Revelations is a six minute cut scene set in the End Times. It tells the story of priest Alejandro Dominguez, and his descent into demon-bred madness over the period of six days. The cut scene was developed in two weeks by a three person team, with myself focusing on script and story, Sela Davis on sound, and Kapish Rawat on imagery.
-Download the cut scene design.
Revelations ©2009
ShatterSoul is an action-puzzle game that follows protagonist, Karm, on his journey to return to the world of the living. Along the way, the player discovers dark secrets about the birth of the universe and the very nature of the gods themselves. The game story and characters were composed by myself, and loosely based on Kapish Rawat's original ideas.
-Download the ShatterSoul story description.
ShatterSoul ©2008-2009, ShatterSoul team
Invasion: CUTE takes place in a universe where all beings were once adorable (except for the ones that were exiled to a leper colony on the moon). But unfortunately, as this tale begins, the delicate imbalance has been endangered by stuffed animal, turned surgeon, turned vigilante, Dr. Theodore Bear. Now at the mercy of the fiendish ugly beam, the only hope for the Confederacy of Cute lies with a bookish fuzzball, a flying mechanic, and a disciple of the God of Cute. But all is not yet lost. On their heroic journey through the fluff mines of Spindle, the K.U.T.E news studios, and the savage jungle territory of the Cutequistadors, they may just happen upon an uplifting moral for us all to savor. The Invasion: CUTE saga was composed by myself and Jay Austin.
-Download the Invasion: CUTE story description.
Invasion: CUTE ©2008-2009, Invasion: CUTE team
Disconnected is a 10 minute play about the unique social problems surrounding MMO players and their friends. The play's purpose was to explore the difference between "real" and online relationships, while exposing the audience to MMOs in a fun and funny way. Disconnected was presented on stage by a company of student actors in the Spring of 2008.
-Download the Disconnected script .
Disconnected ©2008-2009, Chip Hilseberg
The Observer Effect is a hybrid action-puzzle and rhythm game where the player's main tool is mind control. In one mode, the player explores and manipulates dungeons that are built from a victim’s thoughts. In another mode, the player takes control of multiple characters' brains and guides their interactions to solve puzzles. However, the more the player breaks the characters' wills, the more complex of a rhythm they'll have to maintain. The Observer Effect was designed over a period of six weeks and was selected for presentation in the final round of student pitchs.
-Download the Observer Effect high concept or (partial) design document .
The Observer Effect ©2009, Chip Hilseberg
ShatterSoul is an action-puzzle game with two mechanics based on "soul splitting." In the first mechanic, the player controls two copies of their soul over the same time frame, by guiding the old soul first and then rewinding time to guide the new soul. The new soul is able to benefit from the actions of the old soul over the time frame allowing teamwork. In the second mechanic, the player can split up and swap between the two souls at anytime, but if the second soul ever sees the first soul, the player dies. ShatterSoul was originally conceived by Kapish Rawat, with my contributions being critical path and mechanics refinement, UI design, and story.
-Download the ShatterSoul treatment .
ShatterSoul ©2008-2009, ShatterSoul team.
Flow of Knowledge is a World of Warcraft community site focusing on theorycraft information. The problems that FoK was created to address were the complexity of theorycraft information, its poor organization, and the difficulties that new players face in contributing to discussion. FoK solved these problems by creating levels of expertise that allow new players to grow and learn, while distilling knowledge into forms that everyone can understand. Through our linked and permeable structure, we rebuilt user expectations to create a welcoming environment for the noob and expert alike. FoK was jointly developed over four weeks by myself and Josh Wilson.
-Download the FoK design document .
Flow of Knowledge ©2009, Chip Hilseberg and Josh Wilson.
Entropy is a real-time strategy game (RTS) focusing on breeding mechanics for army building. Players are give 10-robot armies of identical strength
and forced to wage war until one player's army is reduced to spare parts. Players increase the strength of their army by breeding two robots to produce a more
powerful offspring that has attributes related to its parents. Robots that perfect an attribute (speed, range, sex appeal, etc) are given special active abilities that
can be used in the battle. Entropy was conceived, designed, and coded over a 3 month period by two main developers. I specifically managed the network code, game rules,
and AI features (evolution, path finding, and fighting code).
-View Entropy documentation, media, and the developer's journal here.
-Download the Entropy installer or source .
Entropy ©2007-2009, Chip Hilseberg and Aditya Gaddam.
Zeal is an RTS/computer augmented board game where players use their hands to wage war on a shared table top. Using an ordinary web cam and a set of printed markers,
the Zeal system is able to translate real world movements into game world actions. As players move their markers across the table, their soldiers march across the terrain.
When their markers draw close, their soldiers battle. Additionally, players wear special gloves that allow them to cast spells over the battlefield. These spells can burning enemy soldiers and teleport friendly ones.
Zeal was developed for a 3D Graphics Programming course over ten weeks by a team of six students. My responsibilities included: augmented reality integration, animation, game logic,
modeling, and battle AI.
-View a gameplay video or screenshots from Zeal.
Zeal ©2009-2010, Zeal team.
A ray tracer that can render a scene composed of various solids with reflections, lighting, and shadows. The contents of the scene are specified in a file that is read into the program at the start. The file can contain syntax that specifies arbitrary camera postion and direction, arbitrary resolution, triangle and sphere primatives, and materials defined by color, phong exponent, and specularity. The result of the tracing is written to a bitmap.
-Instructions, executable, source code, and screenshots can be found here .
©2008, Chip Hilseberg.
WoW-AIM - An add-on that allowed players to use the in-game chat box to converse with friends using the AIM software. The add-on communicated with a Perl program running outside of the game that was able to relay messages to AIM using the Net::Oscar module. Communication between the add-on and Perl program was provided through the WoW keybindings file, which was used to exchange data and control messages. Unfortunately, the save behavior of the keybindings file was changed in a patch, which made communication between WoW and any outside program impossible.
-Source code and Screenshots can be found here.
Chain Rule - An add-on for targeting a heal spell that chained between three targets. It was composed of a distributed helper add-on that reported where a player was in reference to others (within jump distance or not) and a "status" module for Grid (a popular unit frames add-on) that displayed helpful information. At the time of its discontinuation, Chain Rule had over 10,000 downloads and was previously recommended on the top theorycrafting site, Elitist Jerks.
TaeoUI is a self-configuring interface modification for World of Warcraft. It was originally created as a static, high resolution (1920x1080) UI, but was upgraded to support
a number of dynamic features. My contribution to the project was the configuration add-on which supports:
-Visit the TaeoUI site for screenshots, the developer blog, and downloads.