Currently I am prototyping some new indie game ideas with a few other developers. The leading concept is a tactical space opera, where players assault each others planets.

The inspiration for the core concept comes from old arcade games and classics.

Metal Marines

Rampart

Battleship

More information comming soon!

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LM2

Luigi's Mansion 2

Position: Game Designer

For this project I was responsible for prototyping levels for the original pitch, greenlight build and planning production maps.

An NDA prevents me from discussing any details about this game,

You will just have to wait and see what the talented team at NLG bring us!

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Transformers

Transformers: Cybertron Adventures

Position: Level Designer

This title is a rail shooter created for the Nintendo Wii.

I was responsible for creating Decepticon mission's 2, 6 and 8.

Mission 8 "The Tyranny Within" was a challenge because it was the final mission for the Decepticon campaign and there wasn't time in the schedule to create assets for an epic end encounter.

I came up with the solution by having Megatron defend Trypticon from the inside against an Autobot siege. This allowed the environment team to repurpose Cybertron city assets and create a level different than anything else seen in the game.

On this project I learned encounter pacing, camera presentation and how to use the surrounding environment to create interesting events.

Our tech didn't support elevators, but moving around the insides of a giant dino-city demanded it.

I designed an elevator shaft that was just an animated tube around Megatron, a rhythmic camera shake and some appropriate audio completed the illusion. vid_6:25

The team wanted an interesting gallery at the end of the level so I had the idea of ending the level in Trypticon's mouth. This was acommplished by see-sawing Cybertron in the background. vid_11:12

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Emberwind

Emberwind

Position: Lead Designer

This is a 2D independently produced platformer a colleague and I did over the course of a year.

On this project we both wore many hats and contracted out that in which we couldn't do ourselves. My areas were all aspects of design, game, level, frontend as well as QA and minor producer tasks.

After agreeing to my high game concept, Erik and I started prototyping the core gameplay. While he was coding I dived into placeholder art assets and tileset creation, something at the time I knew nothing about.

Within a month we had a game up and running with a great sandbox level built from temporary assets.

I grew more and more fond of mocking up images and kit bashing whatever I could since I had little to no capacity to draw. In images below you can see how the world map went from design mock up to final and what initial tilesets looked like.

A major revelation I had during this project was the importance of good tools. I'd been spoiled with UDK2 visual kismet scripting and all the fancy power of main stream editors. EW tools started from the ground up and I was able to get whatever I needed to be creative.

Someone said to me once "Good people can make any project tolerable, bad tools can make any project unbearable". I couldn't agree more.

Visit and try the demo for yourself!

http://www.timetrap.se

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Fury

Fury

Position: Level Designer

Fury was a PvP arena based MMO, the first ever to use Unreal 2.0.

Previously I spent about a year in Maya, so picking up Unreal was a smooth transition.

I designed, greyblocked and implemented over 100 maps. The game shipped with 16 unique Arenas and 5 Sanctuaries (cities).

I was responsible for gathering team feedback and iterating on maps that made the final cut.

Druje Dam (A win)

This map was not only successful internally, but it was the most played CTF map after the games release.

I attribute its success to a number of good design choices.

3 distinct routes, each at different levels of elevation.

Tempting cascading player flow away from flag forts with power-ups.

Bridge width and line of sight breakers on the lower and upper paths.

A heavily defendable fort separating both team's flag forts.

This ensured at least 2 contested warfronts at all times, creating a balanced and fun experience.

Venom Glade (A Lesson)

The original concept was a forest floor with catwalks going tree to tree. The environment was enchanting, but the map didn't have enough meaningful landmarks to help players navigate.

Players that didn't get lost in the woods enjoyed preying on the helpless from the catwalks above, making it near impossible for victims to counter attack.

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SSX Tricky

SSX Tricky

Position: Sr.QA Tester

With the success of SSX and a smooth development process, it only made sense for EA to steam forward with a sequel. Tricky turned out to be even better than the original.

After three years at EAC, I found myself mentoring new testers and was yet again testing a racing game.

I enjoyed the games industry but felt I needed a change. After I left EA I spent an entire year playing nothing but MMOs and enjoying every moment of it.

Soaking my over critical gaming brain in an expanding new game genre, lead me to land a job as a level designer. This started my transition from QA into game design.

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SSX

SSX

Position: QA Tester

SSX was a PS2 launch title and the start of the "EA Sports BIG" franchise. Working on new hardware is always exciting, but launch titles are often riddled with bugs giving QA more time to test.

I was assigned Moby and the Track Mesa Blanca. I wrote use cases and helped a little on Japanese localization.

SSX was different from most EA projects, because the development team was very open to feedback. They even enlisted the help of QA in many aspects of the game.

QA was given the opportunity to contribute unlockable snowboard graphics. Out of a total of 100 snowboards in the game 8 of mine made the cut.

VeloCity, True Colours, Butterfly High, Parpa Traitor, Lithium Surprise, Titanium TX, Shogun Stinger and Magnate Split.

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VRally2

V-Rally 2

Position: QA Tester

During this project I discovered the joys of ad hoc testing, by finding ways to completely ruin or crash the game just through experimentation and exploration. Driving the wrong way on a track, rub testing the vehicle on world collision at different angles and stress testing the car on car physics.

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SledStorm

SledStorm

Position: QA Tester

For the short time I was on this project, I was trained in the art of bug tracking, recording and regression.

This was my first project in the main stream games industry.

During this time I made the realisation how different

"playing games" and "making games" is.

At first I was turned off by the testing process. A man behind the curtain that cared more about proprietary bug tracking databases, than the end player experience?

Over the course of my three years testing at Electronic Arts Canada, I became well educated in exactly what makes solid game franchises and how hard development teams need to push themselves to do so.

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Design

Design Philosophies

Game designers should divide their efforts into "Theory" and "Practice".

It is the balance of these two disciplines that forge great games. With too much theory you'll never get anything created. While rushing to execution and ignoring design debate, will leave you with a junkyard of half baked ideas.

Draw, Document, Discuss and Debate your designs.

Sandbox, greyblock and playtest your gameplay.

Most importantly "think deeply". Too often enthusiasm or scheduling get the best of a designer and force their hand into making bad decisions. If cornered with a tough question, just say you will get back to them and go for a 10min walk, think about the solution.

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Death to Cows & Crates!

Every designer is passionate about different aspects of the games they work on. For some it's combat and gameplay; others it might be presentation and narrative. My vice is the slaughtering of sacred cows, traditional cut and paste mechanics that are sure to send the title towards mediocrity. I think its lazy and creates forgettable products.

While working on Fury I had a major issue with mana dependency. Any RPG player knows when mana is out, the fun is over. I coined the phrase "fun bar," and pushed the team to find a design solution.

Fury already had a unique charge system that forced players to polarise their attacks to be more effective and release stronger moves. I presented the idea that since these charges already dictated what abilities could/couldn't be used, why not remove mana all together and just focus on balancing cool down timers? The experiment was a huge success and shipped in the final game.

In Emberwind I innovated on traditional boss battles by creating a "tug-o-war system". When the player damaged the boss they would gain back a hit point; when the player was damaged by the boss, they would lose a hit point, healing the boss.

Chris

Hi, I’'m Chris!

I herald from Vancouver, Canada but travel the world in search of work and adventure!

I’ve been in the games industry 10 years and a gamer most of my life.

My first video game experience was on a Tandy, TV Scoreboard (Home Console Pong)

Since then I’ve played nearly everything I could get my hands on.

Action, Adventure, RPG, Sim, and Strategy, everything from single player to MMO.

Designing games is my chance to explore and change the way players relate to their entertainment.

Pushing the boundaries of interactive media and content is what I live for!

Christopher Van Yperen Resume.doc