THE CHASE

These storms hit like a mother…

Tasked with building a game where players could “get into the driver’s seat of a Storm Chasers vehicle” a slice of Kansas was recreated, loaded with tornadoes and fans were set loose to chase down their very own storm.  Numerous custom solutions were developed to push a highly polished experience on the Flash platform including a full-screen rain visualization system as well as a heavily optimized transparent video solution to quickly deliver high-quality, pre-rendered visualizations of the vehicles form the hit TV show.  A custom tile-based game engine was created and heavily optimized to allow a massive environment to scroll as efficiently as possible.  The brand’s audio identity was also pushed to the limit by a few songs I wrote that focused on a more edgy, electronic feel.

The online execution was ported to the first version of Unity for iPhone and an extremely progressive FTUE (First Time User Experience) was concepted and implemented that literally peeled a virtual device from the screen and into 3D space to demonstrate how to play to early iPhone users.

Bonus detail: my retired farther picked up Unity to help me with the tutorials in the iPhone version and he’s still using Unity to this day.

ROLE

  • Programming
  • UX
  • Concept
  • Design
  • Audio and Music production

COMPANY

  • Discovery Channel
  • Bully Entertainment

LAUNCH (Flash)

Footage from the Flash version:

Footage from the iPhone 3GS (480×320) port which shows the device-specific FTUE solution used to help new smart phone users: