coda

Although I did all of Coda's art, most of my time was spent in UnrealScript

2009
www.codamod.com

I go by the nick name "Denrei" in Coda's community.

With only two developers on the entire project, my responsibilities included the design, all art, all game code, several maps, effects, web page art, and UI art. Most of my time on Coda was spent programming. Detailed histories of the tasks required are available in the Coda bug tracker. I am currently working on a series of Coda comics for our fans who have voiced an interest in Coda's plot. Coda is currently being ported to Epic's recently released UDK.

Coda's focus is on thoughtful, unforgiving, competitive, fast paced and stylish team-based gameplay. Coda has a sword combat system that interprets player mouse movements as attacks. Tightly integrated into the sword fighting gameplay are a maneuvering system based on the 2D fighter genre and unique magic system.

Coda Tutorial 701

Coda Particle Effects Demo

Some of Coda's notable accomplishments include:

• MakeSomethingUnrealContest Phase 1 Winner
• MakeSomethingUnrealContest Phase 2 Winner
• MakeSomethingUnrealContest Phase 3 Winner
• Auto Updater/Installer
• First and only total conversion on the PlayStation3
• Original magic system
• Original item system
• Interesting and competitive sword combat
• Localized to 5 languages
• 9 maps at launch
• 4 original characters
• Customizable character color palettes
• Rideable Mule vehicle with mounted sword attacks
• Highly polished network simulation

Coda's art was created in Maya using my DenreiMaya scripts. You can check out the game's documentation in the CodaWiki, but watching the tutorials we made for the Coda community is probably the best way to get the gist of what Coda is all about.

Coda Video Tutorial Series: Please be patient as these load, they are kind of huge.

101Basics|201Taiji|301Combat|401Combat|501Combat|601Xing|701XingFuse

pubcrawl

Using these very simple, general tools we were able to create an entire adventure game experience

2006

The goal for this playable milestone was to create a simple environment which would test our new Maya driven script node system. The system proved itself extremely powerful and extensible. We ended up being able to achieve far more complexity than initially expected.
Arbitrary data could be specified in Maya on scene nodes that would then be exposed to the python game code at run time. This allowed the game to be built very quickly in Maya and Python with little need to touch the core engine C++ code. Using these very simple, general tools we were able to create an entire adventure game experience including complex trigger dependencies, an animation system, pool physics and many clever little bits which make PubCrawl memorable.

PubCrawl was built in Maya using my Lithium scripts.

I did all the art, export scripts and game design. Tony defined general use triggers and parameters in python and I used them in Maya to build the game, animations and puzzles. Chris Olsen created pubcrawl's scene graph and renderer.
Tony Magro wrote the game code.
http://www.stolennotebook.com/games/
pubcrawl official gallery

crossblast

2006

For this project, the StolenNotebook team decided to create the best Crossfire clone possible in 24 hours. Our goal was to test the usability of our in-development engine and tools. The result is CrossBlast: Struggle of a Lifetime, a fast paced and deadly futuristic game of high-stakes goal making. A tournament was held right after development completed, which I'm proud to say I won. I did all the art and export scripts. Tony defined general use triggers and parameters in python and I used them in Maya to build the game and animations. Chris Olsen created CrossBlast's engine
Tony Magro wrote the game code and physics
Matt Hammer wrote the theme song and lent his likeness
http://www.stolennotebook.com/games/
crossblast official gallery

DoE

2004

We took this demo to Electronic Entertainment Expo 2005, where we showed off the networked sword combat gameplay to publishing representatives on a pair of wireless laptops

Disruption of Essence was the first major project for StolenNotebook in 2004, before our team even had a name. It is easy to identify as the grandfather of CodaMod. We had our own engine that featured blended animation trees, server-client networking, normal mapping, and particle effects.

Chris Olsen created the engine
Tony Magro wrote the game code and networking
Nate Griswold wrote game code
I did all the art and game design

hunt fish camp

2005

A Half-Life 2 mod where the main goal is to hunt various types of wildlife. There was a basic ecosystem with birds, bears, headcrabs, and some other creatures. The animals had basic needs like hunger, sleep, and procreation. The game was really cool because the world just took care of itself. You would spawn into a level and walk around seeing all these cool interactions between species. You could also string up any birds you shot and walk around dragging them behind you.

HFC Bear (1804 Triangles)
run, run right, run left, eat, attack, sleep, idle, 8 directional walks

Tony Magro designed and wrote the whole thing.
I did a few guns, level design, modified a Half-Life 2 guy (Tony's request was that he be compliant with the blaze orange attire requirements of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries) and added a bear with several animations. The bear had a full collision model and excellent ragdoll.