Seasons is a 3D scene created using DirectX 10 for the module AG0901A – Programming Environments. The aim for this coursework was to design and construct a 3D application that runs on pc which demonstrates the graphical capabilities of DirectX 10 through the use of effect files utilising pixel and vertex shaders, stencil and depth buffering, lighting, the use of textures and materials, world, view and projection transformations, and user interaction with the mouse and keyboard.
The user has control of the position of the camera. This can be moved freely in all directions throughout the scene. The user can also switch between the different seasons of the scene or reset the particle system.
Left mouse button + mouse movement - Rotates the camera about the X- and Y-axes
Arrow keys - Rotates the camera about the X- and Y-axes
W - Moves the camera forward
S - Moves the camera backward
A - Moves the camera left
D - Moves the camera right
R - Resets the particle systems
1 - Switches to the next state in the scene
This year I took part in the Global Game Jam for the first time, travelling to Glasgow to participate in the Scottish Game Jam. I was part of 5-man team, Tiger Blood, myself and Jonathan Jones coding, Laura McSheffrey and Grzesiek Ziemba creating some rather funky art and Charles Scotland providing sound.
The theme for this year’s jam was:
Deciding to aim for a more adult theme for our game, we came up with a rather mind-bending game about the inescapable cycle of drug addiction, taking inspiration from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Our creation, Divine Moments of Truth, is a simple 2D game in which the player runs around the edge of a continually rotating world, dodging obstacles and collecting drug hits to boost his high and keep him on top of the world.
As this was the first proper game jam for all the team, we did very well and came away with a playable game at the end of the 48 hours. We wrote the game in C++ and used Gosu, the free 2D game development library. I hadn’t used this before, but it was nice and simple, and after a brain storming and design session, we were able to hit the ground running with the code. For next time, we’ll definitely need to organise some proper source control. Dropbox is very useful, but if we’d had more than two programmers, the whole thing would have broken down.
The weekend was fantastic, and really tested our skills. Seeing all the amazing things people managed to make is really inspiring. Definitely going to take part again next year!
Black Hole is a Windows game written in C++ using the Boost libraries to implement threading. The player controls a black hole using the arrow keys. The sun in the centre of the screen emits light particles which the player must collect by colliding with them. The objective is to collect enough particles before the sun goes supernova.
Just a quick example of one of the things I’ve worked on since the summer, here is a little program I wrote to demonstrate an a-star pathfinding algorithm in action. I used this method to control patrolling enemies in the Stealth game I wrote for the Playstation 2 and Windows last semester.
Ok, so the website kind of died a death over summer 2010.
I started a new job last summer, as well as taking on a couple of different volunteer work positions, one as a student ambassador at the university, and another doing IT tutoring with the Hilltown Project in Dundee. All this work, combined with doing my best with coursework at university has left very little time for updating, or even doing much, if any, gaming. Bit of a tragedy, I know. However, I have more money and more skills to show for it, so it is well worthwhile.
Hopefully I am going to be updating a bit more from now on as I want to keep a proper record of all the coding I’ve been doing.
My Sudoku game was written as the core piece of coursework for first year programming in C++ as part of my Computer Games Technology degree at Abertay.
The game displays a Sudoku game grid on the screen and populates the grid with a fresh Sudoku puzzle. The cursor can be moved across the grid on empty squares and values can then be entered. The game updates the grid with entered values. Sudoku puzzles are read from files – 3 available difficulties, 60 puzzles in total, selected at random. Different colours are used to show alternative entry modes yellow for entered values and blue for notes. Values can also be deleted. The game can be saved and resumed at a later time.
My game will display a message suggesting you double check your entries if you make any obvious mistakes like entering a number already entered in that row/column/block. The programme also has a complete Sudoku solver and allows the player to check their entries. Correct entries are then displayed in green and incorrect ones in red. There is also the option to receive a hint if the player is stuck. This will fill in a value at random. However, hints can only be used 3 times.
On completing the game, you will be given the time it took to complete.
Invasion is a Space Invaders clone for the Game Boy Advance I coded as part of my first year coursework for my Computer Games Technology degree at Abertay. It is coded in C++ using the HAM SDK integrated development environment VisualHAM. We used the Game Boy Advance emulator software for the first year module in Computer and Graphics Architectures module to teach us about working within the confines of console hardware.
I found this subject good fun and feel I learnt a lot from it. Although it is now outdated, the Game Boy Advance is still very useful for this as it allows you to program right down to the hardware, passing code directly to the registers. Invasion is written for Mode 4 of the GBA, using a bitmap background, double buffering and multiple sprites. I found this project very rewarding as I learnt about the use of sprites, collision detection and what sort of things I need to be aware of the maximise efficiency.
Controls
Return – Selects options on menu/title screens
Arrowkeys – move the lasercannon
Z – Fire key
Backspace – Pauses the game
Files
Download all Invasion files here. This download includes the VisualBoy Advance emulator neccessary to play Invasion. To play the game open the Invasion folder and drag the Invasion.gba file onto the VBA.exe.
Bug Lick is really the first original game I created as part of my Computer Game Technology degree at Abertay. The brief was to create a scrolling shooter type game. I made the decision to move away from stereotypical scrolling shooters and so came on the idea of having a rotating head rather than a spaceship. This led to the choice of a chameleon as the player’s character and bugs for food. As my design does not feature the usual shooter elements I needed to implement design features such as different power ups or negative effects for eating the various bugs, to give the game the same sort of depth and difficulty.
Primarily, the Flash game project was to give us the opportunity to learn more about game design and implementation of that design, using a procedural language like ActionScript to give us access to something more visually impressive than the ASCII graphics we were working with in C++. I found this project both challenging and rewarding, giving me a greater appreciation of an object oriented approach to coding and also the strong use of mathematics in games programming. This game was also the first game in which I used sound. This has given me a real appreciation of the impact music and sound effects have on the feel of a game.
Yesterday I attended Game in Scotland, a recruitment fair for the Scottish games industry. This is the second year I have been to this event and it has been extremely useful both times. Game in Scotland gives those like myself who are planning a career in the games industry the opportunity to meet people from a whole range of games companies, find out who they are, what they are doing, and what they are looking for from potential employees.
There were 12 different companies exhibiting at yesterday’s event and a number of presentations running throughout the day. Due to some printer malfunctions and a small fight with my hairbrush I arrived just in time for the Welcome and the who are we presentation from VEEMEE.
I actually found VEEMEE’s introduction one of the most interesting of the day, simply because it’s a company I really didn’t know anything about beforehand. A lot of the work they do is with Playstation Home, the 3D community environment available through the PS3.
I am one of the those Playstation owners who does have Home, but never really uses it. I tried it out a few times when it first came out, mostly because I’m a sucker for character customisation and spent most of my time on it trying on different outfits and changing my hairstyle (there is a disappointing lack of long hair styles, Sony). However, I never found the service particularly useful. I find typing with the PS controller a pain in the butt so I didn’t do any chatting and went through all the stores and downloaded all the free stuff, but I didn’t see much benefit in paying money for virtual clothing for an environment I didn’t see myself using much at all.
This means I’ve missed a lot of the new content that VEEMEE has contributed to Home, such as the London pub and the Audi space. Although I’m still sceptical about paying for things in a virtual space with no particular gaming goal to it, I do like the idea of things such as the darts competition and the Iron Man 2 game on Playstation Home. It sounded like an interesting blend of advertising for companies and also gave an incentive for players to try it. More so than I found with the simple avatar clothing.
Following VEEMEE, there were presentations from TAG Games and Dynamo Games, both relatively small, young companies based in Dundee, working on mobile/social games. TAG Games talked about establishing their company identity and working their interns very hard. I always find this sort of thing good to hear, as I remember my awful secondary school work experience with a graphic designers, where they sent me out to buy milk and let me laminate things, but wouldn’t trust me with anything more complex.
Social gaming continued to be the hot topic, with Dynamo discussing what technologies and knowledge were required to develop games for Facebook. This was useful, as it gives me a better idea of what subjects I should be focussing on if I wish to do that sort of work during my degree.
As with previous Game in Scotland, there was a discussion panel on what makes a good CV. This has given me some good ideas about changes to make to my CV, so I’ll be doing a big rewrite soon. Now that I have my first year finished, I actually have a few pieces to put together for my portfolio. I also have a couple of things I’m hoping to work on over the summer to add to it. I always try to go back and update/edit my CV every few months, as every time I do there’s always stuff I want to change. I think it’s good to keep these things fresh.
Realtime Worlds, Digital Goldfish and Hunted Cow also gave short presentations. APB is looking pretty fantastic. I’ve not been playing the beta as I wasn’t sure how much free time I’d have between my coursework for a game like that. I get a bit… over-competitive with MMOs so I have to be careful, or I’ll end up back where I was with WoW!
I have a bit of nosiness when it comes to Digital Goldfish as I’ve known the Managing Director since he was 4. It’s quite amazing to think someone my age is running their own company and doing so well with it. The idea frightens me!
The final Who are we? presentation was from Codeplay. They are game technology specialists who develop compilers, code analysis tools, multi-system programming systems and other tools for game developers. This is an area of the industry I haven’t put much thought into. I am not far enough into my course to have learnt anything much about it, but the presentation definitely gave me some food for thought.
There was also time to go around the various exhibition stands for each of the companies, have a look at what they were working on and speak to the people working there. There were a number of iPads being shown off. I’m still not sold on it, myself. The iPhone suits me just fine and I have my PC if I need anything more.
The day was rounded off with the Future of Gaming discussion panel, chaired by Brian Baglow.
The main predictions were to do with the explosive growth of social gaming and how this will integrate with console gaming. The conclusion was that the demographics of these two types of gaming were so different that social gaming will never replace consoles, but that there will be more crossover, achievements posted to Facebook and so on.
Although I’m impressed with the success of companies like Zynga and the incredible numbers of people playing these Facebook games, I can’t help wondering how long it will last? I’ve already read articles about how younger generations are less interested in Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. So where will these games exist once everyone drops Facebook? Or will that never happen? I was hoping this might have been touched on a bit more.
They also talked a bit about upcoming technologies like Playstation Move, Natal and 3D gaming. With Natal and Move, the opinion seems to be that developers creating content for these are making high quality games that will make good use of the motion technology. This will hopefully avoid the pile of very mediocre games that appeared on the Wii. There is also hope that they will bring this type of technology to more hardcore game genres, as the Wii is more family/children oriented.
Similar views were expressed about 3D gaming, if it is done properly and used appropriately, it will be good. I am doubtful about this. I have seen several 3D movies in the past year and I don’t feel that anything was added by them being in 3D besides a few extra £s to the ticket prices. Yes, I am including Avatar it that judgement. I also really don’t like having to wear the glasses, so 3D gaming is a big gimmicky fail to me already.
There were also a few rather silly questions. “Will games for girls ever be anything more than a big pile of rank?” Does that sort of question really need to be asked? As far as gender discussions go in the gaming industry, I’d still be more interested in a game featuring a genuinely female role model, and not just a female skin a typical male character. I think that may have more luck it appealing the women who don’t currently play games.
There was an interesting comment about advertising to girls too. Games companies definitely focus far too much on targeting certain male-dominated sections of society, so it’s no wonder more men play games than women. When it comes to differences in male and female gaming habits, or any hobbies for that matter, as well as career choices the media, education system and advertising still has a huge influence.
All in all, I thought the event was very good. I enjoyed all the presentations, although my bum did go to sleep a bit sitting down for so long. I would have liked a bit more time to go round all the exhibits, though I did arrive a bit late so can’t complain too much about that! It was also very encouraging to see how many companies are taking on interns and recruiting. Although I am working extremely hard to improve my odds, doing this degree and changing my career path is still a gamble.
It took me a while, but here it is. I am going to be using this site to blog about games industry things I find interesting, as well as keep a portfolio of some of the stuff I’m working on at university and at home.
I’ll try to update on a regular basis. It’s been a while since I’ve kept a blog, so we’ll see if my writing has improved at all.
