally we are continuing our work over the semester break and hope to have a lot of awesome stuff to show come next semester so stay tuned.

Brian Dieffenderfer-Thoughts on the Production of One Shot

  My name is Brian Dieffenderfer and I am the audio designer/modeler for Team 98310. We are currently working on a game called One Shot: One Shot at Revenge. We just finished our first semester of this two semester long project. We are a little behind where we wish to have been at this point, but we are still making progress.

  So our game (like most games) needs sound: Music, sound effects, and possibly voices. I volunteered to take care of the audio for the project. What that entails is looking for sound effects and music that we can use in our game from the internet (legally of course), altering those sounds to our liking, and creating my own sounds if I can’t find anything suitable for our needs. I am using FLS (Fruit Loops Studio) to alter as well as create sounds for the project. The biggest obstacle I have run into is finding suitable music. I have found a few decent selections, but nothing that I really have in my mind. I may end up creating my own theme song or level music, but that might become very time consuming, which is a problem because time is very important at this stage.

  At the point we are at in the project, we had hoped to have all of the environmental and level assets finished and created so we could focus on creating the levels and fine tuning next semester. Unfortunately we all kind of fell behind in that regard, so we will need to be working through winter break in order to make up for it. Since it is mostly models we need to work on, I will be jumping over and helping create the models as well as taking care of some UVs for already created assets. I will continue to work on the sound as well, but the focus as of right now is the models.

  We have also had to put some of the features in our game on hold. We want to have the camera rotate to another axis so that the perspective changes to another side of the level. We have not been able to get the camera to smoothly rotate to the side the way we want. We could probably use two different cameras and just switch between them, but we want to have a seamless transition between the two perspectives. So we have put that on hold and have made the prototype level a 2D straight line instead of being able to take turns at select areas of the level. The game can still function like this, but it takes out one of the features that would make our game stand out. So we will need to get that working by the end of production.

  Next semester we should have all of the building blocks for our stages created so we can start making a few levels for the players. I would like to create one or two of the levels because I enjoy making areas for people to enjoy exploring and play the game.

Brian Dieffenderfer Bio

My name is Brian Dieffenderfer and I am currently taking classes at the University of Baltimore. I am finishing up my third semester here after completing my associates at College of Southern Maryland. My major is in Simulation and Digital entertainment which includes the designing and production of games both digital and analog.

Over the course of my time at UB I have taken part in the design and production of many games. One of which take advantage of the Fit Bit system, using steps you take in your everyday activities and translating them into in game currency. The group I was in for that created a prototype of the game as well as the system for which I did audio design.

I would primarily like to go into in level design. I love to create areas for people to enjoy and explore. Although the more I work on sound in some of my projects, I find that I am enjoying that as well.

I do not have a portfolio site up yet, but I will be creating one soon and will post the link to it once it is up and running.

Long Post 1: Play Testing

  Well seems as though I have not updated this blog in a while but this however will be the biggest blog post to date and I might actually have to split this up into two posts. So with out further ado lets get under way.

  First of all I want to say we have been hard at work with developing our game OneShot: One Shot At Revenge, so hard in fact that we have a little request to any one who is interested and reading this. See we need to do play testing on our current build and have prepared a small zip folder and survey for the occasion.

  So if you feel you want to help us out you will find two links at the bottom of this post, one to the drop box folder for the game and the other being the link to the survey. All we ask is you run the Playtest_v0.1.exe in the OneShot_Playtest folder, then fill out the survey. It should not take more then 10 to 15 mins.

  With this being said I'd like to give a little back ground into what this play test section is. In this level for the play test the player controls a capsule that can move, jump and shoot. Controlling the capsule the player will get to the play through the tutorial level of the game there is dialog boxes to help the player along and we would like feedback on the writing.

Side Note: we are aware of these issues:

• Scale of player vs environment is way off
• The One Shot at the end does not work right
• Blocks not thorns at the end.

  It goes with out saying but I will anyway, thank you for helping us with our play tests and we really appreciate your time.

  This is the link to the game and is about 200 MB in size, just unzip the folder find the Playtest_v0.1.exe in it and you are good to go.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyh5jqolhqec3zn/OneShot_Playtest.zip

Here is the link to the survey just follow the questions and you are good to go.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qfe6_g-0Zmp2fUkMQD_AqN5hsRWc5FcPwRYgD1wer9Q/viewform