2009 – 2011
In Development was my first attempt at game development outside of my undergraduate studies. I was the lead designer and lead programmer of the project. I started working on it during the summer before my freshman year of college, and ended the project 2 years later. I stopped working on the project because I wanted to focus my time on my studies.
In Development is a Source mod about the journey through a psychologically insane game developer’s mind. The player wanders through incomplete games that have been twisted by the developer’s psychological illness. The player will be pursed by creatures called “Dements”, which are impervious to conventional weapons. For the first portion of the game, the player has no choice but to run from the Dements. Once they player finds the “Developer Weapons”, the player can fight back.
The “Developer Weapons” are weapons that are based off programming terms. These weapons were designed to add a unique playstyle to the game, instead of having the usual machine gun or shotgun. Some of these weapons are the Breakpoint, the Pointer, and the StepOver. During development, only the StepOver was finished.
The Step Over is a weapon that teleports the player directly behind the enemy. The player then has a short opportunity to kill the enemy instantly. While this does seem overpowered, the weapon is only useful for separated targets. When there is a large group of enemies, teleporting into the group will just end with the player’s death.
You can see a developer video showing the weapons below. You can even see an earlier iteration of the Pointer weapon from Root Force.
Be warned that my presentation skills were not fully developed at the time of making this video.
There were also plans to add a cinematic system to the mod. This was designed to improve upon the Source engine and give other mod developers a tool they can use to improve their own mod. The cinematic system would allow developers to control the camera of the player and add a simple dialogue selection prompt during cutscenes. This would allow for more choices and options for the modder’s story.
If you’d like to learn more about In Development, you can visit the ModDB page here.