LEGO Rock Rocket
Client: LEGO
Tools: Flash CS3, Photoshop
Responsibilities: Game development
Noteworthy facts: Working with LEGO while at Blockdot has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. I am an unabashed LEGO fanboy and have been ever since I was old enough to put them together. This was the first game I got to produce for their new Power Miners product. We weren't allowed to show any of the vehicles, only the mysterious Rock Monsters. You hurl one through the air with a mine cart and attempt to pick up as many crystals as you can before you crash to the ground. Each color has its own special abilities. The crystal panel on the title screen is a code entry mechanism. Enter five yellows to unlock a new monster. The others you'll have to do some digging to find... This project included a number of firsts for me; I learned how to create displacement maps so hitting a rock causes a shockwave effect, and the Rock Monsters are composited from two layers of alpha-channel video. One of the layers has a color transform applied to it in real time so that we could use one set of animations for every color of monster.
