Hey, welcome to my portfolio page. My name’s Ben, and I’m currently studying Computer Games Programming at Teesside University. Here, you can find all the projects I’ve been working on, either individually or as a team. Feel free to read about what I’m currently up to, or download some of my content. I’m currently building my portfolio, so please leave me feedback!

You can also see what I’m currently up to by visiting the livestream page!

To contact me, email me at b.scroggins@live.com, or add me as a friend on steam.
To find out more about me, click here, or click here to request  a copy of my CV!

Some quick links to visit:

Enjoy the site!

–Benjamin Scroggins

Over the past month I’ve been working on an idea inspired from my work experience at Escapist and through my recent interest of mobile devices. I recently acquired a smart phone (I’ve been using a simple phone which could just text and call since I was 12), and have been astonished by the features of these devices.

I’ve been thinking of the possibilities, and my main thought has been this:
With smart phones – we can access any form of information – from anywhere. How can I apply this to games?

My answer to this is through an example car game. Players could be playing a racing game from anywhere in the world -the track being set in say, New York. The device could then download the current weather information about New York and put that data into the game in real-time. This could mean a number of things – but the things I’m concentrating on are:

1) The weather can change as it’s happening in real life, immersing the player in the virtual world.
2) The gameplay changes subtly to affect the experience. If it’s raining, it’s raining in the game. Suddenly the cars have less grip on the road.

This is something to work on. For the meantime, I’m currently building my project on the Windows Phone as a prototype. Testing everything quickly in XNA – before I move over to my main device, the iPad. I would love to see this working on the iPad. I plan on getting my prototype finished before January, and then moving onto xcode and objective C. Exciting stuff.

My project is set in the Phoenix Building car park at Teesside University. This video shows the current weather data being received and implemented into my game. It’s not much, but it’s a good start – as this was actually the temperature and weather condition, taken at the time of recording this video.

Just a quick update on our progress:

We’ve been working very hard on Teddy Defender over the past few weeks. Our presentation is on February 18th, and we want the game almost complete by this point. Our final month will be bug fixing, adding final bits and pieces and trying to get the game certified for the indie marketplace.

The game is definitely taking shape, and I’m beginning to add a menu – which is currently being designed by our designer, Marco. I’ve also been tasked with implementing animations. I set up animations by following the skinning tutorial by Microsoft, and working with our animator for hours trying to get the correct export settings in 3DS Max.

Pathfinding has been implemented by Chris and Charlotte, which is coming along rapidly. As a design issue we’re looking at either disabling towers being built during a wave, or updating the path every time a tower wants to be placed. It’s also now impossible to block and enemy’s path.

After the holidays we need to continue working on the gameplay, and trying to make a fun – replayable game. Currently it needs quite a bit of play testing to get the waves just right.

I had a day free last week and decided to port over Blackjack21 to the Windows Phone. It gave me a good excuse to explore the Windows Phone SDK (7.1) – something I need to become familiar with for my final year project prototype.

This version of Blackjack21 is as its best – now being completely touch screen. It has a couple extra features – such as Vibration and Sounds, which make it more fun than the previous versions. In the future, if I do get more free time, I would like to add a screen which displays your wins, loses – and just some general statistics.

Anyway, it’s been certified and published to the Windows Phone – and is completely free! So no excuse – go on the marketplace and give it a download! Let me know what you think!