Behind the Scenes
From Dominoze
The Development Team
Christopher Haag is responsible for the inception of Dominoze. He is also the project manager, lead designer, sole programmer, CEO/owner of Gamieon, Inc., and jack-of-all-trades when something in the project needs to get done.
Eric Barth is Dominoze's most veteran artist. Having been contracted to do content development on and off since 2006, his many contributions to the project are invaluable; and the high quality of his modeling is clear in numerous levels. After his time as Lead Artist, he has since retired from the project.
Jeff Gordon heavily contributed to Dominoze level art in 2009. His work is always well planned and well executed.
Jordan Pelovitz also contributed to level art in 2009. Lately, he has been the go-to person whenever the project needed something like a castle or an apple modeled fairly quickly.
Yisroel Goldstein designed several Dominoze levels as of 2008. He has a talent for creating puzzles with simple objects which yet require real critical thinking to solve. If you find yourself wondering what is taking you so long to solve a puzzle, it's probably his design.
Hélder Gomes is Dominoze's first contracted level and UI designer. His contributions helped the project hone in on the main menu and game interface. He also helped establish some do's-and-don'ts for level development.
Since 2007, Russ McMackin designed some of Dominoze's most intricate levels. His creative ideas kept Chris busy analyzing the capabilities of the Dominoze, and adding new features that make the game experience more enjoyable and fun to watch.
Bryan Taylor designed several of Dominoze levels in 2009 after the rules of "how to design levels for the first Dominoze release" were finalized. His levels are included in the demo, and are mostly designed to help new players grasp the fundamentals of how to play.
Mick Rippon, a very talented music composer, graciously allowed for his music to be used in Dominoze. His rhythms create a more pleasant yet energized atmosphere in the puzzle solving world that is Dominoze.
3 Peak Audio provided custom sound effects for the project. Prior to their efforts, there were less than a dozen total sounds in the whole project; and without the music, things were rather quiet!
The Technology
Dominoze uses the Gamieon engine, which relies on in-house-developed technologies; as well as other third party technologies, including: FreeGLUT and the OpenGL graphics API, the OpenAL audio library, the Newton physics engine, CxImage; and the LUA scripting engine.
The Dominoze website is hosted by 3-Wave technologies.
The Development Story
Dominoze development officially began on February 1st, 2001 by Christopher Haag as a casual one-man project to develop a simple physics simulation with the focus of knocking over dominoes. There was no plot, story, design, long-term plans, publisher, or game play concept other than the idea of moving objects into alignment so that all the dominoes could fall over. The main focus was engine and game editor development to satisfy the simulation; and the desire to develop as much of it as possible while trying to keep the use of third-party game engine libraries to a minimum. The project moved along at a crawling pace of anywhere from 0 to 10 hours per week; depending on the week.
Years later, it was clear that the project was going to be seen through to the end, and that what was a simulation needed to finally become a playable game. On October 26, 2004, Gamieon was officially incorporated as the company through which all further growth and development would continue. Casual development continued at a slow pace. Various game play interfaces were tested and scrapped, and work continued on the game engine.
Though incorporated two years earlier; it wasn't until roughly 2006 that other individuals were contracted to assist with level design and art development. Initially, there was confusion over the direction of the project. There are so many things that one could do with the core game play concept of Dominoze, that it was difficult to find the best way forward. There were also problems with the game and the editor not being up to par with modern graphics, game play, and stability. Through continuing with an improved development pace of 0 to 15 hours per week, communication, and play testing with all team members involved; the game design became much more well defined, and engine development yielded much better graphics and better game play. After the game became fit enough, a website was formed to invite Alpha testers in to provide additional feedback. A cycle of bug fixes, feature additions, internal testing, and alpha releases ensued.
In mid-2009, a game play test revealed that the project still had fundamental problems as far as game play and entertainment. A long list of grievances was created by the lead developer, and with consent from all the team members involved, the development pace accelerated; and the problems were quickly knocked out one by one. The process continues to this day. With just a few more things to fix, the Dominoze demo is slated for release after additional general testing, as well as community or professional testing to take place later in 2009.
