“The Legend Of Groomp” and 1st Year Game Challenges

Each year I’ve been at the University Of Lincoln I’ve really looked forward to seeing the games made by the new first years. This year I wasn’t disappointed, there’s some real talent in that group, and I’m really looking forward to seeing them all progress through the year.

Each year the first years have been tested with the creation of a one-button game, here was my attempt. Below is 2011 video for the first year “One Button Game” challenge:

One game that really caught my eye this year (2012) was Alex Saye‘s “The Legend Of Groomp” a tower defence game, here is a basic description:

The Legend of Groomp is a simple tower defense game where you must defend against a horder of soldiers using up to nine different spells. Spells are cast by either tapping or holding the Space bar. To unlock spells, you must get experience by killing enemies. Stronger enemies give more experience!

My gosh is this game fun. It’s got a really clever take on the one button game genre, using taps and hold-downs of the space button to decide which power to use. The game itself is so juicy – spells feel incredibly good to use, even those at a low level. The spells the player can use also can chain together, for example the flame-thrower can be chained up with a push spell to set other enemies on fire!

One of my personal favourite spells is the lightning spell, as it makes enemies spasm wildly and forks across the map in a very cool way. I also love the way that catapults lob rocks at the castle, and then they bounce off under physics… hilariously killing their own men. There is so much to this game, which is especially impressive when you think that they only had two weeks to develop it from start to finish – it has a very high level of polish.

I highly recommend trying the game out it’s so good. Also it’s free to download and play… so what exactly are you waiting for?! Download it for Windows!

If you’re interested in playing some of the other games made for the 1st year game-maker challenges, check them out here:

Good News Everyone!

Today I received my initial mark and feedback for the first Advanced Games Studies assignment, I got 79% which is a reasonably safe 1st. It also means I don’t have to work on sprint 2 to improve my grade, which gives me extra time on my dissertation, and I like extra time for everything!

I’ve also implemented some more stuff in my PhysX Games Engine assignment, there are now blocks that the ball destroys when it hits them, I’m pretty happy with it (The video below doesn’t show the ball reacting to the blocks, but it does now… trust me.) This coming week I hope to finish implementing some extra PhysX features like joints and convex objects in order to get a higher grade!

I’ve also hit 20,000 words in my novel, I should hopefully have a complete first draft by the end of December. I’ve had a look into getting it printed, 100 copies should cost around £300… which is steep but I can reclaim the costs if I sell the books for £5.00 each. Where I’m going to get the initial funds from I do not know, but hopefully I’ll have a job come summer to pay for it! I’ve also looked into releasing it for the Kindle, which could be a cool idea.

To quote my old history teacher Dr. Perry: “Happy days chums!”

Now for a well deserved drink in the nearby student pub!

Games Engines Assignment – PhysX Cloth Works!

I implemented the basics of my breakout trampoline idea today in our Game Engines workshop, it works reasonably well. I’ve added a ‘shoot’ mechanic which stretches the cloth into a bouncy trampoline, launching the ball into the air! I’ll probably have to make the ball bounce higher in the final version, as it doesn’t go too far right now… might have something to do with its weight or the gravity in the scene.

One thing I need to work on is the collision detection between the ball and the cloth below – even after having increased the thickness of both the cloth and the collision skins, it will occasionally fall through when the cloth is subjected to high powered forces. But this is a prototype after-all so it’ll be fine in the long run!

Advanced Games Studies Work (Great Balls Of Fire!)

After a little bit of coding and fiddling with rigid bodies and triggers – I’ve added in some rather nice-looking fireballs to Team 1’s game. They react nicely with the world and damage the slimes on collision… I can’t help but think it makes the slimes far less threatening – but that’s fine right now.

Here is a quick video showing off the implementation of fireball projectile weapons:

Game Engines Assignment – My Idea!

So I really wanted to use cloth in my Game Engines assignment. Our task is to re-create the basic idea of breakout but with interesting PhysX mechanics added into it. I’ve come up with the following idea to implement cloth into the game:

A piece of cloth is attached to two boxes by its edges like a suspended parachute. The games ball then lands in the centre and then rolls into the centre. When the player holds down the space bar, the two boxes move away from each other, making the cloth pull upwards quickly – the resultant force should propel the sphere up into the air!

The player then has to control the two boxes in order to re-capture the ball and then fire it off in different directions (depending on where it is on the piece of cloth…) in order to destroy the blocks above. Of course the cloth will be un-tearable so that the ball won’t crash through and ruin the game.

I’m going to try and implement this over the next few days depending on how much work I can get done on my dissertation project. I am not sure if the sphere will actually collide correctly with the cloth, so this will be an experiment to see if the idea is actually viable as a method of gameplay.

Advanced Games Studies Work (Slimy Goodness)

I think from now on I’m going to add slimes to every game I make. They’re just so damn adorable! I’ve also added some sound effects for the background and the slime’s jumping action. The sound effect for the slime is one made by a good friend Louis Bartlett, who is looking to get into sound design – some top notch work!

Next thing to do: Get the player shooting projectiles at the enemies… simple enough!

7 Day Game Challenge 2012 (#7DGC) Roundup

So two weeks ago I organised an event at my university called “THE SEVEN DAY GAMES CHALLENGE” – which was a week-long game jam for anyone in the Lincoln School Of Computing. Below is the article pulled from the Lincoln University Games Blog, have an enjoyable time reading it!

The Seven Day Game Challenge (7DGC), as organised by the Lincoln School Of Computer Science and Sean Oxspring has had a most successful conclusion. To recap, the 7DGC is a week-long short marathon style Game Jam event opened for anyone willing to develop a video-game, either on their own, or in small teams. 7DGC provided a strong, motivating and friendly atmosphere in which developing, presenting and discussing video-games development is fun. The event started on the 2nd November at 04:30PM and finished on the 9th November at 04:30PM. Throughout the week, course related units, workshops and seminars were reorganised to provide 7DGC competitors enough time to work on their submission and to allow them to contact staff members for support and critique.

Over fifteen teams have registered their interest to partake in the event, however, only eight teams have managed to survive the endurance of a week-long game developing rush. On the 9th November, teams gathered in the Lincoln School Of Computer Science Computer Labs and each of them presented their submission. To be eligible to enter the competition, teams had to develop and present a game which includes the themes of Vegetation and Space. During the presentations, a panel of judges evaluated the games on their fun-factor, their juiciness, their originality, and their use of the theme.

The judges were quite dazzled by the range, quality and originality of the presented games. Clearly participants deeply thought about incorporating the themes in varied and fun ways. There were games about bees conquering flower fields in an RTS style, mutant vegetables trying to help the moon landing in the 60′s, Space travelling jump and runs, farming simulators, carrot and cabbage collecting shooters, ant sized scientists trying to escape to the moon through resource gathering, multiplayer co-op space potatoes collecting shooters and mind controlled mash potato exploring games. Furthermore, event-organiser Sean Oxspring presented his submission, which he classified as an arts-ish experience, a parody of what is believed to be an overly pretentious ludo-logical experience.

It was most arduous labour for the judges to decide on a winner as all submissions were most astonishing considering the short amount of time that students had to develop their titles. However, after some intense debates two submissions were chosen. Many congratulations go to:

7DGC Main Winner:
Team AD-JAM – Alex Saye, Mike Thompson, Jamie Bloor, Adam Cane, Dave Ridout – for “Buzz Kill”.

7DGC Honorary Mention:
Team Nigel Sapphire – Kieran Hicks – for SHKAMFSVATG.

If you want to play the games that were developed for free, click here!

Advanced Games Studies Work (22/11/2017)

I’ve been added to a new group for advanced games studies class at university… unfortunately they haven’t really had very much luck in the way of programmers since the start of this semester: so there was a distinct lack of code or game-play implemented.

This week I’ve spent my time re-coding the current game engine that the team had in place, the whole game was controlled by one script – so the object-oriented programmer in me was screaming like a mad-man. It didn’t take to long to re-code what there was there, and now it all works properly. Keys have also been added to the game so the player cannot continue until they unlock doors. (I also stuck a few place-holder textures in and added a black fog and some ambient lighting to make the game look far less pre-alpha than it did last week.)

It’s looking a great deal more promising as a project now, the team has one more week on this before the presentation on the third of December. Next week I plan to implement some form of enemy and a fighting mechanic (probably a projectile based one).