Author Archives: Mak Mendelson

About Mak Mendelson

Mak is an artist at Gradient Studios. He studied fine arts and then electronic arts, focusing in character design. He really enjoys thinking about various game mechanics and how they work together, mixing and matching to create new ones that might one day end up in an actual game.

Showing co.llide at BostonFIG

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This past Sat­ur­day, we were given the incred­i­ble oppor­tu­nity to show­case co.llide at the Boston Fes­ti­val of Indie Games. The turn out was great, and we had a remark­able time!

First and fore­most, we would like to thank the entirety of the Boston­FIG team for putting together such a fan­tas­tic event! It’s thanks to their efforts, and those of the hosts, MIT, that we, and our fel­low indie devel­op­ers, could put on such an excel­lent show. But the biggest thanks of all, goes to the atten­dees. Thank you so much for stop­ping by our booth, giv­ing us feed­back, and telling your friends about us! It’s your inter­est and enthu­si­asm that dri­ves us to cre­ate the best games we can for you to enjoy.

From all of us at Gra­di­ent Studios:

Thank you!

Mak Mendel­son

Mak is an artist at Gra­di­ent Stu­dios. He stud­ied fine arts and then elec­tronic arts, focus­ing in char­ac­ter design. He really enjoys think­ing about var­i­ous game mechan­ics and how they work together, mix­ing and match­ing to cre­ate new ones that might one day end up in an actual game.

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Transition to 2D Vehicles — Why and How

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Tin­kerTech Derby is a pretty fan­tas­tic con­cept, but we ran into a snag. We encoun­tered severe per­for­mance issues because we were try­ing to use 3D physics engines writ­ten in Javascript for a real-time online mul­ti­player game. Not nearly enough com­put­ers are capa­ble of run­ning that game as it was with any latency present. We decided that, if we were to con­tinue with the orig­i­nal premise of the game—and we really want to, because it’s really cool!—we would have to drop the third dimen­sion to our physics sim­u­la­tion. For­tu­nately, the 2D game­play is still very fun, and the core idea remains strong.

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Mak Mendel­son

Mak is an artist at Gra­di­ent Stu­dios. He stud­ied fine arts and then elec­tronic arts, focus­ing in char­ac­ter design. He really enjoys think­ing about var­i­ous game mechan­ics and how they work together, mix­ing and match­ing to cre­ate new ones that might one day end up in an actual game.

More Posts — Twit­ter

Dealing with Modular Design

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Our Demo­li­tion Derby game is mod­u­lar. Each mod­ule is a low poly­gon mesh, and a player assem­bles these mod­ules to cre­ate a wheel-based vehi­cle. These vehi­cles are then used to com­bat other play­ers’ vehi­cles in a sim­u­lated physics envi­ron­ment. Vic­tory is deter­mined by break­ing apart the mod­ules of the opponent’s vehi­cle before they yours.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Mak Mendel­son

Mak is an artist at Gra­di­ent Stu­dios. He stud­ied fine arts and then elec­tronic arts, focus­ing in char­ac­ter design. He really enjoys think­ing about var­i­ous game mechan­ics and how they work together, mix­ing and match­ing to cre­ate new ones that might one day end up in an actual game.

More Posts — Twit­ter