Description : 

Pen and paper role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder have always suffered from the challenges of introducing new players to a complicated rule set. The Pathfinder Beginner Box is a starter set with a great ramp for beginners willing to read rulebooks. Players who do not read these rulebooks, however, still suffer from confusion and information overload.

 

 

Star Stone is a semester long pitch team at the Entertainment Technology Center. We are creating a digital character sheet for the Pathfinder Beginner Box designed to simplify information, drive meaningful choice, and encourage new players to fully engage in role-play. This experience is delivered through mobile devices to augment the Beginner Box adventure materials.

 

 

Our vision is to create a better first 30 minutes of play after which brand new players should feel confident and interested in further exploration. The visuals focus on the actions of characters who are recognizable at a distance while leaving the emotions to the players. Our audio is designed to underlay dialog at the table while setting the mood and focusing players on the task at hand. All of this is wrapped in a synchronized application able to influence each other’s characters.

 

 

Website : 

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/transcendence/

 

 

Role : 

Lead Programmer : 

• I was the lead programmer on the team. For the frontend we used Cordova API which converts a web application into phone apps

• For the web application itself, we used HTML/CSS with AngularJS

• In the backend we had a simple server written in node.js using socket.io

• I created the architecture in the frontend which included features like all the statistic calculation for character sheets based on rules, an animation system, an audio manager which has the capability to cross fade music when it is changed

• The architecture also handled two different interfaces - GM interface and player interface