Zachary Kramer
Game Designer
ABOUT
MYSELF
I aspire to learn every day. With every challenge, an opportunity to build my skills and improve my techniques.
From Columbus, Ohio I am building a career as a software developer. It is my goal to establish myself as a hard-working, reliable, and creative member of my industry.
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WHAT I'VE DONE
Since graduating with a bachelor's degree in Video Game Design from Full Sail University I've become proficient in C# in Unity, basic digital art skills, and have designed several games, including table-top games. I've also become involved in local industry meet-ups and study coding online.
WHAT I DO
I do whatever needs done. I have been a sound engineer, an artist, a chef, a nightclub DJ. I possess soft skills as well as practice good work ethic. I bring attention to detail and an understanding of the big picture to whatever project I work on. I learn with determination and lead with humility.
PORTFOLIO
Quadro Delta
Here are some of my past projects I'm particularly proud of. Some are prototypes, and some have been shipped. Also, I've listed some of my experience here.
Penguin Rush
Pixel Piracy, a game by QuadroDelta, was released by ReLogic in 2014. I worked on a team of volunteer testers. We mostly reported bugs in Jira and Mantis, but also got to work with the development team on creating pixel art assets, equipment, items, and balancing weapons and fighting algorithms. Balancing for fighting, equipment, and loot drops involved creating simulations in spread sheets.
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This was my first experience with video game developers and designers. I was approached by QuadroDelta because of my positive involvement in the Steam forum community regarding their game.
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Steam Store page:
After the re-release of Pixel Piracy, I was invited to begin delta-testing Pixel Privateers. During this time, I was a part time tester for this project due to my day job and online classes. Continued contact with the developers kept me inspired and helped me learn programming and make design decisions with my own projects.
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Steam Store page:
"First Fiction" battle prototype
An interesting exercise in mimicry and resourcefulness. We were instructed to choose a game system from a list (I picked the Final Fantasy 6 battle system). My team and I were able to recreate the ATB (Active Time Battle) system, as well as stats such as armor, resists, and elemental strengths and weaknesses. After working on this for only a week, they told us we were to change direction entirely. At first, we were very confused, but we learned we were suddenly given creative control over the project. With this course change, we needed inspiration to push us in a direction; we were pretty much in shock.
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I chose the arcade game Tapper as my muse, and the team, after doing some research on just what that was, became recharged, and we dove back in!
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What this project taught me was how to use what is available in order to meet specifications and not waste time or effort. We ended up throwing out a lot of what was near completion, such as the use of armor and multiple characters. We gave the game an arcade-style feel, but still used the ATB system, resistances, and multiple attack-types for our fast paced action game.
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September 29th - October 1st, 2017
I plan on volunteering my time to help my hometown of Columbus, Ohio have another successful Game Developers' Expo. This year it is being held at the newly renovated Ohio Expo Center in downtown Columbus. This is organized by members of Multivarious, a creative technology culture leader and video game design company in Columbus, Ohio.
Penguin Rush was our capstone project for the Bachelor's Degree in Video Game Design Program at Full Sail University. It is an arcade-style 3-D infinite shootem' up. I worked as part of a team of five. Across five different states in three different time zones, we worked remotely for over four months.
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Our postmortem video can be found here.
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A point of pride in this game is the spawning system state machine, which instantiates all interactive game objects in their patterns creating the challenge and giving us control over level design. Additionally, creating the pattern functions and teaching my teammates how to utilize the functions to create their own patterns was not only fun for me, but helped me expand on what I had already written.
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As a team member, working on this project really made me flex my soft skills. I learned a great deal about coding, but even more about myself and how I work. Penguin Rush has been the single most prominent learning experience in my design experience so far.
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Team Penguin Rush will be returning to this project to polish and port to mobile with new controls and a revamped UI, soon. We hope to finish this and release it for free before Christmas 2017.
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Our final project submission for Windows/PC can be found here.
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Our final project submission for Mac OSX can be found here.
Gosh Darn Ants!
Gosh Darn Ants! was a prototype I worked on during the final months of my time at Full Sail. The theme was "inequality", and was an experiment in using Unity's built-in physics system. It's a puzzle game, wherein you try to squish the bugs that spawn into the game scene and try to march towards their goal (from green to red).
The most interesting part about this project is the design of the bug. It's a tiny little monster with a large mass and it's shape permits it to bounce around and never (intentionally, anyway) get snagged on any other object. They will eventually move any obstacle you put in their way, if you don't place your pieces wisely.
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If I had more development time, I would address collision errors with the bugs, shapes being dropped on the floor/wall pieces, and make many more levels. I also had ideas for bugs that stuck to each other to produce a larger mass, or could crumble obstacles the player drops in, or perhaps leap into the air when arriving at edges.
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With only a three-week development time, I am still proud to present this as one of my solo projects.
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A playable build of this game for Windows/PC can be found here.
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A playable build of this game for Mac OSX can be found here.
Poysky Productions (Alexander Poysky, CEO) has recently asked me to join the testing team for their latest project, Realms of Ruin, a 2-D side-scrolling action RPG.
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I plan to continue work on this for Alex until its release.
August 17th - 20th, 2017
I am excited to announce that I'll be attending this event! As a Full Sail University alum, I've been given a fantastic opportunity to see presentations by game designers, CEOs, and many different leaders in my industry. I will utilize this time looking for the next opportunity in life, be it a full time job or an exciting new project. Also on the docket, I plan to meet some of the instructors I worked with over the past two years and seeing the campus, specifically the library.
Currently
June 27th, 2019
Earlier this week I registered with WeCanCodeIT! With project-based learning, this full stack development boot camp will leave me with some interesting additions to my portfolio! Becoming a professional developer is just a matter of time!