This past Thursday all of the teams for the 490 project course had a chance to present their work-in-progress games for the first time. Unfortunately I had a family issue to deal with so I missed the first hour of presentations. 
But at least I was able to make it on time to give our Snap! demo. Without giving too much away, the games which the other teams are developing are:
- A rhythm fighting game
- A Frisbee throwing game utilizing the Wiimote
- A game about squirrels and nuts
- A fantasy/adventure/puzzle game based on Harry Potter
The only game I have seen was the fourth one; I would have loved to see what the other games looked like so far.
When we gave our presentation on Snap!, we talked about our progress with the game, what has been done and what needs to be done for the next couple of weeks. Originally we wanted to use an open source 3D engine called Irrlict but later made an executive decision not to because there were too many unanswered questions about how to do some common game elements with just that engine (e.g. collision detection, scripting, event triggers, GUIs and HUDs, etc.). We ended up using 3DGameStudio, which was what Steve Engels suggested everyone in the class to use to quickly develop their games. 3DGameStudio is a “game authoring tool” that costs about $200 USD for the commercial version and the consensus among us students is that it isn’t the greatest tool to use, but it gets the job done and fairly quickly. Here are some in-game screen shots of Snap! so far:
The first alpha-release demo happens in two weeks, and I believe the lead designer of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed will be coming to our class to see what we have been up to!. So I can’t wait for that. A couple of students from the other teams came and told me that they thought Snap! was the most impressive demo of all games that day, so we’re doing something right. Yay us! 
Post a Comment