Amperage

Amperage is a 2D, top down, puzzle game in which a player must solve and quickly complete fantasy circuit puzzles. This game was built entirely in DigiPen's Zero Engine, a robust game engine that is actively developed in DigiPen's R&D department. You can find out more about Amperage and the Zero Engine from the links below.

• Amperage on DigiPen's Game Gallery
• Download Amperage Installer
• Zero Engine

Circuit Boards?

Amperage was the first game I worked on and completed during my time at DigiPen. Before DigiPen, I actually made a few games in Visual Basic, but to show them off now would be embarressing. Unlike most of the memories that students associate with their first game at DigiPen, I have fond memories of creating Amperage. The game was made in the GAM 100 class, the very first game class that most students at DigiPen take.

At the time, I was also in one of the entry level design classes. In the class, one of our assignments was to work on a weekly design log. Every week, we had to create a game concept and write up a very bare bones GDD. And when I say "very bare bones", I mean it. Well, for the very first assignment, I wrote up the simple GDD that turned into Amperage. I actually still have a copy of the assignment. If you're interested, you can find the original pencil and paper GDD for Amperage below.

amperage_original_gdd.pdf

Creating Circuit Boards

While creating this game, I worked as both a designer and a programmer. When students come into DigiPen, they are not expected to have any experience with game development or programming. Luckily, I had been taking programming classes since my sophomore year of highschool. Because of this, the scripting came to me very easily, allowing me to take two roles on the project.

One of the first tasks I did on the project was implementing the core mechanics. This involved implenting the basic motion of the charge on the cirucit board and how if interacts with parts of the circuit board. My primary goal was to create a toolset that would allow Dylan and I to go into the Zero Engine editor and easily create levels without even touching the scripts that ran them.

Once we had the core features implemented and some art to pretty up the environment, we were free to create any levels we could come up with. The process for this level creation was very unique and entertaining. My method for creating the levels was to first draw out the entire level on graph paper so I could quickly change and edit problems I noticed while drawing. Once I had the idea layed out on paper, the next step was to put it into the engine and playtest it. I also have some copies of these paper prototypes still. If you're interested you can find them below.

amperage_paper_prototypes.pdf

Looking Back

Whilst this project wasn't too for a first DigiPen game, there are definitely parts that could have been done differently to make the project go more smoothly than it did. For one, we were using SVN at the time. Now, after two years of using Git, I can safely say that using SVN is probably not the best choice. Additionally, with the amount of programming experience I have now, I can think of ways to implement this game that would improve the rate at which a designer could create and test the level by twice the speed that we worked with.

However, the biggest benefit this game brought was the team aspect. Before Amperage, I had never worked with a group of people on any software project. Though the project was almost purely stomping grounds for us, my teammates and I pulled a lot of experience about what it's like to work with a team. This can be anything from having team meetings to going out on a team lunch. Bear in mind this was our first team project, so we were not at the stage where we were thinking about the process of it all just yet.