Unreal Fellowship
Broken Wing is my personal project created during the three week fellowship program. I implemented gameplay to achieve a high quality arcade experience that includes these features as intended for playing on a single joystick:
Curriculum Vitae
Welcome to my portfolio. My name is James, but feel free to call me Jim. I am a level and narrative designer living in the Greater Vancouver Area of British Columbia, Canada. Before games I spent more than 6 years…
Leading the Player Abilities team
Project: MythForce Engine: Unreal Editor 4 Feature: Player Abilities After unexpected attrition on the design team, I was quickly offered a chance to lead the Player Abilities team towards a critical milestone. This lightweight group made excellent progress in these two…
Narrative treatment for Game Characters
Project: MythForce Engine: Unreal Editor 4 Character: Hawkins, the Ultimate Archer My role in creating Hawkins was to lead the team of three who prototyped, implemented, animated, and added visual polish to his abilities including a transparent shader. I worked with…
Research on Tomb Raider’s Third Person Camera
The Tomb Raider reboot from 2013 will always hold a special place in my heart. I frequently list it as one of the best examples of Open World design, but also one that captures the evocative potential of camera in…
Action Verbs for the Ultimate Archer
Project: MythForce Engine: Unreal Editor 4 Character: Hawkins, the Ultimate Archer Teamplay Archetype for Hawkins Ranged Initiator and Escape Expert These three player abilities are the most impactful verbs for Hawkins’ portrayal Design Intentions Hawkins uses strong bow weapon attacks, as…
Class-based upgrade systems
Project: MythForce Engine: Unreal Editor 4 Feature: Player Abilities For each of our twelve abilities, I designed and reached approval on three additional upgrades. These varied in scope, with the original intention that each upgrade must add a differentiator on the…
Mentoring at Vancouver Film School
Role: Mentor for student’s final projects Engine: Unity and Unreal Editor 4 When: Once a week over ~4 month period, from 2016-2019 Let’s focus on F.R.O.G., which is a VFS student project made in Unity. It is one of many games to…
Modding support for Tuning Packs
Project: Company of Heroes 3 Engine: Essence, a proprietary engine at Relic Feature: User Generated Content (UGC) It was just over a month until Launch day, and I discovered our public editor was missing features. There was little production team knowledge…
Ghosts n’ Goblins x Dead Rising 4
Project: Dead Rising 4 / CAPCOM Heroes Engine: Forge, a proprietary engine at CAPCOM Vancouver Character: Arthur costume from Ghosts n’ Goblins series Goblin Target Practice A variation on Shoot Targets archetype where five dangerous, evolved zombies must be hit once…
Technical Gameplay and Level Design
I joined the team in mid-production, a bit over 6 months before this release candidate build.Initially, I audited project workflows and architecture; to improve consistency and advocate better for designer empowerment.
Nightingale
I implemented “A Realmwalker’s Initiation” along with the rest of Aurelio Acevedo Ortega’s plot line, and more. My contributions as a Senior Narrative Designer all fell within the eight month period leading up to Early Access launch. Looking for something…