| Michael Todd's Curriculum Vitae | ||
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Full name: Michael Thomas Todd Education As mentioned in my resume, I am completely home-educated, a process which began when my family moved to the Arctic region of northern Canada. I have learned to teach myself, which has resulted in a strong work ethic. My strongest areas of interest have been general science, math and a passion for reading. This has fueled my imagination and creative abilities which I use today in creating the worlds and gameplay of my game design. My main focus since the age of fourteen has been game design, and because my education has been self-governed, I've had an unusually long and intense time to study my greatest area of interest. Working with other game-designers and programmers I have made many projects, mods, maps and games in order to gain experience. I've included a variety of these projects for your perusal below. I hope that the quality of my design work will speak for itself. Skill summary Relevent previous experience Relevent jobs and Indie projects - 2008 - Teaching summer camps at Labyrinth
Gamer Cafe,
Screenshots can be found at:
Screenshots can be found at:
Worked as lead designer in a team of two, including myself and an artist. Engine of War is a fast paced shoot 'em up where
you fight waves of monsters with a large array of weapons. However,
the game also features a flexible electric circuit simulation,
which is used for building the internal circuits of your vehicle. Screenshots and a youtube video can be found at: 2007 - Racing Gears - A small hover racing game prototype, for the PC. Worked as lead designer in a team of two, including myself and an artist. Racing Gears is a racing game where the player can race along various racetracks that float in the sky, giving the game an open light feel. This is reinforced by a slightly cartoonish style. The other main concept of the game is that the player can build his own engine in the garage, using physics. Various parts that interacted with each other were designed. Screenshots can be found at: Worked on this one solo, focusing on prototyping the unusual gameplay mix. The game was done using stickfigures for the sidescrolling, allowing me to clearly show movements and abilities without a modeller on the team. The units were designed to each have a certain role on the field, such as pikemen for holding a line. The units used several types of formations, and a pathfinding system designed for squads. This would allow them to walk single file through a small gap, or walk abreast through a larger area. Also, this project featured wizards inspired by dungeons and dragons. The wizards were powerful, yet limited. They could cast each spell only once, and could memorize only one to four, based on their level. They learned spells as your charactor found teachers for them in the platform RPG part of the game. The wizards were powerful, but normal units could overcome them, by use of numbers and speed. I found that wizards worked well as walking single use abilities, and it gave the right sense of dread when the AI brought a wizard to the table, without the wizards being so powerful that the game revolved around having them. Screenshots can be found at:
Worked as lead designer in a team of three, including a level designer and a programmer. The engine for this game was built around the concept of an infinite world. The world consisted of city blocks, each with a single building or center piece on it, or several smaller houses. In reality, there were only nine city blocks in existence at any one time. The world was full of wandering survivors, zombies and mutant monsters. This project had a unique system for spawning boards, and nailing them to buildings. This allowed the player to seek shelter at night, by boarding himself in. Also, I did all the menu art for this project, as there was no artist on the team. Because of the aliens later in the game, we chose to go with a space style of menu, rather than a ghost city style. Screenshots can be found at:
Worked as lead designer in a team of three, including a level designer and a programmer. The gameplay was based on stealth, with the two teams, Thieves and Guards having various abilities around this. The Thieves could climb walls, and one-hit kill when backstabbing. Guards could sound the alarm and carry torches. Worked online with 4-players. Screenshots can be found at:
Worked as lead designer in a team of two, including myself and an AI programmer. Has a complex AI system for the battle, which could create a tactic for any of several army types. The player could play as any of six teams, which were each a character. Each team was an army commanded by a single person, including Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Erwin Rommel. Each team's units reflected the tactics of the character, such as the heavy use of fast mobile units for Rommel. The storyline and world were designed to allow greater flexiblity for the characters, to allow for both fictional and historic characters and to explore the tactics these people might use. Screenshots can be found at:
Worked as lead designer in a team of two, including myself and a programmer. Each of the two teams had four unit types, and these all interacted heavily with each other. A non-standard fantasy setting was chosen because I wished to design several unusual unit types and abilities and this allowed more flexiblty. The teams are Zombies and Survivors. Zombies used various mutant types of zombies, and the Survivors were armed with various scavanged weapons. Only worked over a LAN.
Worked solo, as programmer and designer. This project was a basic style of gameplay, with the player using various weapons to kill zombies until forced to fall back to the next line of defense, through house, hedge and fence. The point of the game was to survive until a helecopter could arrive to save you. The game had several maps, and a complex pathfinding system. This pathfinding system focused on low resource use, to allow more monsters onscreen at a time. Screenshots can be found at:
Worked as puzzle designer in a team of three, including an artist and a programmer. The project was based on making a single real-time isometric puzzle example game. It featured two layers of tiles, that could interact with the player. Twenty levels were created and thirty-four tiles. Some of these included: Lava, Ice, Keys & Doors, and Conveyor Belts. Years later, I revamped this engine to create 'Puzzle Wizard', but added another three layers of tiles and forty-odd tile types to improve the complexity. See 'Puzzle Wizard' below. Screenshots can be found at:
Worked as designer in a team of three, including an artist and a programmer. The project was based on selling a easy to use editor, with a flexible amount of parts, objects, tiles and monsters. The game could also have menus, deathmatch areas, hotseat levels and single player levels. These could all be built using the editor. Screenshots can be found at:
Worked as designer in a team of four, including myself, and three programmers. This project was entirely hotseat, and involved the flying and combat of up to four planes in a stunt arena. It used a unique method of tapping jumping-jets to fly the planes, allowing for complex stunts, and giving a high skill ceiling for the players, with a minimum learning curve.
Worked as lead designer in a team of two, including myself and an artist. This game only had a dozen levels made, and three basic weapons (minigun, cannon and the sword), with the design focusing on the player's abilities. Screenshots can be found at: Counter-strike maps - A RPG co-op map, involving classes. A hide and seek map Starcraft maps - An RPG map, using a complex leveling system. A CTF map, mimicking 'Team Fortress', with upgrading
fortresses. Work history 2008 - Summer Courses Teacher at Labyrinth Gamer
Cafe in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Working alongside a certified
international teacher, Mel Khang, I taught courses on game design
theory. Reference Darrell Flood, artist on Engine of War Criag Adams, artist/design on Fatal
Inertia The Reverend Canon Jeannie Loughrey Thank you for your time,
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