University of Cincinnati - Super Booty Run


Super Booty Run is a fun and friendly arcade-like game created by two talented students, Paul Mealy and Nicholas Mitrousis as their final class project at the University of Cincinnati . Showcased to the public at the annual DAAP works show, this Pirates' scavenger hunt game was created in only 4 months.

Paul Mealy and Nicholas Mitrousis

Super Booty Run was designed by students Paul Mealy and Nicholas Mitrousis as their senior capstone project in the digital design program at the University of Cincinnati. Planning began in January 2003 and production lasted from March to June 2003. It was showcased to the public at the annual DAAP works show and received excellent reviews.

Application

Super Booty Run is similar to a game of capture-the-flag. Unlike the many current incarnations of this game, there are no shooting opponents or hiding flags in Super Booty Run: the pirate must leave his docked ship, cross an island, and find the opposing pirate's ship. Once on the other ship, he must steal the treasure and return it to his ship. The twist on this capture-the-flag concept is the introduction of traps. Indeed, on the island, the players will encounter traps they can set to foil an opponent's plans. The traps do such things as block a path, move the treasure, or slow his progress. To create the best playing conditions for two opposing players, Super Booty Run was design to run in a custom-built arcade cocktail cabinet. The cabinet was designed and built alongside the game's production. The cabinet contained two LCD fl at panel displays, 8-way two-button control panels, working coin door, speakers, and printed table graphics. A PC, set up similarly to a MAME cabinet, ran the game inside. The LCDs presented each player a 3rd person view of his or her pirate. In the game's brief development time, only two players are allowed to play. In a full-running version, Super Booty Run would allow for multiple players on teams in a cooperative/competitive game.

The challenge

The concept behind Super Booty Run began with a frustration of Paul and Nicholas in the current trend of video games. According to them, many games today are re-makes of ageing concepts such as the first person shooter and almost always dependent on quality graphics instead of quality gameplay. Also, multiplayer gaming's dependence on the Internet loses much of the two-player excitement found in arcades and home consoles.

Super Booty Run is essentially an experiment with three objectives: create a game that is easy to learn and easy to play, create a sense of camaraderie among the players much like a board game, and base it on a traditional game with a non-traditional twist.

Solution

As interactive designers, their programming experience was limited to mostly Flash Actionscripting and Director Lingo, but Super Booty Run required a much more robust development environment. In the same time their goal was to focus on the design and gameplay. Finally they used 3D Studio Max for the modelling and a professor recommended Virtools for their development, which was the most suitable solution to their needs.

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