Past projects
ZenBound – 2009
I was involved in ZenBound by creating 3d models for the game.
Game idea is to roll a 3d model with your fingers and tighten a rope around it covering as much of the model area with the rope as possible. Sounds simple and it is but the game has some of it and has won several awards and collected loads of very good reviews. To understand it better you should check the website: ZenBound.com I will not present all the awards and material here as the website does it a lot more efficiently.
“The Game Boy famously had Tetris; The PSP introduced us to Lumines; The DS shined through Meteos, and now, the iPhone has Zen Bound.” – 1UP.com
Platforms: iPhone, iPod touch
SPiN – 2008
Game contains 100 3d models (in a mesh fileformat using 3dsmax-exporter I created) made by me.
Game base on the idea of SiL. Actually it’s a rework of SiL gameplay wise and adds a 3-axis rotation for example. It even contains lots of the same graphic content than the original.
Platforms: iPhone, iPod touch
Awards:
IGN – Best Puzzle Game 2008 – “SPiN is a welcome change from the match-three formula that still dominates puzzlers.”
Reviews:
slidetoplay.com — Highest rating, ‘Must Have’
148apps.com — 4.5/5
ipodtouchlab.com — 5/5 (Japanese)
AppVee — 5/5
Video: Youtube
Ruusun Taisto – Uneton48 2008 entry
Off Productions contribution to Uneton48 contest held in Helsinki, Finland from 12th to 14th September 2008.
Assigned elements were:
Genre: Western/Musical
Character: Taisto Suomalainen, politician
Prop: scale
Line of Dialogue: “Älä nukahda” (”Don’t fall asleep”)More about the Uneton48 contest can be found on the official site: uneton48.fi.
You can watch it from: Youtube high-quality-link
I worked as a director for the film. Getting a western squeezed in to 7 minutes with some kind of story was quite a challenge. We didn’t use even half of the real 48h for the production but we did have a lot of fun with the group. =) (even though I was sick for big part of he production and couldn’t carry my duty that well and joint effort with Joona Poikonen (the producer) was more than welcome.) All in all the whole thing was more of a group effort while having fun. =)
The production didn’t end up in the jury-chosen 10 finalists but was picked by the organizer to be in the DVD with them so I assume it wasn’t that far from the finalists in the whole picture.
Stunt Bugs – 2007
Did the game design with Eero Pöyry and concept graphics with Mikko Finneman. Project contained a lot of tool designing and technical stuff because of some proceduralism included etc.
First shot down here is a prototype of procedural bug controlled in 3dsmax with couple of simplified sliders. The three last ones are taken from the unfinished teaser trailer material.
SIL+ – 2007
I did all the 3d graphics, co-designed the game with Eero Pöyry and scripted most of the level backgrounds. I also built a tool for 3dsmax to build variations from the 3d-objects with an arbitary set of vertices and did 4 variations for every object with that. All the 2d background and menu graphics are again from the hand of Mikko Finneman
Sil+ is a sequel for Sil. We had opportunity to tweak the gameplay and graphics much better this time as we had the original Sil as a “prototype.” The game includes also a lot more features and content than Sil.Platforms: Win32, s60 rev 3 and 2, WM5
Toy2one – ToyZone 2 – 2007
ToyZone got a sequel. This time I teamed up with Joona Poikonen for a nice comeback because our last production together was already 6 years a go (LeGorSIKA – check below for more information). We didn’t really have too much time as we started the project a week before the Assembly demoparty where we wanted to release it. The music was done by Kai-Eerik Komppa who pinched that one out in a very tight schedule.
The production itself is a stop-motion animation using small plastic-tubes that are placed one by one with pinchers on a plate (a.k.a. “Pearls”) that has 72×36 small sticks to support them. It placed 2nd in the Assembly 2007 Shortfilm competition – which btw. had great great level of quality among the participants.
Download: Toy2one XVID ~90Mb
Youtube – Toy2one
AmisQuest (Working title) – 2006-2007
AmisQuest is a adventure game where boy called Ami explores and solves puzzles in a fantasy-world to save his home-village.
I did the game concept, design and 3d graphics for the prototype. Mikko Finneman did most of the concept graphics. The development was frozen at a stage we had the prototype graphics running on a mobile device as seen on the screenshot below and the project kept “hanging in the air” for the last year of the life of Fathammer.
SIL – The Silhouette Game – 2006
Sil was a quite small project at start and I did the all 100 3d objects and 3d mesh exporter with Maxscript for the project. The idea behind the game is already old but our decision makers wasn’t keen of it back those days.
The game is practically just shape matching. Your goal is to match objects rotation to the silhouette in minimum possible moves. It trains shape matching skills and is great fun.
Awards: Forum Nokia PRO, GDC mobile innovation hunt
Platforms: Win32, s60, UIQ, Brew, WM5
Boom! Boom! Driller! – 2006
Participated in Assembly 2006 Game Development competition. This time the concept was something I’ve had in mind for a long time already. Then suddenly I found a coder that was interested to do it (Jari Komppa.) He also came up with the idea of Indie musics for the game and handled all that “lovely” paper work and communication with the bands. I did level design, graphics and concepting for the game.
The game itself is a drilling and bombing game. You are supposed to go thru levels with different puzzles and goals by attaching drills and bombs together and bombing the stuff! The game has pixel particle physics so it’s not all the same than Worms. =)
Platform: Win32
ToyZone – 2005
A Stop-motion animation that is created using a children toy for Assembly 2005 short film competition. It ended up 3rd. The music is composed by Simo Virokannas.
Youtube
Factory Pinball – 2005
I did graphics and level design for Jere Sanisalos Assembly 2005 Game development competition entry called Factory Pinball.
It’s a pinball where the ball is replaced with different ragdolls and the table has dynamic elements controlled by realistic physics.
Platform: Win32
Chernobyl exclusion zone trip – 2005
Note that the URL that most of the links on the internet points to is http://random.gfxile.net/chernobyl/which is the original home of the pictures.
C.J. Chivers from New York Times was on the tour with us and wrote an article about the trip. It ended up in the frontpage of New York Times and Herald Tribune so check it:
The article in NY-Times by C.J. Chivers (I’m the Black&White-shirted guy with dark hair in the left side of the picture)
Targets – 2005
A third person shooter project that was supposed to be made just to showcase X-Forge 2 and to develop engine cababilities. In the game you were supposed to be police officer in target-range built in old industrial buildings.
The project was never finished as it was cancelled on the chalklines. Although for a mobile game it was quite advanced. It was runned on 640×480 resolution hardware accelerated device. It featured shadowmaps, hierarchical branched animation blending etc.
My job here was Lead Level Designer. In the project we had quite nice and fluent team working on it.Platform: X-Forge 2 + openGL-ES
Generic Street Racing title – 2005
A Street Racing title which never got over production-phase. The project was cancelled a bit before first playable because Fathammer stopped to do games internally.
My participation for the project was this time a bit bigger. I wrote the game design and was again the Lead Level Designer. Also I was strongly participating in the technical designing of things with Jetro Lauha. With content I was pleased that we were able to create new and faster workflows for content creation and all the game tracks were much ahead of the schedule. For the 3d-content I worked with Tero Koivu and the screenshots below are from him.
After all one of the best projects I’ve ever participated. Sad that didn’t got the possibility to finish it. Mind that the content seen in screenshots below are pre-first playable and placeholder content.Platform: X-Forge 2 platforms
Firehammer level packs – 2005
The level pack for this vertical shooter was already done somewhere around 2003. It didn’t got released as the company thought that there’s no market for these. Although when Tapwave went down summer 2005 and Zodiac turned obsoleet hardware Fathammer gave the level packs for the Zodiac users for free. (Along with full Geopod XE, you have to search it yourself…)
I did a bunch of graphics for one of the themes.Platform: Zodiac
Reviews: gamezone (The review is about the original game. Not considering the level packs.)
Stuntcar Extreme – 2003-2005
Stuntcar Extreme is a mobile racing game with funky physics. It’s still one of the best games Fathammer has ever made.
My role in it was an 3D-artist/level-designer.Platforms: Zodiac(was bundled with the device), series 60, series UIQ, Pocket PC, Gizmondo, WIPI
Reviews: all about symbian(series 60 version) | wgamer(Zodiac version)
Hockey Rage 2004 – 2005
As original Hockey Rage was developed for series 60 we needed to enhance the content for Gizmondo version as it has more processing power. The 3d-content was almost fully redone.
I redid the playing field and environment for the game.Platform: Gizmondo
Reviews: gamezone | gamershell
Stuntcar Extreme Enhanced – 2004
Fathammer created a enhanced version of Stuntcar Extreme in 2004. All the environments are from the hands of Olli and Sami Sorjonen and the cars, original level design and technical polishing was done in-house. The game itself was bundled with a 3D HW accelerated version of Dell Axim to showoff the PDA’s tremendous processing power at that time.
My role in it was an 3D-artist and I was mainly involved in polishing the environments and creating part of the cars.Platform: Dell Axim
Heppa by DHFC – 2004
Had some great time while doing this stuff. We used normal maps first time for our demos with this. Although the workflow for getting them was not even nearly as easy as it is in current times so we didn’t use them too much.I spent my time mostly on environments as the bar-scenario was almost fully completed thru my hand (minus the aliens which were created by Jyri Ullakko.) Also I worked out the workroom models and most of the textures but Jyri did lighting for it.
As the whole demo was done tightly as teamwork most of the stuff was done in a manner that everyone had their hands on it.(The name of the demo refers to a line from a finnish comic which itself was a parody of a Lucky Luke)
Bomberman – 2004
3d mobile bomberman. The game was quite complete in technical aspects. It had only one level-theme and one enemy because it was a proposal for Hudson that we could do a 3d mobile bomberman. Even though big enough project to be mention here.
Hudson wasn’t interested about the project so it was discontinued even that it was almost ready product.
I did 3d-graphics for it. Although the characters were based on original gamecube 3d-bomberman. And probably I can’t share screenshots of it because of license-issues. =/
Platforms: X-Forge platforms
X-Forge 2 demo – 2004
A project we did to test X-Forge 2 engine and tools that were under production. The demo was also running at some mobile-event at Fathammer booth. As we had quite free hands to just test things it’s more of a tech-demo. Also was a nice project to work with. The demo features a scenario where me and my workmate animated two sci-fi characters to fight each other. I think it was the most pleasant part of the demo.
We worked as a quite tight team with my workmates and my part was mainly to plan stuff, 3d-art, working with technical issues and also animated cameras and part of the character animation. The engine was in production at the time and didn’t have shadow maps, bone systems or that kind of a fancy features yet.
Spy Hunter Missile Crisis – 2003
Spy Hunter Missile crisis was done in quite tight deadlines and the reference for the game was the new PS2 version at that time. One of the best projects I’ve worked with. Most of the team had spent part of their childhood playing the original Spy Hunter so it was nice to get hand on it.
The game featured 11 unique levels that were varying from 2 to 5 minutes to play thru optimal way. So it included a big load of fastly whistling content on the roadsides. I had nice crunchtimes with Kai-Eerik Komppa working with the levels. =)
My role in it was an Lead level designer.Platform: Zodiac
Reviews: wgamer|pgnx
Geopod XE – 2003
New version of Geopod. Contains a big bunch of new pods and tracks. Geopod is a wipeout-like racing game. When Zodiac turned to be obsoleet hardware Fathammer released Geopod XE for Zodiac to be downloaded for free.
I did most of the 3d-content for the game.Platforms: Zodiac, series 60, series UIQ, pocket PC
PITT by DHFC – 2003
This project was done mostly as a satellite project. Nitro did some of the scenes and I did my share. John Peeba and Stallone also did some modelling sketching etc. I did the probe and the cyberdog and most of the 3d in the first part of the demo.
Men In Black II: Alien pursuit – 2002
This was the first bigger game-project I got my hands on at Fathammer. The project was done for Sony-Ericsson and the game is bundled with P800. The game was launched somewhere around the same time as the movie. Game itself was simply a railshooter.
I did all the 3d-content, animations, cutscenes and some of the 2d sprite-animations.Platform: series UIQ (came bundled with P800)
Stunt run – 2002
A racing game that was also bundled with Sony-Ericsson P800 phone. The game is a bit in fashion of old classic: Stuntcar racer.
I did some tweaking on 3d-content.Platform: series UIQ (came bundled with P800)
Fable by Armada – 2002
This demo had a poem as a narration and the story was told in a realtime 3d scenario. Although we started doing the demo too late and we didn’t really have time or resources to finish it. The animations were done in a great hurry and really technically awkward and bad way. Great learning experience if nothing else.
Geopod – 2002
The original Geopod with only couple of levels etc.
I worked as a 3d-artist.Platforms: Series 60, Pocket PC
LeGorso and LeGorSika – 2000-2001
A series of Stop-Motion animations I did with Joona Poikonen.
LeGorso was 1st in Assembly’2000 Wild demo competition and shown in some film festivals. LeGorSIKA was at 1st place in Assembly’2001 Wild demo competition. (These days they call it “Short film competition”)LeGorSIKA has been aired couple of times on national (finnish) television channels and it has won several awards in film-festivals.
LeGorSIKA also won Kultainen porkkana-award in 2003. Finnish national radio channel Ylex and pixoff.net picked 6 best finnish indie movies from Pixoff.net and people could freely vote for the best movie out of them to get the award.Youtube – LeGorso
Youtube – LeGorSIKA trailer
Youtube – LeGorSIKA