Tahir's Playbook

Tahir's Playbook was my first and primary game while working at the Games for Entertainment and Learning lab. It is a mobile game made for children in 5th grade. It's specific goal was to assist classroom curriculum regarding nutrition education and to encourage kids to eat healthier and exercise regularly. The game was the product of a contract from Tahir Whitehead (of the Detroit Lions), designed in collaboration with MSU Extension and Detroit Public Schools. It is currently in closed beta and is being tested by a few select schools in Plymouth Michigan, though it has been published on the Google Play store and the iOS App-Store.

The game was developed in the summer and fall of 2016 by a team of 5-10 student employees over a period of about 5 months. Several large tasks included a heavily networked game with a layered account system, large-scale inventory tracking, achievements, customizable characters, and of-course the typical constraints that come with developing for the mobile platform. The game was made in Unity and the models and animations were made in Maya.

My Tasks

-Writing, organizing, and maintaining the design document throughout development.

-Wrote, documented, and optimized the system of shaders that were being used for the characters and environment.

-Created and optimized lighting throughout the game.

-Managed the art team, creating and managing deadlines and reporting progress to my superiors.

-Rigged the characters for animation and set up BlendShapes for customizable content.

-Created shader effects, such as the food for the diner mini-game and the animated crowd for the football games.

-Created and maintained a character customization system including adjustable body-types, swapping facial decals, changing colors of applied shaders with alpha channels, and creating UI interfaces for the end-user to access. (More on this task here).

-Created and managed animator trees for the characters and cutscenes.

-Systems programming to handle character pathing, intro-tutorial, and character loading and spawning.