A few posts ago I talked about my new modules at Uni and the start of my groups Game Society project, so I just wanted to write about these projects a little and the progress made on them since the University year is now finished.

For the Game Society we formed a team called What A Twist and are currently working on a project called “The Chroma Project.” We’ve been creating the game in Unity, which has been a fun experience using a new platform to develop on. The game is a first person 3D puzzle platform game, using light as a mechanic to control the puzzles. Other mechanics in the game include moving platforms and localized lights, as well as some standard features like checkpoints, skybox and a title screen. Although there are only a few levels in the game so far, they show off the mechanics of the game well in a sort of “Tutorial Levels” kind of experience.

Game Engines has been quite an enjoyable module. The  module consisted of working on UDK and learning about the feature’s of game engines, and to an extent game design. For coursework we had to create a game concept, discuss its features and how it could be implemented in a game engine of our choice. I decided to create a game called Galactic Zombie Defence League. Galactic Zombie Defence League is a cooperative survival Sci-fi / Horror video game for PC and home consoles that puts the player in the role of a surviving member of the Galactic Zombie Defence League. The game consists of the player controlling up to four of the eight remaining members of the Galactic Zombie Defence League, each with their own unique abilities. The player must use the characters they control to survive the outbreak of alien zombies, using the various characters they control and their abilities to explore areas. The player must also complete missions, survive outbreaks of alien zombies, and defeat “boss” enemies, driving the narrative of the game with it. The player must survive to the end of the day to progress further into the game. The gameplay focuses on characters survival and the narrative of the game, rather than combat, although there will be elements of combat involved.

Graphics Programming coursework has been creating a 3D scene in OpenGl, either from a game or a scene of our own choosing. I decided to create a scene loosely based on a level from Spyro 3, specifically the level Spooky Swamp. For this I used models I found online, created several models, and created water using a water simulation demo and and moving textures.

Operating Environments coursework consisted of  a program built using threading and safely sharing resources between threads. For this i adapted the Graphics Programming version of The Cave, separating the game into threaded functions handling enemies AI, player movement, the room reset, and collision handling. The code for this project was a lot more transferable than the previous version of The Cave, and a lot easier to manage. The game was also left quite open, with various other features possible to be added.

For Console Development I took the original version of The Cave and adapted it for the purpose of the coursework. The brief was to create a 3D effect game without using 3D geometry, just sprites. So I adapted The Cave to use single point perspective to create a 3D effect, and made a few minor tweaks to game play and enemy AI. The bulk of the change in the program was restructure code in a similar fashion to the Operating Environments coursework program, calling several functions rather than managing everything within the main function.

Overall I’m exceptionally happy with my work for second semesters coursework, hopefully I can continue this trend of hard work throughout third and fourth year.