Flip Against The Frontier
Itch.io
A thrilling action arcade pinball game that takes place inside The Frontier, an infamously challenging pinball machine. Navigate and survive by smashing robots, building gizmos, and reaching new high scores.
I contributed 230 hours to this project over 10 weeks. My roles were Lead Programmer, Gameplay Programmer, AI Programmer, Tools Programmer and Git Manager. I did the following for the project:
All enemy AI. 3 types of enemies with unique behaviors, and 7 total enemy variants. All enemies utilize a flexible and easily extendible state machine system I created.
1) Chaser, an enemy that follows the player and attacks
2) Breaker, an enemy that destroys player-made gizmos
3) Brute, an enemy that picks up the pinball and throws it at a target
Enemy interactions with other systems, including a system for enemies going limp when being magnetized or hit with the bat.
Pinball interaction gameplay, including deflecting the pinball with your bat and attracting the ball to the player when charging a swing.
Online leaderboard system for sharing scores.
Wave / enemy spawning system, with heavy customization and extendibility for designers to fine-tune game balancing. Used to make 10 unique waves and infinite scaling past wave 10.
“All I asked Joey for was a system where I can set different spawns per wave, then he made this with a bunch of other nifty features. He knew what I was going to ask for before I asked it.“
Joshua Guptill, Designer on Flip Against The Frontier
https://joshuaguptill.myportfolio.com/work
Light sequence creation tool for easy generation and customization of different light patterns by designers. Used to make 16 unique light patterns for over 160 total lights.
“When trying to captivate the essence of pinball machines, light sequences are essential. As soon as the team agreed upon this, Joey got straight to work on a system that is flexible enough for designers to use, as well as keeping the system synced to allow for all of the lights to match each other creating uniformity. Truly a great and easy to use system, especially for the time crunch we were under.”
Joshua Guptill, Designer on Flip Against The Frontier
https://joshuaguptill.myportfolio.com/work
Material crafting system, including building and destroying environment structures. Created inventory system to store 3 material types.
Machine shutdown event that presents unique challenge for player and largely transforms gameplay.
All machine lights shut off, a red alarm light starts
Balls stops spawning, no more scoring
Boxes light up, hit 3 to restart machine
Tutorial system with modular event triggers for advancing to next tutorial when objective is completed. Used to create 7 unique tutorial prompts.
“The tutorial system was incredibly hard to comprehend at a high level design standpoint. I went through multiple iterations to find the correct way to teach the player and every step of the way the system put up with the stress of heavy renovation.”
Joshua Guptill, Designer on Flip Against The Frontier
https://joshuaguptill.myportfolio.com/work
Supported and organized 2 programmers as Lead Programmer while doing art implementation and bug fixing.
“Without Joey’s help on Flip Against the Frontier, the project wouldn’t have made it. His advocacy for programmers on the team helped identify issues early on and his designer tools helped combat the short timeline we were given for the project.“
Dillon Drummond, Gameplay Programmer
https://dillondrummond.com/
