Work
MBB: Marsianische Bundesbahnen
Marsianische Bundesbahnen is a 3D, single-player, strategy and management game about building a railway infrastructure on Mars. The player has to connect colonies and resources together with railways, allowing the cities to grow and develop. This game has been developed from scratch during the Game Programming Laboratory at ETH Zürich Game Technology Center. The theme of the year was Alfred Escher, railway pioneer on Switzerland and founder of the ETH.
Dates:Feb 2018 - May 2018
Type:Academic Project
Related skills:Java, Algorithms, Game Design, UI Design, Photoshop, Music
launch projectI have mainly worked on the background story, balance and mechanics of the game, the graph algorithm for distribution of resources, terrain generation, the user interface programming & design, the dynamic music soundtrack, and the website. The resources (sources) are provided to cities (sinks) with a max flow algorithm. The cities grow or indicate alerts according to how their needs are meet: there are several types of resources each one will have a different impact on the city (limited research, population death, decrease of profits, etc.). Head to the website for a more detailed explanation of the game.
The soundtrack adjusts the intensity and changes between themes based on how the player is doing in the game (cities dying or growing fast, lack of essential resource, incoming asteroid storm, etc.). The original sequential soundtrack was splitted into parts and I programmed transitions and loops between them.
The use of synthesizers (Omnisphere) allows to obtain a sci-fi sound, this is combined with recorded heavy guitars (tools: Bias FX, Bias Amp) and drum samples (EZDrummer) for intense sections. I was inspired by Doom sci-fi Soundtrack wich also have heavy guitars and its history is based on Mars. Below are some guitar playthroughts of the themes.
Finally, here are some examples of the designs I did for the interface.
