Cow-Duction

Ana Acosta

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

64 5

A wacky, out-of-this-world cow abducting game, Cow-Duction pits milk-loving spacemen against hard-working farmers. Spacemen from dairy-deficient Lactadia fly a motion simulator & catch cows to power their ship & save their planet! Farmers in line battle on mobile devices to defend their prize cows. ...learn more

Project status: Under Development

Game Development

Groups
2020 Intel University Games Showcase

Intel Technologies
Intel Integrated Graphics, Other

Docs/PDFs [1]Code Samples [1]Links [2]

Overview / Usage

About the Game, Cow-Duction

Cow-Duction is a wacky and cartoonish out-of-this-world cow abducting experience, pitting milk-loving spacemen against hard-working farmers. Two guests from the dairy-deficient planet of Lactadia fly inside the motion simulator, working together to abduct milk-heavy cows to power their ship and save their dairy-starved planet. Guests in the queue put on their farmer hats and battle on mobile devices to defend their prize dairy cows. This motion-based attraction creates a unique, asymmetrical player-versus-player experience that’s fast-paced fun for everyone!

About the Motion Simulator Attraction

The combination of theme park attractions and video games is a growing trend in the themed entertainment industry. An ongoing challenge is to effectively engage and entertain guests during long wait times in the queue. Guests should be invited into the game world as soon as they see the attraction and the Cow-Duction project puts the guests into the game at the head of the queue. Using their personal mobile devices (or staged play stations), the guests in line get to play against the guests inside the premium seats of the motion simulator. This extends the experience and increases the value to the guest, especially for people that would otherwise not be able to enjoy a motion platform attraction!

Designed for the Voyager, Drexel’s on-campus motion simulator platform, Area 52% created an exciting asymmetrical, networked multiplayer game as a custom, location-based themed attraction. Without the motion platform, Cow-Duction can also be played on a variety of desktops and mobile devices combinations, locally or online.

The motion platform experience enhances the game feel with thrilling motion queues synchronized to the in-game flight. Hits from the farmers’ weapons rock the ship and the guests inside the Voyager. When the guests inside grapple a milk-heavy cow, the ship dips and reacts to the unbalanced weight and adds to the special physical location-based experience that can’t be had inside the home. This physical action becomes part of the game design balancing, as the guests are challenged to play under the additional thrill of the motion platform.

About the Team, Area 52%

We are a team of Game Design & Production and Computer Science students, mostly juniors and a few seniors working together in a two-term, twenty-week workshop production course. After multiple prototypes were made in the first ten-week term, Cow-Duction was selected to move forward for an additional term of development!

Ana Acosta, Producer

Vincent Nguyen, Technical Director, UI Designer

Elton Chau, Art Director, Website Designer

Thomas Trimbur, Programmer, Narrative Designer

Katie O'Leary, Programmer

Daniel Sipe, Programmer, Website Manager

Joe Konieczny, Sound Designer, Narrative Designer

Devin Doane, Level Designer, 3D Artist

Saiabhinay Yerreddu, UI Designer, 3D Artist

Giovanni D'Agostino, 3D Artist, Video Editor

The Support Team

Once our team was nominated by the Digital Media Department to represent Drexel University at this competition, we realized our team needed more skills than just the ones we already had. We reached out to other students and expanded our support team to what it is now. These students did not participate in the class but were still invaluable to our game’s production.

Jonathan Morency, Ride Operator

Alex Talitskaya, Concept Artist

Dierdre Liu, Motion Capture Technician

Brandon Delvalle, Animator

Bryan Lee, Rigger

Christian Sánchez, Concept Artist, 3D Artist

Amanda Schiavone, FX Artist

Austin Abrams, FX Artist, 3D Artist

Note Nuchprayoon, Graphic Designer

Abigail Stein, Video Editor

The Faculty

Without these faculty members, our team could not have created Cow-Duction. Dr. Diefenbach and Prof. Lloyd's design constraints and high standards were key aspects that kept the team pushing for a bigger and better game.

Dr. Paul Diefenbach, Advisor, Ride Operator

Prof. Rob Lloyd, Advisor, Ride Operator

Prof. Nick Jushchyshyn, Videographer

Methodology / Approach

As a student team, we used an agile style of development. Our scrums were based on our weekly class schedule and worked very well with our production timeline. We also used a version control GitHub repo to effectively develop our game systems.

Technologies Used

For our game we used software such as Unity, Maya, Blade, Shogun, and Substance Painter, and hardware such as PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads. The game is designed to work on the Voyager, Drexel’s on-campus 2.5-ton hydraulic motion simulation platform, but the game is also playable online and on mobile! Our goal was to create an experience that players find immersive and entertaining.