My Fantasy

Playees Inc. Iphone Game Project: Balloon Heaven

admin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:39:48 +0000

Introduction:
We found a start-up Iphone game company “Playees” in Sanfrancisco from Nov. 2009. Balloon Heaven is the first project we worked on. Basically our goal is to make a casual game, based on Iphone platform, focusing on creating a comfortable and enjoyable entertaining user experience. It’ll be released on App Store in May 2010. Before released, all the content of the game is under NDA agreement.

My Role: Co-Game Designer/ Concept Artist/ Composer

In this project, I work with other 2 designers to brainstorm and polish the core idea of our game mechanics. We hope it’ll be simple, easy, and enjoyable. The feeling of the game is supposed to be relax, shinning and peaceful. Besides working as an co-designer, I personally take charge of all the art assets and music composition. The art style is supposed to be cute, and the music is supposed to be Orchestra-oriented.

Screenshot:

My First album: Life Is You - 存在的理由, May 2009 - Oct 2009

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:37:41 +0000

Introduction: After graduation from Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University at May 2009, I worked with professor Riccardo, Betsy Lawrence, and TreeLady Studio to produce this personal and professional album. It includes 12 original and creative Chinese popular songs which are sung, composed, and arranged by me.

My Role: Singer/ Composer/ Lyricist/ Arranger

Latest Single: Released on 20010/2/18
13 Bubble Tea Song - 珍珠奶茶進行曲

<Click here to listen to Full Version>

Click here to listen to Instrumental Version>

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Latest Single: Released on 2009/10/18
12 The Belle - 長髮飄飄

<Click here to listen to Full Version>

Click here to listen to Instrumental Version>

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My Album：Life Is You - 存在的理由: Released on 2009/9/17

01 Carnegie Symphony - 卡內基交響曲

02 The Rainstorm - 暴風雨

03 Happiness Sonata - 幸福奏鳴曲

04 Don’t Go That Far - 送君千里

05 Life Is You - 存在的理由

07 Morakot Summer - 莫拉克夏天

08 Opera 2.5 - 歌劇 2.5

09 C.C’s Melody - 告訴我

10. My Theme - 我的主題曲

11. Birthday To Be Happy - 生日要快樂

If you would like to understand more information about my album, please go to the official website for my album: http://Yijenlin.com (In Chinese).

TaoMasters Project, Jan 2009 - May 2009

admin — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:33:27 +0000

Visit our official website: http://www.taomasters.com/blog/

Download our game and play it at: http://www.taomasters.com/downloads/

Taomasters Promotion Video I make (30 second version):

To see more Promotion Video I make, click here

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Introduction: Taomasters is a strategic role-playing game that uses the written Chinese language as the basis of its gameplay. You will play the role of an aspiring Taomaster and the written Chinese characters will be the weapon accompanying your journey.

Gameplay: Written Chinese characters are formed by one or more radicals. In Taomasters, you must combine the radicals correctly to fight in battles and solve puzzles.

Story: The story takes place in Tang Dynasty, the golden age of China. You will not only feel the blossoming of creativity in the empire, but also the subtleness beneath the grandeur.

Art: Fluid and beautiful, the visual of the game draws references from Chinese water color paintings as well as Chinese theaters.

By combining unique gameplay, dramatic storyline and stylized art, our team is dedicated to make this game an entertaining, engaging and inspiring experience for players.

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My role: Game Designer/ Concept Artist/ Texture Artist/ Sound Designer

Game Design: As a co-founder of Taomasters project, I participate in making gameplay mechanics, story scripts, storyboard.
Concept Art: As a main concept artist in this project, I’m responsible for design Characters, Monsters, Environments, Posters/Half-Sheets/Team Business Cards.
2D Animation: I work on environment animation (In 1st scene, the sunshine and fireflies in the forest)and Promotion Videos.
Board Game Prototype: For game designer’s convenience, we make a board game prototype for testing the game balance. As the main concept artist, I’m responsible for designing the layout of our board game and leading other artists in our team to accomplish our goal.
3D Texture: To match our Chinese Water Painting Style, I produce cartoon-liked texture for our 3D models in Maya.
Sound Design: After our composer passes his original composition to me, I have to work with our audio programmer. I’m responsible for adjusting the balance and making any change needed to the music, to ensure the music are on the right track and fits the feeling of our game.

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Main female character: Cang-Ji: Talented but cold, Cang Ji may appear to be emotionless sometimes. Although she is a reserved person, the scar on her face seems to tell the story of her painful past. Deep down inside, Cang Ji has a kind heart that deeply cares about others and the world.

Element: Wood

Main male character: Chen-Xing: Optimistic and friendly, Chen Xing hopes to become a good Taomaster like his companion, Cang Ji. Although he has lost his memory of the past, he still faces everyday with courage and an open heart.

Element: Human

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Board game prototype

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Game play Video:

SwordSmith Romance, Mar 2009 - April 2009

admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:52 +0000

Yi-Jen Lin/ Solo Game Design Project

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Introduction: A MMORPG Board Game designed by myself. Players are supposed to level up their equipments by collecting rare materials dropped by the monsters. Up to 4 players, random skill combinations, unexpected events, and multi-endings.

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My Motivation for this project: Extend the range of my target audience; to introduce “hack and slash” gameplay to non-hardcore players.

The most common feature of current MMORPG is “hack and slash” gameplay. It means, basically players are allowed to group with other players and fight with monsters in the virtual world. Players are expected to hold high expectation for receiving rare items or raw materials after a battle. Most important of all, players can strengthen and customize their characters by receiving rare items or build their own skill set. Usually, players are also allowed to negotiate and trade with other players to grind levels more efficiently.

I love the gameplay mechanics in MMORPGs, but I think its entry level is too high so that it sacrifices much possible target audience. The entry level means that players who play MMORPG are usually hardcore players or used to playing video games. For example, my father and mother will never play MMORPG because they didn’t play computer games before. If there is way to make them play MMORPG with their children, it will make big money. My goal is to implement this gameplay mechanics on paper, such as a board game, and introduce to the people who are not familiar with MMORPGs before. I hope that the hardcore players will share this board game with non-hardcore players such as their families. If I can succeed that, it means there will be a new, huge group of target audience of MMORPG— it will bring huge financial profits for the developers.

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Story: Long time ago, there was an giant monster - Charybids. When human being faced Charybids, a dark knight appeared. Nobody knows who he was. The dark knight gave people a manual to build a giant lance to kill Charybids. From that moment on, people called the giant lance “Celestial Pillar.” After 1000 years, today, you are a normal swordsmith in the city, and you start your normal life as usual…

Game Play: Players are supposed to level up their equipments by collecting rare materials dropped by the monsters.

Equipment Card: There are 4 kinds of Equipment Cards: Weapon, Shield ,ManaGun and Item. To build these equipments, players need to collect the required materials and enough money.

Combo Skill: To strengthen personal uniqueness, every player has a unique Combo Skill which is performed by 2 Equipment Cards and assigned randomly in the very beginning of the game. A player can perform a Combo Skill by combining his own 2+ Equipment Cards or with other players’.

Time: The basic time unit is called “Period.” An event will come out every five periods. As periods pass by, which means the plot progresses, the game will lead to an end.

Multi-Endings: Depends on how the players accomplish the events, the ending will change accordingly.

Art: My original logo and original layout of all the cards for my board game prototype. The pictures on all the cards in this project are the random pictures from the internet.
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My Role: Game Designer/ Layout Designer

Game Design: Be responsible for world structure, game play, mechanics, data and story.
Layout Design: Be responsible for the layout of all the cards, and design the original main character “Venus.”

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Original Main Female Character "Venus" in SwordSmith Romance

Layout of Monster Card I make

Battle Melody, Feb 2009 - Mar 2009

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:35:52 +0000

Introduction: Battle Melody is a combat card game allows 2~ 6 players to play on the table. Each player can choose a race from Dragoon, Hero, and Darklord. Each race was born with unique Skill Combination, which allows the same Skill Card functions differently for different races.

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Group: 2 groups forms a game. A group can includes 1~3 player(s).

Hit Point (Hp): Every race has different HP representing his life. The creature will die if his HP <=0.

Victory Point (VP): Every race has different VP representing the victory of his group. The group will lose the game, if its VP <=0.

Cards: There are 3 kinds of cards: Sword, to attack enemy’s HP; Shield, to protect owner’s HP; Magic, to attack enemy’s VP.

Combination Skill: Skill Combination will be triggered by adjacent2 cards. A player can trigger by combining his own cards or with other players’ cards.

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My Role: Level Designer/ Layout Designer

Level Design: Be responsible for world structure, game play, mechanics, and data.
Layout Design: Be responsible for the layout of all the cards.

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Data of Cards and Combination Skills:

Throw a dice twice to get 2 cards in each turn:

	Sword cards	Shield cards	Magic cards
Dragoon	2,3		5
Hero	2,3	5
Dark Load		2	3,5

Power of Sword, Shield, and Magic Cards in 3 races:

	Sword cards	Shield cards	Magic cards
Dragoon	2 damages to LP		1 damage to VP
Hero	3 damages to LP	Reduce 2 damages to LP
Dark Lord		Reduce 1 damages to VP	2 damages to VP

Names, and Effects of Combination Skills in 3 different races:

	Sword cards	Shield cards	Magic cards
Sword	Double Crash	Shining Power	Angel Slayer
Shield	——————–	Earth Guard	Dark Revenge
Magic	——————–	———————-	Super Resonance

	Dragoon	Hero	Dark Lord
Double Crash	2 extra damage to enemy’s LP	1 extra damage to enemy’s LP
Earth Guard	———————	Reduce extra 1 damage to VP	Reduce extra 2 damage to LP
Angel Slayer	1 extra damage to enemy’s VP
Dark Revenge			Reflect damage to enemy (you still take the damage)
Shining Power		Get 1 extra card (you can’t use in this turn)
Super Resonance	Add (X/2) points to your LP/ X= Your VP		1 extra damage to enemy’s VP

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Battle Melody cards on my table

Omega Project, Sep 2008 - Dec 2008

admin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:29:52 +0000

The name of our client is under NDA agreement.

Introduction: We are looking for a solution for both navigating 3D world and 2D data, by using multi-touch interface and multi-touch screen. We build our own touch screen, based on FTIR technology, and design creative and intuitive gestures to interact with our software system. My work is to prototype our interface system on paper, and come up with those gestures. In the end of the semester, we use the multi-touch software framework we create, integrating multi-touch hardware interface to present our final presentation.

My role: Interface Designer/ Texture Artist

Design: Create 50+ intuitive gestures for users to perform multi-touch inputs to our system; providing FSM diagram storyboard for programmers.
Art: Produce textures for 3D objects in Maya and 2 illustration videos to explain our another 2 kernel ideas to our client.

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2 Illustration Videos I make:

1. Virtual on-screen keyboard: Due to the limitation of our time and human resource, we decide to make 2 illustration animations to explain our anther 2 ideas to our client, instead of programming the whole system. The first idea is about Virtual on-screen keyboard System, which allows users to put both palms (up to 10 fingers) on our touch screen and a virtual keyboard will appear accordingly. That’s the way we would like to introduce for improving the typing words on a multi-touch screen.

2. Drawing on Multi-Touch screen: The second video I make is about how does our system work when users draw on our multi-touch screen. The video shows that the system will have 2 layers ready for accepting users’ input. When users’s finger touch the screen, the Alpha layer will become transparent based on where the users touch. Therefore user can see the color layer by passing through the finger-touched area of the Alpha layer. The color layer can be assigned to any color users want.

Sharp Project, Feb 2008 - May 2008

admin — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:31:51 +0000

All the contents of this project are under NDA agreement.

Introduction: We cooperate with SHARP corporation to explore prototypes of cutting edges technologies.

We’re the first Japan-based ETC project. We have 8 persons in total. 5 persons stay in Osaka for the whole semester and 3 persons stay in Pittsburgh. I’m one of the 3 people staying in Pittsburgh. We have a teleconference on Skype on every Monday. The reason why we separate the whole group in 2 different locations is that we can update and get feedback from faculties on both locations more easily. But it also makes our team’s communication more difficult and complicated, such as the 12-hour jet lag and long distance. It’s hard to get response instantly when we need other teammate’s help. The Skype video teleconference sometimes are not stable, which needs us to re-setup the computer and software. Although this project is rough and we encounter many obstacles, we think it’s worthy. Working with Sharp corporation is a precious experience to me personally. We learn how to communicate well across 10000 miles. We learn how to work in different time zones which have 12 hour jet lag. We learn how to work with a bureaucratic-oriented company, which is very different from western culture. Finally, Sharp corporation were amazed by our final product so that they asked for working with ETC students for one more semester.

My Role: Designer/ Texture/Interface Artist

design: To develop the prototype with other teammates.
Art: Responsible for the textures of our 3D environment. Responsible for designing the interface.

Building Virtual World, Sep 2007 - Dec 2007

admin — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:26:37 +0000

Building Virtual Worlds: Building Virtual World is a course which requires students to create a new world every 2 weeks with different teammates. Because your teammates are decided by the faculty, it forces students to learn how to communicate with the people who they are not familiar with. The schedule is very intense. Usually every team has a presentation in class on every Monday and is able to get feedback from all the people in class.

BVW Show: In the end of the semester, the faculty will choose 10+ best rounds from all the works in a semester to perform publicly. Normally it’ll be held in Carnegie Mellon main campus.

My Role: Designer/ Concept Artist/ Texture Artist

Design: Focus on making virtual experiences and produce creative storytelling idea; making interesting game play and organize a complete play testing package.
Art: Design characters and environments. Produce 2D animations, and textures in Maya.

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In the 5 worlds I made, 2 of them entered the BVW show:

Round 2 - Monster Training Center: A game to train a horrible monster. The player will play as a giant monster and learn how does his shadow on the screen interact with the objects in the game. The player needs to either destroy buildings or scare people to progress the game, and eventually fights with the giant robot to save his son — little monster.

Live Video: Monster Training Center on BVW Show:

Round 3 - starry Night: Have you ever dreamed about making your own night sky? Player can choose stars in any color and shape, then rotate, scale and shoot them to the sky. In the end by clipping both hands, all the stars in the sky will start to fall down, performing a romantic 3D animation.

Live Video: Starry Night on BVW Show:

Round 4 - Draco Story: Draco is the name of a blue dragon. People in the village are afraid of him because they think Draco is a evil dragon. In fact Draco has a kind heart and is willing to help human being. This round didn’t enter on the BVW show but I would like to show you the 2D intro animation I make for this round.