Game Development

Space Quest: 2099

Space Quest 2099 Trailer

(2017 - Present)

Space Quest 2099 is a stylised, multiplayer, sci-fi, action-driven first person shooter. Think Quake 3 meets Command and Conquer, complete with live action cutscenes, terribly cheesy one liners, and an utterly balls to the wall stupid cooperative campaign!

Grab some friends and take control of Thunderchild's intrepid crew to embark on intergalactic space adventures! Alternatively, blow each other to smithereens in Space Quest's deathmatch suite!

Gameplay reminiscent of the glory days of late 1990s and early 2000s cheese by Raven Software

This game is actually an old school project that flew WAYYYY out of control. I've tinkered with Space Quest on and off for the past couple of years now. It's a project that was started when I was seventeen years old as a way to procrastinate doing A level maths, and was last touched when I was twenty a couple years back. I'd never really gotten around to releasing it, but here it is now. For free. For the world.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1860550/Space_Quest_2099/

Insane Ian

Insane Ian Trailer and Breakdown

(2021-2022)

Insane Ian is the flagship team project of the 3rd year of my Computer Science degree. Fundamentally, this was a technical project designed to cram as many custom-written techs into the context of a game. One of the limitations in 2021 was the requirement for the game to run in a browser with no installation required. HTML-5 was used, with a harsh limit of 2GB of RAM available for the whole virtual machine.

Top Five Contributions:
1. We replaced Unity’s physics components with our own, using C++ to directly access Unity’s internal physics engine, enabling deeper access to simulation data and finer control over physics events.

2. We implemented real time networked physics and dynamic interactions with lag compensation algorithms and smooth correction of vehicle velocity and rotational velocity across up to 12 clients.

3. We created a detailed soft body physics solution by developing scripts for intricate, multi frame mesh deformations.

4. We Implemented high quality audio communication across multiple users and integrated the feature seamlessly into our gameplay.

5. We utilised a meticulous agile team process with over 100 team meetings and 1200 content commits to our version control repository (>1800 including merges) to tackle the ∼260 tracked tasks we created.

Insane Ian is a multiplayer action racing game in which teams of two cooperatively pilot vehicles and attempt to score the most points within a three-minute match against other teams. Points are scored by destroying the vehicle of another team or by holding the Gubbinz; an object which powers up your vehicle but makes you much more of a target. We have made extreme optimisations to allow networked mesh-deforming collisions to run in a browser.
Players can pay as one of two roles: driver or gunner. Drivers have control over the motion of the vehicle and have both offensive and defensive responsibilities. They must keep themselves out of harm’s way but can also deal considerable damage to opponent vehicles by ramming into them. Gunners on the other hand have a clear offensive role. Their objective is to deal as much damage to enemies as possible. Communication between drivers and gunners is essential for maximum success. We have built in several features which specifically reward teamwork. For example, gunners can select a target vehicle for the driver. If the driver then collides with the target, increased ramming damage will be dealt.

Full project report available here.

Commodore Mandeville: Revenge Of The Martians

Revenge of The Martians Trailer

(2020 - 2021)

Revenge Of The Martians is a 3-D strategy game inspired by Jeff Wayne's musical War Of The Worlds.
Set 100 years after the defeat of the Martian incursion into Victorian England, the game takes place in a steampunk alternate reality. As soon as the first of the Fighting Machines fell, our industrious minds set about deconstructing - pulling apart their huge metal frames. The will of a nation descended upon understanding, learning from, and ultimately arming ourselves with their arcane knowledge. The unequal jumpstart of technology led to the next wave of British colonisation - SPACE. The British surge outwards into the galaxy, powered by half Victorian, half Martian powered steampunk spacecraft. Specially designed from what they learned defeating tripods with the Thunderchild.
Unbeknownst to The Crown, The Martians had also tried invading other worlds across the galaxy - and even succeeded in some cases. For one hundred years they lay dormant, but have now awoken - faced with the sprawling might of the Royal Galactic Navy.

Unfortunately, although this game is functionally complete (skirmish matches are playable), I have not had the time to finish Revenge Of The Martians. As such, strategic depth is not as rich as I would have liked, and placeholder assets are not uncommon. The technical depth is all evident, however. Ships are designed modularly, with independent on-board subsystems each with their own controller agent. All ships are outfitted with independent AI behaviours. The project itself was, for me, a technical exercise in software engineering with many interconnected and concurrent processes - almost akin to microservices - albeit contained within a single game.

Original Soundtrack by Jack Connor.

Officer Training Manual Download.

Game:
https://leversoftware.itch.io/commodore-mandeville

THEY CAME FIRST (Remake)

They Came First (Remake) Trailer

(April 2020)

Winner of the international Scream Machine horror Gamejam.

A psychedelic lucid dream horror synthscape… where you’re an egg.

They Came First is an experimental horror game capturing creative use of camera angles, lighting, and glitch effects that - with the use of a heavily synth based sound design - attempts to create an altogether nightmarish machine-scape.
The camera makes heavy use of virtual tracks, varying focal lengths, fields of view, and perlin noise - all dictated by a 'heuristic cameraman' to add to the experience.

Inspired by the winning concept developed in the 2019 css gamejam – this game is a test bed for the bizarre machinations of a mind in lockdown.

This project was another venture with my musician friend Jack Connor. Sound design is an extremely pertinent aspect to the experience of They Came First.
Original soundtrack by Jack Connor.

https://leversoftware.itch.io/they-came-first

Magnum Opus

Magnum Opus Boss Fight

(2022 - 24 hour Gamejam)

Magnum Opus: The final University of Bristol gamejam by Jordan Taylor. Going out with a bang.
Winner: Best overall.
Theme: It's not a bug it's a feature.

Magnum Opus is a third person, live action, stop-motion horror adventure created in 36 hours for the 2022 CSS Gamejam. It originally featured live processed sound effects on an external modular analogue synth, however the downloadable version is only software based. Numerous graphical effects were created, including global visual noise spikes, static, and a variant of chromatic abberation.

Sound effects made using foley and the analogue synth. I broke myself a bit making this.

https://leversoftware.itch.io/magnum-opus

Behind the scenes documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXZ2VF6VT-Y

GO BACK TO HELL: Death is Just The Beginning

GO BACK TO HELL: Gameplay

(2021 - 24 hour Gamejam)

Winner of Bristol Computer Science 2021 Gamejam People's Choice award.
Theme: The Start is The Beginning
An on-rails shooter contained completely within Powerpoint. Naturally, this game had a very out-of-left-field development and development style.

While not one of the most traditionally technical games I've made, I don't think anyone could ask for more Microsoft Office proficiency.

The game originally kept track of a measure of health using macros and VBA scripts, however these had to be removed due to the University's security concerns.

https://leversoftware.itch.io/go-back-to-hell-death-is-just-the-beginning

Flash Gordon: Race For Ajax
(2020 - 24 hour Gamejam)

Winner of Bristol Computer Science 2020 Gamejam People's Choice award. This gamejam was completed fully remotely. As such, my motivation for working through the whole 24 hours was rather diminished. Therefore, this game was made with the challenge of fitting development all within an 8 hour work day (plus a little bit of overtime for polish). Paypal were sponsoring 2020's gamejam, and the representative seemed to approve of my working practice - although whether this is reflected in the company's work culture is yet to be seen.

Flash Gordon Race For Ajax can be played online in browser at:

https://leversoftware.itch.io/flash-gordon-race-for-ajax

They Came First (Original)
(2019 - 24 hour Gamejam)

Winner of the 2019 CSS UoB Gamejam - Best Overall. The first of two years I wanted to 'tryhard' at the University Gamejam - the second being for Magnum Opus. They Came First is a surreal 3D egg-based horror platformer created by a team of six majorly green and fresh faced students.

I felt the idea and setting had a lot more to explore. As such, this game formed the basis for a much more substantial sequel created in 2020.

(Renamed to Who-Came-First because of the sequel) https://leversoftware.itch.io/who-came-first

Turncoat
(2018 - 24 hour Gamejam)

Trust nobody. Not even your jacket.

A team based arena shooter with a twist. Deceive your foes and work with your allies to lead you to victory!

You are able to change your appearance at will, creating shrouds of secrecy between players.

The making of Turncoat is not exactly an experience I would enjoy re-enacting. It involved the hastily bodged development of a hard-coded client-server based multiplayer game.

Was it successful? Yes.

Is it any good? Arguably.

The project was given note for the achievement of creating a multiplayer game in 24 hours, however - in honesty - its graphics and gameplay are lacking.

If you're an employer stumbling across my portfolio, take this as evidence that I'm able to bodge things at ridiculous speeds - I just ask you that you don't make me.

Testbed Terror

Testbed Terror Trailer

(2015 - 2016)

BLAST YOUR WAY through an old-school single player campaign across three distinct realms!
From the depths of places unknown, legions of abominations arise– sowing destruction in their wake!
Grin with sadistic glee as Blood, guts and entrails hurl themselves apart at your hand to the tune of (mostly) witty one liners and an original soundtrack!
Some call Testbed Terror the unexpected love child between Serious Sam and Doom, and who can blame them? With increasingly fast paced gameplay, explosive jumping, hidden items and secrets; Testbed Terror captures the charm of 90's shooters.
Now, go smash those bastidges!

In all seriousness, Testbed Terror is not a game I look back on with pride. I take it as a case study of not having good programming and development practices, lack of overall art and game direction, as well as a bit of a quantity over quality attitude.
Having said that, this was my first 'large' game, and I'm fairly proud of 15 year old me throwing this together.

Original soundtrack by Jack Connor

https://store.steampowered.com/app/674910/Testbed_Terror/

Monkeh II: A Space Adventure

Monkeh II: A Space Adventure Screenshots

(2013)

Monkeh II - What is essentially a cheesy experiment with the Unity engine sees the player fight their way through space against hordes of mutant 'Monkehs' with the crew of the UNS: Thunderchild. A first person shooter with multiple environments, Monkeh II was one of my first forays into making something ambitious - with a (mostly) original soundtrack as well as multiple types of friendly and hostile Ai.

The game also features an experimental multiplayer expansion pack. The server software only supports deathmatch over LAN. This was my first experience with any sort of concurrent programming and network stuff. Suffice to say, fourteen year old Jordan was very perplexed.

Despite not looking or playing the best, this game has a soft spot in my heart. As such, it provided a great deal of inspiration for the successful Space Quest: 2099 which started development three years later (and is still being updated to this day).

https://gamejolt.com/games/monkeh-ii-a-space-adventure/149436
https://www.indiedb.com/games/monkeh-ii-a-space-adventure

Monkeh I: The First One

Monkeh 1: The First One

(2011-2012)

Monkeh I: The First One is the first 'real' game I ever put together. It was built in an early version of the Unity Engine (Unity 3.1). Although looking incredibly amateur and archaic, it was the project that got me into programming - and ultimately computer science. At the time, eleven year old me was too stubborn to look at or follow tutorials, so the game just sort of follows a mechanical progression of "ehh, this works" and "nice, this seems cool, I'll add it". Features such as a menu and even health are absent from the game, meaning you have to complete the game in a single sitting.

https://www.indiedb.com/games/monkeh-the-first-one

Super Nova

Okay, we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Super-Nova is the result of my only entry to any three-hour gamejam. The theme was 'stars'.

Super Nova pits your as the driver of a rocket-powered Vauxhall Nova, violently flying through space as you dash away from a Supernova - hurtling by the suspiciously densely packed planetoids that seek to plunge you to your doom!

I'm a bit cheeky because this game didn't actually win any awards, I just think it's funny.

WARNING: Strong and crude language https://leversoftware.itch.io/super-nova