With the end of the semester fast approaching, the members of the Multimedia Club scramble to finish their video game project.
Yale Buckner, the club president, said that getting to this point hasn’t been easy for the team, balancing academics with the project.
“It’s extremely difficult; a lot of our guys are losing their minds trying to juggle finals and girlfriends and jobs and school, and it does get hectic at times,” said Buckner.
The game, a first-person shooter titled “Hunted,” is being developed in conjunction with other clubs at Moorpark College, including the Programming Club and Dub Club.
“Hunted” features a character stranded on a tropical island with, in Buckner’s words, an “action junkie psychopath” who is attempting to kill the player.
The game draws influence from author Richard Conell’s book, “The Most Dangerous Game.”
The project is being built on the Unreal Engine, a development platform used by professional game studios.
Roughly 100 students are working on the game, with some focusing on rendering environments and foliage, such as trees and lighting effects.
The team as a whole helps put a narrative together, using voice acting and environmental cues to weave a plot around the player.
According to Buckner, the club members contribute approximately 30 to 40 hours a week on the project, sometimes sacrificing their personal time.
“We get together after class, between class, after school, on the weekends,” said Buckner. “We are really burning the candle on both ends trying to get this thing done.”
Sometimes the stress of juggling a video game, work and academics can be a lot to manage, according to Co-Narrative Manager Jonathan Munoz.
“It’s my passion to do, so I’m willing to put in the extra time between [“The Hunted,”] classes, work and all the other things I have going on in my social life,” said Munoz.
Level Design Manager Trevor Rice spends around six hours everyday working with the game engine, integrating what the others have made into the game.
He said that the small milestones are what keeps the team going, like when he managed to get an elevator moving up and down with sparks.
“It’s not just the whole game, it’s the little victories for us right now,” said Rice.
Buckner is confident they can pull everything together in time, and even though it has eaten up a lot of free time and can be difficult at times, he says it’s worth it in the end.
Munoz can relate.
“There are times…like I had to make this tree with thorns on it, and I literally wanted to break down because it was four in the morning. I hadn’t slept in like 48 hours,” said Munoz. “But even then I sat down and thought about it. I was like “I love doing this. I could keep doing this for the rest of my life and be happy.”
