Jokingly called “Mario 64 II: The Sequel” by our team, this project is a clone of the famous Super Mario 64 level “Whomp’s Fortress” and the result of a month-and-a-half of hard work by Michael Moerdler-Green, Koken Ishii, Ian Ouellette and myself. We recreated the mechanics, level structure, 3D assets, sound, and even music of "Whomp's Fortress" from scratch using Unity, C#, Maya, Photoshop, and Bosca Ceoil.
Scope was a major concern of ours, given the month-and-a-half of development time we had to complete this project. We initially planned to shoot for the moon and duplicate “Bob-omb Battlefield," one of the larger and more complex levels of Mario 64. However, we quickly realized that replicating "Whomp's Fortress" was a more realistic goal. Nevertheless, we had to cut a few elements of "Whomp's Fortress" in the interest of time, such as the final boss encounter and certain side-areas, but these choices allowed us to focus on improving the quality of the facsimile level overall.
Team coordination was critical given the wide variety of tasks on our plate. (Programming, art, sound, level architecture, etc.) Staying organized with GitHub task cards, near-weekly stand-ups, and in-person/remote communication allowed us to remain in-the-know even when the team was physically separated.
On this project, I...
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Maintained the project development calendar, updating it on a weekly basis
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Outlined team members' weekly tasks in-person, and followed up on the status of those tasks remotely via Slack
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Coded the behavior of the "Whomp" and "Piranha Plant" enemies using C#
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Modeled and painted simple 3D assets for the "Whomp" enemies and the collectible coins using Maya
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Created the 2D sprites for Mario's health meter using Adobe Photoshop
MARIO 64 CLONE
(2017)
Recreated the famous "Whomp's Fortress" level from Mario 64 from scratch in Unity 3D, within one-and-a-half months of development time as part of a four-person team.
