Junk

The first of two GDS projects during our 2nd Year of GGT, initially we gathered quite a large team. However due to Group Project work the group size was reduced down to three – which later proved ideal for this small project.

Our final presentation slides explain Junk rather nicely!

Junk1

Junk2

Junk3

Junk4

My own work for Junk centered around implementing Box2D, and the physics bodies for falling objects.

In an unexpected last minute twist (not like its happens frequently…) we discovered that our prototype played a little too well. We actually left one running during a team meeting and watched the high score climb… Right before the final presentation we came with the idea of flipping round our concept – no longer a Tetris eliminate a row style game, but to stack the objects to the objective without creating any horizontal rows.

The result was a superbly difficult game – with only a handful of testers actually winning during the GDS showcase.

Dark Souls: Windowed Edition – winapi

An early submission for Graphics Programming – we were tasked with creating a 2D sprite game before moving on towards OpenGL.

I had been playing alot of Dark Souls at the time, so decided to go about creating a simple representation of a boss fight.

DarkSoulsWindows2

Though simple I attempted to recreate Dark Souls stamina system as accurately as possible, with stamina being consumed for attacking and blocking incoming damage – and regenerating only while not blocking.

DarkSoulsWindows1

Overall mechanically this was a very simple game – I believe I spent more time in Photoshop cutting out screen shots of a knight and creating the sprite sheets…

Disc Wars! – Playstation 2

Disc Wars! was a Tron themed 2D sprite game created for the first submission for Console Development.

At the time we in the process of learning and developing a framework for the Playstation 2 using the Linux development kits.

Most of the work for this submission was based around playing around with the frameworks sprite class. At this point we had not covered loading in textures , so I explored playing with the drawing information being passed to create gradients and patterns.

DISCWARS_screenshot

The player controls the grey triangle – with forwards/backwards and rotational movement only. The black line within the rings indicates the current direction of incoming discs – which must be dodged by the player. During  the game the center rings will pulse and rotate before settling on a new direction – changing the direction of all the discs in doing so.

The Chroma Project

This project was created during the first year of the Game Development Society, by team WhatATwist.

After a group discussion about preferred types of games, we settled on the idea of creating a 3D puzzle platformer. We also realized that we would require at least one major mechanic for this prototype. The idea of light and colour – where there would be one major source of light within a level, and the player would have to alter its colour to progress through was chosen to be further developed.

Chroma1

Given our initial idea, it was suggested that we explore the Unity 3D engine to produce our prototype.

My own contributions were creating the platform meshes / prefabs, and creating test levels for the prototype. Quite a few of the team attempted level design and quickly found it rather difficult to create interesting puzzles.

Maya Animation and Scene

MayaAnimation&Scene2

The first semester of Media Production for Games was an introduction to Maya. The submission consisted of two parts:

– an animation using the supplied Jimmy rig

– a scene created within Maya

I chose to combine the two submissions together,  in a attempt to give my animation a little context.

Though my first time using Maya, I had did have previous experience with other 3D modelling packages such as FormZ. The scene created was a small ‘T’ section of octagonal corridor, featuring an airlock.

MayaAnimation&Scene3

This was however my first attempt at animation, giving me a good appreciation for the skill involved in making a fluid walk animation.

Both the mesh and rig using for this coursework were supplied by Lynne Parker.

Metal Gear Solid – Game Boy Advance

Inspired by Metal Gear Solid’s Soliton Radar, the goal of this coursework was to recreate the game solely in that form for the Game Boy Advance.

The initial part of the coursework was to recreate one of chosen games mechanics, I chose to represent the stealth mechanic.

MGSGBA1

The guards vision cones were drawn mathematically initially, and later represented as sprites to achieve  the desired look.

MGSGBA4

Previously the hit detection used was per pixel – detecting the current pixel colour.  For the final game more advanced radial detection was implemented.

MGSGBA3

The final submission featured four levels, attempting to roughly replicate the first few areas in Metal Gear Solid – the Dock, Helipad and Tank Hangar.

MGSGBA5

Along with the SciFiShooter this was one of the very first games I made. The final submission featured patrolling guards, the ability to sneak up and takeout them out – with guards on the 2nd and 4th levels carrying keycards to allow further progression.

SnakesNightmareManual

This manual was the final piece of this coursework, again heavily based on the styling of the original manual contained within the Playstation version.

Sci-Fi Shooter

SciFiShooter Screenshot

This was the final submission for Media Production for Games, and one of my first games! It was built using a combination of Flash Professional and Flash Develop.

The basic concept was to create a defense style shooter, with the protected edge being represented by a section of a large capital ship.

The capital ship alternates between two different states – initially with its large triple turrets taking out any nearby asteroids, then once fully charged the player can activate its defense grid – with the big guns going offline and the gun decks blanketing the area in fire.

SciFiShooter Screenshot