Curtis Ratica - Game Developer
Curtis is a traditional artist and all around creative. He is also experienced as a game designer, programmer, project manager and entrepreneur. From 1st person shooters, to RTS games to sports games to strategy games, Curtis has experience developing games in many genres and on many platforms.
Previously, as founder of Cloud 9 Games, he designed, programmed and developed trivia, karaoke and band games which included master tracks of original recording artists due to the music licensing and distribution deal that he signed with EMI CMG. Curtis later sold the company to Left Behind Games, LLC. Through his gaming career, Curtis has worked for independent companies as well as AAA game companies, including a AAA game with an $8 million budget.
Currently in Development: This VR game will be released next spring in the Steam and Meta stores. Watch for it then and be prepared for the fright and flight of your life!
JUNKYARD DAREDEVIL RACING: This game was developed by Curtis Ratica under his business name Ratical Games, Inc. to teach his son (then 9) how to develop games. They coding and created art for the entire game and implemented features that full games have. This included a large assortment of levels and vehicles to unlock, each with their own physics. There were also parts and accessories that could be found in Uncle Jim’s junkyard! Players can receive in game cash to help them unlock more goodies by repeat play and by watching ads. Also incorporated was a multiplayer mode that stored player data so that it could be replayed as ghost vehicles that you compete against in races. The game can currently be found on the iOS store here. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/junkyard-daredevil-racing/id1533769270
Mobile Sports Game: Curtis created all artwork for a social media sports game that was available on iOS mobile devices. Every building/structure had multiple levels of advancement. Artwork was created in 3DS Max and rendered as 2D sprites. Animations were rendered to sprite sheets.
Cloud 9 Games, Inc: Curtis founded Cloud 9 Games and designed, coded and created several games including triva, karaoke and music band games. One of the features that set his games apart was that he used original recording tracks from the mastered originals rather than cover bands that other companies were using thanks to the publishing/distribution deal he signed with one of the largest music publishers in the world.
CLOSE COMBAT RTS Games: Curtis worked on several of these games when he was Art Director and artist at Atomic Games. In the example on the left, he painted 2D background maps based off real world locations at the time of the event, whether from the 1940’s or 1990’s.
Coral World: One of the games he developed for his own company, Ratical Games was Coral World. The design, artwork and some programming was performed by Curtis while directing others to develop the front and back end code.
TUROK- EVOLUTION: While working at Acclaim, Curtis was lead environment artist and was responsible for creating the artwork for most of the jungle levels in the game. The game was a launch title for Xbox and was also ported to the Nintendo and Sony consoles. Curtis was responsible for those ports, reworking all the art in the games to be optimized for their respective hardware nuances.
SHOWDOWN Legends of Wrestling: Curtis created half of the stadiums in the game. He and Eric Mckenney used all the resources they could find to faithfully recreate the stadiums for the time period of the game. Since some of the stadiums had been destroyed they had to reach out to even some of the wrestlers and managers of that era to get additional photographs to ensure accuracy of the stadium models.
2D/3D ART: Creating beautiful, engaging and immersive art is a passion for many game developers and its no different for Curtis. This Robot War robot was created in 3DS Max and uses PBR textures to really bring it to life. He also painted some of the weathering and wear into the texture as you can see from the bottom left of the image.
DESIGN: Creating a well thought out and thorough design document is key to managing any game development process. Here is an example of a 60+ game design document that Curtis created for a MMO game, complete with flowcharts, mockups and UI prototypes.
ANIMATIONS: The most difficult type of animations is character animations. This is because we all know what its supposed to look like and because there are so many moving parts and nuances that make them or break them. Curtis keyframed all the character animations for two tank simulations (Steel Beasts). When the animations were delivered, the CEO said “Oh, I didn’t know you were going to mocap them!”. I told him they weren’t, that I manually. keyframed every bit of them. He was very happy with them. The animation to the left was one of the sneak cycles.
ADMIN PANELS: Curtis is a big believer in having admin panels to modify and manage online games. This allows quick and efficient game management and content updates, rather than relying on hard coding which is expensive and slow. This is an example of setting up a new fish for the Coral World game, its behavior, how it swims, resource values, etc.