If you’ve ever played video games before, you may have wondered about how they’re made and who makes them. Well, many different types of people make video games, even one of Western Albemarle’s students.  

 WAHS senior Cal Hughes is creating their own game as a capstone project at Center I. They’ve done four of their years at Center I, and as a senior, they have started constructing their capstone project, “a 2D fighting game like ‘Street Fighter’. They were inspired by many fighting games, but were mostly inspired by the game ‘Super Smash Bros.’” 

The objective of the game, which is called “Project: Why am I fighting you?” (Project W.A .I.F.U. for short), is to beat your enemies in a 2D fighting arena. Hughes gave his project the name “Why am I Fighting You?” because its characters shouldn’t be fighting each other. 

The characters are a roster of 8 people who walked through a door into a battle world. The roster includes Elda, a janitor, Maxwell, a doctor turned assassin, Luci, a girl who loves Christmas lights, Gabe, a lost boy scout, Augra, a rich businesswoman, Holly, a farmer with a jacked protector, Gon Daza, a cartoon dragon, and a secret character that unlocks after the story mode.  

Hughes plans on updating the game until it has the right animations and personality for their characters. They plan to add some secrets to the game, including references to other fighting games. Unity’s 3d engine allows the x, y, and z axes to be manipulated to create the models of the characters. The biggest problems they are working on are making the characters always face each other and controller key binds, which is a way to use keys that you want to use. 

Game development is a passion of Hughes’, but they also are hoping to make some profit off their game by uploading it to Steam, a platform where developers large and small can share their games with the world. They see themselves finishing the game “after the school year.” because “[They’re] a solo developer, and that takes time.” 

At college Hughes plans to major in game design to further his skills in game creation, and hopes to attend George Mason University or Drexel University. After college, they hope to work at Nintendo or Capcom and make games of their own.

Project W.A.I.F.U. seems to be the first of many interesting games that Cal Hughes will make, and it will be exciting to see what comes next.