Game Design – Nicolas Barriere

This past weekend I got the opportunity to participate in the 2011 edition of the Global Game Jam as part of the Montreal Chapter. This year’s theme was “Extinction”, which was a fairly intense to tackle. In a very intense 48 hours, Team Silly Goose and I were able to crank out a very interesting project. Fataliste tells the story of a little girl that tries and defy the inevitability of the end. It’s a single-player linear platformer.

During the project, I got to help consolidate the project, create 3D art models and textures, also while composing some music and sound effects. I really pushed myself in a number of different fields, with only 5 hours of measly sleep during the weekend.

I love the jam format. It’s pretty amazing seeing everyone in a single room completely involved consumed by all working in a single idea. This event really helped me realize how much I’ve learned since starting and graduating from school. I’m also ecstatic by the fact that I finally got to collaborate with people whom I have wanted to for a very long time. It was definitely a project of dedicated passion. Try it out and give feedback!

Play: link

Download: Windows, OSX

The Sandbox level in ENDI Tank Battle is the first map experienced by the player. It is primarily the most iconic out of all the levels, having been spawned almost immediately during the first moments of production and having gone through several iterations to get to its current state. It embodies a lot of the ideas about childhood and exaggerated imagination the team and I wanted to include from the onset of the project.

I wanted to share the design ideas to better demonstrate the process behind the map and different areas encompassing it.

Read more »

It is my great pleasure to announce the third game I’ve worked on as both game and level designer: ENDI Tank Battle. A 3D vehicular combat game built with the Unity Game Engine for iPhone, iPad and iTouch portable devices. Players control tiny tanks and fight other miniature vehicles in oversized childhood environments in more than 20 missions. With accurate motion and simple controls, players move forward/backward by pressing two buttons, turn by tilting the device and firing their cannon by tapping anywhere on the screen.

This was an incredible project to work on. I learned an incredible amount of precious game design knowledge and go to work with amazing and inspiring people that delivered spectacular work on all levels. In the end, I feel the game looks amazing visually and is accessible and fun. The game will be released on the Apple Appstore in September 2010 as a free downloadable game.  I do hope you’ll try it out.

D.N.A / A.D.N is an experimental game created in 36 hours for the Bivouac Urbain 2010 Game Jam. Inspired by the song “Dan Dan” by electronic group “Misteur Vallaire”, the player controls an avatar and must learn to evolve correctly by absorbing various combination of shapes, while always accelerating and avoiding gates that slow the player’s current speed. The game presents a very soothing atmosphere that opens the way for a relaxed play style.

This was a good opportunity and my teammates to try out a more artistic and emotive approach to creating games. Bivouac Urbain was the perfect place to experiment so we jumped on the opportunity. The game we ended up creating is unchanged from our initial concept. Many aspects of gameplay therefore came out frustrating at best. The game was built in 36 hours with a team of 5: 2 programmers, 2 artists and me as designer.

The game currently is not online. Thank you for understanding and enjoy some screenshots.

290 polygonss. Simple diffuse texture done with the help of Photoshop. I’m diving back into painting/texturing.

I recently spent some time discovering the world of architectural rendering. It’s been a very fun and rewarding experience. The room is based on reference from an Ikea catalogue and rendered with Vray.

I’m working on some models and textures on a music video for MVMT and jazz/rap band Blitz: The Ambassador. Just a simple retro boombox and casette:

My first demo reel in english is finally completed! It mainly showcases my work design, model and texture work for projects related to the Unreal 3 engine. Here’s the video! You can also watch it here for a better ambiance.

Odd1 Inc was gracious enough to permit me to show some work I had done for my last video game project: Odd Society. This reel mainly showcases low-poly model work and textures.

Here are some models I’ve been working since I’ve finished school.

The robot (Steamy McSteam) his basically a joke/mascot character my team and I made up during my final studies project. Since it was a steampunk, we figured “Why not make a character that encompasses everything steampunk is about, but… as a robot!”. Of course, the model isn’t that stylized like that now, but the name stuck nonetheless. I didn’t do a concept phase and started designing and modelling directly in 3DS Max. Steamy is about 18 000 polys and will be rigged and animated after I get around to texturing the fella.

The truck is for a student game project I’m currently involved to keep myself busy like an irrational bee. There’s not a lot of details to talk about, we just started. I had never modelled a vehicle before, so this was a nice challenge. The tanker part was easy, but the driver’s area took a while for me to figure out how to built it efficiently so I wouldn’t have to go back later and undo mistakes.  It’s somewhat optimized for game engines, with a poly count of around 7000. I didn’t have any clear guidelines, so I may need to cut down on some details like the drivers area. I’ve realized this recently: you can’t cheat cylindrical shapes in low-poly models, it almost always looks bad.

If you like Steamy’s desigh, I made this. I was bored and I’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 in my downtime.