Tag Archives: Nintendo Switch

Gameplay, Indie, Programming, Published games, Tools

Teku Studios: The Stone of Madness

Project: The Stone of Madness
Studio: Teku Studios (supported by The Game Kitchen)
Genre: Strategy, RTS, Stealth, Tactical
Platform: Windows, XBox Series X|S, PS5, Nintendo Swtich
Job description: Gameplay Programmer & Tool Programmer
Technologies: Unity3D, .NET, C#, Plastic SCM
Store links: Steam, Epic Store, Xbox Store, PS Store

"From the creators of Blasphemous"

To be honest, this is an original game designed and developed by the creators of Candle, Teku Studios, with help and support from The Game Kitchen and not viceversa. This is the truth.

The Stone of Madness is a real-time tactical stealth game set in an 18th-century Spanish Monastery. Five prisoners pool their skills and resources to face their phobias, stave off insanity, uncover the mysteries of the Monastery, and find a way to escape.

Senior Game Programmer and Tool Programmer working on the system and tools to manage and design the campaign missions and objectives, used by the game designer to easily structure all the logic involved on the different campaign missions and objetives in the game, and to be able to fast prototyping ideas on  the game levels without affect or collide with all exsisting work.

Also I worked, in minor way, maintaing and extending the code of some systems and entities (players and NPC characters, items, dialog system features...).

Other tasks was help with the optimization the code of some systems (thinking on the porting to consoles) and a QA tool for ease catch unhandled exceptions and end the game session (to prevent false error feedback up from this point due the Unity feature to continue execution with unhandled exceptions) recolecting all possible debug data (exception message, full stack trace, screenshot of the last frame rendered...) pack it on a zip file and show a "BSOD like" screen with all collected data.

Indie, Porting, Programming, Published games

Pipe Push Paradise (Nintendo Switch, XBox One & PS4 Port)

Credits screen with all Stage Clear Studios team members for XBox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch ports.

Details

Project: Pipe Push Paradise
Author: Corey Martin (ported by Stage Clear Studios)
Genre: Puzzle
Platform: XBox One, PS4 & Nintendo Switch
Job description: Gameplay Programmer
Technologies: Unity3D, .NET, C#, SVN, Tortoise SVN
Store links: XBox One, PS4 (EU), PS4 (US), Nintendo Switch

Credits

Programmers
Juan Escudero Vizcaino
José Miguel Sánchez Fernández

Technical Artists
Sergio Bernardo Sánchez
Francisco Porcel

QA
Guillermo Regueiro Martín-Albo
Andrés Conde Herranz
Maria Ruiz Algar
Alberto Relucio Gallego
Ricardo Pascual Segovia

Producer
Raquel Sánchez Illescas

Credits (Nintendo Switch version) on MobyGames site: https://www.mobygames.com/game/switch/pipe-push-paradise/credits

Description

Gameplay programmer for the porting to Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

I worked on optimization tasks on code and graphics assets in scenes, mainly reducing polygons in major objects in scene, like the pipes, implementing a system to switch original pipe models for a low-poly version when the puzzles are solved (the original pipes, that the player see when play a puzzle, are a compound of several high-detailed meshes with detailed interiors, very unoptimal for realtime videogame rendering), and removing several duplicated/overlaped sprites on decorations (and improved the sprite materials with help of our in-house technical artist, Sergio Bernardo) to reduced the several overdraw and draw-calls when the game shows the entire island or large areas with solved puzzles.

Other task consisted in adapted the user session for working with the console systems, and save game implementation and other related game state code to avoid continuously read/write operations on disk (or the NAND memory in Switch) major bugfixes related with the original Steam version and last-hour game workflow changes requested by the game developer.

P.D.: Before the last Nintendo Switch SDK version on november, Unity games on Nintendo Switch they couldn't reach the full potential on the GPU. Because this, initialy, in an effort to reach almost 30 fps, we created an alternate version of the island scene for the Nintendo Switch version and applied several cuts on effects and decorators, like the water waves effects and some sprite layers in most of the wall decorators like the hedges.

Indie, Porting, Programming, Published games

Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut (Nintendo Switch & PSVita Port)

Nintendo Switch Trailer

PSVita Trailer

Details

Project: Slayaway Camp: Butcher's Cut
Studio: Blue Wizard Digital (ported by Stage Clear Studios)
Genre: "killer" puzzle
Platform: Nintendo Switch, PSVita
Job description: Gameplay Programmer
Technologies: Unity3D, .NET, C#, SVN, Tortoise SVN
WebSite: http://slayawaycamp.com/
Store links: Nintendo Switch, PSVita (US), PSVita (EU)

Credits

Programmers
Alejandro Machuca Díaz
Sergio Alonso Martínez
José Miguel Sánchez Fernández

QA
Guillermo Regueiro Martín-Albo
Andrés Conde Herranz
Maria Ruiz Algar
Alberto Relucio Gallego

Producer
Raquel Sánchez Illescas

Description

A killer puzzle game where you control Skullface, a psychotic slasher bent on slaughtering camp counselors at the title campground. Slide this adorable voxel murderer around hundreds of isometric puzzle levels to squash, flay, and decapitate the hapless victims in this darkly comic homage to 80s trash horror.

Gameplay Programmer for the porting to Nintendo Switch and PSVita console versions. I worked on optimization tasks on code and graphics assets in scenes. Other task consisted in adapted and improved some UI elements to use in touch screen and major bugfixes on this platforms.

PSVita version was required most of the enfort, was the most difficult platform to port. Mainly I needed to reimplemented most of the original game core to ensured to fit in the low hardware requeriments, I implemented new resource management systems to cached reusable assets (sounds, textures, etc...) and background load processes (this is the only version that requires of loading screens between scenes and other game states). Also I applied extreme optimization in all graphics assets to avoid continous VRAM overflows adjusting size and compresion parameters in a right way to preserved the original visual feel in the PSVita screen resolution.

Indie, Porting, Programming, Published games, Technical Artist, Tools

Ginger: Beyond the Crystal for Nintendo Switch (Porting)

Credits screen running on a Nintendo Switch. Courtesy of Miguel Company, from Drakhar Studio.

Details

Project: Ginger: Beyond the Crystal
Studio: Drakhar Studio
Genre: Adventure, 3D Platformer
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Job description: Gameplay Programmer, Tool Programmer, Tester
Technologies: Unity3D, .NET, C#, SVN, Tortoise SVN
WebSite: https://www.drakharstudio.com/ginger
Store links: Nintendo Switch

Description

Ginger: Beyond the Crystal is an adventure platformer in which you have to rebuild and restore balance to a world devastated by the explosion of a mystical crystal. Face quests and challenges set over 3 worlds and gain powerful new skills, costumes and powers that will help you to defeat the fiercest.

Gameplay Programmer and Tool Programmer for the porting to Nintendo Switch version. I worked on optimization tasks on code and helped to optimize asset graphic implementations in scenes (mostly consisted in grouping and baking meshes for reducing draw calls). Other task consist in develop small intergrated tools (to help to search large amount of objects in scene by component type and other filter options, mainly to help in light mapping tasks), studied and tested the game against the Nintendo Switch TRC guidelines and testing the game with the last changes on the Nintendo Switch hardware.