Design3 Contest: 51 Run entry (September 2011)

 

51 Run Contest Guidelines

Other Information about Design3's concept

51 Run Final Game 


In August of last year I stumbled across Design3.com's contest for a game they were developing with the intent of making tutorials. The game would be "51 Run." It was about an alien who was fleeing a laboratory to get to his ship and escape. It would be a 2.5D game in its original concept and built using the Unity 3 engine.

The contest called for anyone who was willing to develop anything that was within the theme of their game. All submissions would be judged at the end of September with some pretty good sized prizes including fully licensed software.

This is the original concept for how the game would look and feel.

I ended up building two models for the contest and one additional later on when they were trying to get additional models. In choosing to do a background object I was tasked with keeping the model anywhere from 250-300 polygons.

The first model I decided on was a magnetic tape unit.
I ended up winning 4th place with this model in the contest. 

 

 

The second model I built was a lab table with some equipment. 

 

In mid-October I along with some others that had submitted models to the contest received an email asking for additional models. It specifically asked for hazards and some additional objects that were specified in a detailed list.

I took the opportunity to make a simple manhole that would pop up and then return. It was never finished but ultimately ended up in the game above as you can check out.

I had built the simple animation and prop and sent it in to see if this would be acceptable before I continued any other work on it. I never heard a response. I wanted to add smoke billowing out as if it were the catalyst that pushed the manhole cover upward.

This is a .gif animation of the manhole cover exploding up and then falling back down into place. it is rendered at a slower speed than is actually used in the game.

This was a fun and a learning experience. I look forward to any other contests that Design3 has to offer in the future.

I later found that Design3 had finished the game on their site. They had an immense amount of tutorials to help anyone make the same game they had built. The first thing I immediately noticed was that the game no longer resembled the concept image above. Design3 had taken a completely different approach and instead made a 3d game. Also, instead of playing as the alien you were now the evil scientist trying to capture the alien before he/she gets on their ship and flies away. Along the path of the level there are hazards that try to damage you and stop you from completing your goal. The manhole shown above is now in the game where as the magnetic tape unit I created is no where to be seen.

I have no hard feelings about it. It was a fun contest and I would have liked to see the original concept come to fruition but I imagine there were things that happened behind the scenes that changed dramatically based on time/money/assets or any other list of things.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. More to come soon.