The Portfolio of Tyrone Ward

Mythrunner: Oisín’s Journey is a game created as a group project along with Dylan Cahill, (https://dylancahillmulling.wixsite.com/dylancahill), for our Digital Project module at Maynooth University. Created in Godot, Mythrunner is, in its current state, a simple Endless Runner style game in which the player controls Oisín as he runs and avoids various obstacles. The original vision of the game included the entirety of the Tír na nÓg story, with three levels planned: Oisín’s initial journey through a forest and meeting with Niamh, Oisín and Niamh crossing the ocean on top of the White Mare, and finally Oisín’s return home to Ireland. Planned educational features included Irish language translations and an interpretation of the myth that would serve to teach about Irish mythology and ancient culture.

My primary contribution to the project involved coding along with the visual assets. Environments, obstacles and characters. These assets were created using a combination of Blender, Photoshop and Substance Painter.

Pictured above is our player characer, Oisín, the hero of the story. He appears here as he would have for the majority of the game, with the ending featuring an elderly Oisín.

These bears serve as one of the obstacles/enemies the player would encounter. Unlike the majority of the game’s obstacles, the bear would be mobile, moving either left or right across the player’s path. Further development would lead to a variation of the bear that would pop out of bushes and swipe their paws at Oisín rather than walking across his path.

An example of the modular environment created for the game, featuring trees, mushrooms, rocks and bushes. These would be generated along the player’s path as they move forward.

A mushroom asset created for the game. These would be generated within the modular environmental pieces and could come in blue or red.

An example of one of the static obstacles the player would need to avoid. This one is a log that is layed across Oisín’s path. Oisín would need to jump in order to avoid it.

Further planned levels would include other characters. Namely the White Mare, who would effectively take over as the player character for the second level, in which she would be carrying Oisín and Niamh across the ocean to the titular island of Tír na nÓg.

Examples of some of the menu UI, depiction the Start, Exit and Replay buttons in their various states, unpressed and pressed. Unlike the rest, these were rendered as images and placed into the game rather than physical models within the game world.

Concept boards for the First and Second levels. Created using AI generated assets. The first depicts level 1, in which Oisín travels through a forest as shown in the above gameplay footage. The second image depicts the journey across the ocean as part of the planned second level.