Odds and Ends
Every one can come up with ideas. Not everyone can analyze these ideas and work to improve them further, even beyond a “finished” product. The ability to accept and generate thoughtful feedback from a variety of sources is the marker of a true designer.
In the following section I’ve created a variety of smaller, less complete ideas, formed from filling holes in other designs or are smaller parts of bigger projects. One day they may get upgraded to the main document with more work.
Writers Bible
As I’ve developed my personal writing style and honed my focus on world building, I decided to try something different. Inspired by the work of Bruce Tim and the rest of the writing teams on works such as “Batman the animated series”, I’ve chosen to create my own “writers bible”, as if one of my own universes was a similar animated show or run of comics requiring a team of writers and designers. This was inspired by the publicly available “Batman The Animated Series” writers bible that was written before the show even began production.
I began with a variety of character and location briefs that would give all of the necessary details about each major characters/locations background, what the initial vision of them looks like, and how they play into the larger world. This then links into a comic book inspired story set in this universe with the working title “Cero: Midnight Sun”.
Goal: Create a writes bible for a preverbal team of writers to create a series. Studying what works in other medias and adding personal spins to make the ideas my own.
Results: This inspired a new work for me that maybe can get published along with other work. Once it gets more defined it will be on the “Creative projects” page.
Dead Island 2 Class concepts
In October of 2024, the developers of Dead island 2 released their own version of the classic arcade “Horde mode” found in many other zombie games, with its own spin. The players take control of “The Bobcats”. A group of zombie fighting college students who simply want to protect the neighborhood around their Frat house. The 3 playable characters represent 3 classes and playstyles to adopt for the mode that the players can tune to their liking. Every character having their own pros and cons.
Though the amount of love I have for this mode and the game as a whole is great it makes me want to see this game be the best it can be. One of the issues I have with the mode is there only being three playable characters. This is in spite of the mode still feeling designed around 4 player Co-Op. Meaning that when played as seemingly intended, two players must play the same class. Though doubling up classes is not inherently a bad thing, it can cause minor irritations to the players, and for lack of a better description, just feels wrong.
The easiest way to fix this problem is to simply add another class or two to fill the gaps left by the original trio, and that is what I came up with here.
Goal: Create new classes for neighbor hood watch that would be completely distinct from the rest of the classes in role, playstyle and personality. All while attempting to add minimal extra work for the programmers.
Overwatch Hero Outlines
Blizzard Entertainment’s “Overwatch”, is a game with such a diverse and creative roster of characters that makes it difficult to create ideas that feel completely unique. Especially 42 characters in. This was a challenge I was willing to take. I love the world the writers and designers at blizzard have created and only seek to add to it. Especially with my favorite faction aesthetically, the Deadlock gang.
Goal: Create a support hero and a tank hero that fit into the deadlock gang’s aesthetics, while feeling unique to other hero’s, and not creating mountains of new code.
Notes: Creating the abilities and conceptualizing the visual design was far from hard once I had settled on a general motif for each of the characters. The tricky part came in the form of attempting to balance the characters while still keeping what makes them, them. Luckily the rest of the fanbase was willing to aid my design process by providing valuable feedback and notes that I have worked into the final design. Tweaking numbers, cutting concepts, combining ideas, adding new ideas, all came together to create two new hero ideas, with a third in progress.
Twisted Metal Game Mode Conceptualizations
Twisted metal is a simple classic. First created back on the original Playstation, this game series is one of the most interesting concepts for a game franchise. Combining elements of shooters, fighting games, and cart racers to create a adrenaline factory of a game best described as a super demolition derby. All tying into a fantastical world where some people will do anything to make one wish.
With Twisted Metal Black, Twisted Metal 2012, and most recently the TV show solidifying the look of the franchise, the games need to do more to keep new and returning players happy. Though some of the changes introduce in 2012 didn’t rub all fans the right way, and are likely a contributing factor to their being no more games since then (as of February 2025). What should be done to change that?
Goal: Conceptualize new game modes, story mode tweaks, and other additions to freshen up a preverbal 2025 game in the franchise without alienating old players.