Austin Molina

GameDeveloper/Artist

Adjunct Instruction

2018 (Unity C#) Yavapai College Faculty


  • My course (VGD171 Video Game Development) focused on learning C# among other learning outcomes
  • The course spanned 7 weeks which was a change from the department's previous 16 week design
    • It was up to me to redesign the syllabus and decide what assignments to give to my students
  • I created a project for students new to game development that would fulfill my department's requirements
  • Scope of the project:
    • 2D animation and physics-based movement
    • Health and score accompanied by UI
    • Interactive objects and dialog system
    • Game state persistence
    • Simple enemy ai
  • Overall, the class was a success with the majority of my students finishing the course with a functional and personalized version of the course project
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In-game Scene
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Project Preview




3D Bullet Hell

2017 (Unity C#) University of Arizona Game Jam

Awarded "Most Innovative"


The game was created with Unity for a game jam in less than 48 hours. The theme was "Aliens" - we decided to make a bullet hell game inspired by Star Fox and Evangelion.

  • My Role: Modeling, Animation, Boss Controls
  • Player Cotrols, Music - Alex Katzfey
  • Voice Acting, Music, Asset Collection - Connor Runyan
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Full Gameplay
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Player Model
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Learning Blender on the fly




Claiming Xodius

2014 (GameMaker: Studio) Personal/Shipped


  • Claiming Xodius was created over the course of 2.5 years
  • All programming, design, and visual assets were created by Austin Molina
  • Wesley Wyatt (sound designer) was recruited from reddit to create all music and sound assets
  • An editing tool was created with GameMaker: Studio to aid in creation of:
    • Levels
    • Enemy Stats
    • Items
    • Events
  • During development, information was posted on indieDB
  • The game is available on itch.io

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Gameplay Video
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Lighting
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Player Party
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Party Loadout and Stats
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Level Editor




Polynaut

2017 (Unity C#) Class Project


  • Proposed a project to be developed with two classmates over the course of a semester
  • My role: level design, 3D modeling, game logic/persistence
  • Team goal: Create a game to showcase a variety of graphical features in 25 minute slot
  • Success depended on setting deadlines with realistic goals, regular communication, and weekly assessments of progress
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Forest
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Space
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The Grid
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Underwater




Multi-User Dungeon

2016 (Java) Class Project


  • This project was completed with 3 classmates
  • Utilizes MVC (Model View Controller) paradigm
  • Other design patterns:
    • Singleton
    • Builder
    • Observer
  • Agile development method
  • 71 Java Classes
  • Asynchronus with concurrent processes
  • Supports multiple users and accounts accross a network
  • My task was to:
    • Create classes necessary for the server. Including handlers for each client
    • Build a protocol for sending, receiving, and processing network messages
    • Implement a stack-based game-state manager
    • tl;dr I put the 'C' in MVC
  • I also created a tool that would allow my team to create ASCII art for the client
  • After discussing the project with my team, I sketched a UML diagram that would support all project specifications
    • Modifications were made as a group, but my initial design served as a strong foundation for the project
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The Feed
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Full Client View
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ASCII Art Editor
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Eclipse Code/Project Sample
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Rough UML/Planning Sketches




Other Games

2007-2016 (GameMaker: Studio) Personal


  • First picked up Game Maker as a teenager at around 2007
  • I started with the drag-and-drop code blocks, but eventually began to learn GML, the built in programming language
  • My early projects were rough. Lots of platformers and top down adventure games
  • After high school, I started building more complex games, for example, Claiming Xodius
  • My final Game Maker projects:
    • Implementation of Perlin noise used to procedurally generate 3D terrain
      • Game Maker has little built in 3D functionality - it took a lot of math to get collision working
      • GLSL shader was written to render a depth map. This was used to calculate mouse coordinates
    • A multiplayer game where users can select a character and battle enemies
      • The server supports multiple players that can each participate in battles with different enemies
      • This is a concept I will revisit in the future, but likely with a different engine
Procedural Generation
Multiplayer




Dragon Sculpt

2018 (Blender)


  • The dragon was initially sculpted with dynamic topology
  • The sculpt was remeshed for UV mapping
  • Normals from the sculpt were projected onto the low-poly remesh
  • A diffuse texture was then painted with the aid of a drawing tablet
  • You can see my other models and art on instagram
  • Started modeling in Blender about 3 years back; the learning curve is steep and I still have a long way to go
    • I'm now more sparing of the decimate tool that I was so fond of while working on Polynaut

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Texture painting (side)
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Texture painting (front)
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Normal map and mesh topology