Adam Franco

This is a prototype game I made for my final project in Game Programming Essentials at NAIT. It is a puzzle platformer that uses the rune abilities found in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It is made using MonoGame.

The game is fairly simple in its current state; I only implemented one skill, one level, and one enemy for the demonstration. I hope to eventually add the rest of the skills and a few more levels and enemies!

This project is important to me because it was my first foray into a skill system, and I built all of the components myself. Some features I'm especially proud of:

• Parsing Tiled Maps
  I created a system for taking maps generated by Tiled Map Editor and parsing correctly, including the ability to set backgrounds, use layers, and multiple source spritesheets.
• Screen States/Screen Manager
  Ability to create and render individual scenes (menus, levels, etc.), as well as layer scenes on top of each other (pause menu, skill select, dialog system)
• Dialog System
  When the player picks up an item or skill, a dialog box will appear with information
• Scene Transitions
  Ability to create and use transitions between scenes such as fading in/out, screen wipes, etc.
• Skill System
  Acquire, select, and execute different skills. UI overlay for skill selection.
• Component System
  I build myself a small framework for handling input, collisions, sprites, game objects, cameras, collectables, and UI

Download the latest build:

Mass Effect 2: Arcade Edition (ME2AE) was the very last project I made at NAIT. The assignment for this project was simply to take a game from 2010, and translate it into the style and gameplay of an arcade game from the 1980s or 1990s. It was made using Unity.

I really wanted to work with Mass Effect 2 in this project because it is one of my all-time favorite games, as well as pay homage to my instructor, who worked on the Mass Effect Trilogy. It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to translate the gameplay, but after some research, I thought a beat em' up such as The Simpsons would be a perfect fit.

Highlights of the project:

• 2 game modes
  • In Arcade Mode, 1-4 players battle through the collector base, fending off waves of collectors, as well as Harbinger! The level is inspired by the final mission from Mass Effect 2, the Suicide Mission.
  • In Battle Arena, 2-4 players fight to the death in a small map, directly inspired by the gameplay of Towerfall: Ascension. Last one standing wins the round, first to three is the victor!
• Enemy pathfinding using the A* algorithm
• My first real attempt at custom art - the characters designs were taken from a reddit user named wolfentir's DeviantArt account, which has since been deactivated, and modified to my own taste. I also had to create the animations for walking and punching. The level art was made by myself.

I wanted to do more with this project - more debugging, extra levels for arcade mode, better walk cycles, special attacks, and a wider variety of enemies, but unfortunately did not have enough time.

You can check out the most current build below. Be warned, there may be bugs!

This website was for one of my peers at NAIT, who started an indie game studio.

I worked with him to design the logo, and built him the website on top of WordPress. It's a completely unique theme with custom components, such as the carousel on the landing page, as well as the user control bar at the top, and custom login, register, and password reset pages.

The website included a support ticket system, and a user ranking system, allowing for the inclusion of moderators, support staff, and others.

The website appears to be offline for the moment, but I took some snapshots of the pages that Google has cached.

Click here to visit the website.

For my Capstone Project at NAIT, I was Lead Programmer on a team of seven (4 programmers, 3 designers), working with the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation. For the entirety of our final semester, we worked with our client from the Glenrose to create an augmented reality game for the Microsoft HoloLens that they could have patients play during therapy.

The main deliverable requested by our client was research and documentation of how to use AR cards inside of Unity, as well as using the spatial mapping generated by the HoloLens.

We decided to show our work with a simple project: A pirate-themed scavenger hunt, in which the player is looking for different pirate-themed items.

Highlights of the project:

• There are 21 cards to find, as well as 3 menu cards.
• Each card has a unique model that will pop-up when said card has been recognized.
• The idea behind this game is that a therapist will put on the HoloLens, and in setup mode, select which cards the patient is to go find by scanning them in.
• The patient is then given the HoloLens, and the game is put into play mode with the start card.
• The game encourages the player to walk around, searching for certain cards.
• Depending on which cards are chosen in setup, and where these cards are hidden, the therapist can finely tune the distance walked during gameplay.