Game Development

Music Monsters

During my second stint at the Game Design Initiative at Cornell I was part of Infinite Fermata working on the 2D side-scroller and music input game titled Music Monsters.

As a programmer, I designed the level structure, parallaxing system, tile system, and 2D drawing system. I also built the stand alone level editor.

The game was showcased, along with projects from other classes, at the end of the semester.

You can download the Music Monsters source (Win32 C#/XNA) here.

Savior of Elsia

My first Cornell project was a memorable one. Acting as a programming and artist, I helped develop this unique asymmetrical co-operative platformer.

As a programmer, I designed the particle system and character animation. I also created the art for the particle and orb effects.

The game was showcased, along with projects from other classes, at the end of the semester.

Elsia was my first project back from a few year programming hiatus. It was my first experience with two dimensional animation and DirectX coding. At Cornell, the CIS300 groups were required to use a custom DirectX API, GameX. Primarily geared toward 2D game programming, GameX made it easy to import graphics, run simple collision, and control basic input. The official GameX page can be found here: http://gdiac.cis.cornell.edu/GameX/GameX-info.htm. Using principles learned in NeHe OpenGL tutorial #19 (http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/lessons/lesson.asp?lesson=19) I created the simple particle engine found in the game. This was used to create sparkle effects around the fairy character as well as embers that fly out of the fire effect. Adobe Photoshop was used to create graphical assets like the tornado and the fire effect. Fortunately, because of the elegant engine created by Jeremy, the addition of the wind effect added a nice dynamic touch to otherwise straightforward gameplay.

You can download the Savior of Elsia source (Win32 C++) here.

XeRn

XeRn was initially designed to be a cross platform open source networked 2D side scrolling shooter written in C++ and OpenGL and based on the NeHe OpenGL tutorials. It could be considered 2D Unreal Tournament, a better version of Soldat or a worse version of Liero (because nothing beats Liero).

For the game I developed a custom made physics engine. It used STL linked lists set up in a 2D array to allow for parsing of large level collision. The game was originally designed to be heavily physics based including concepts like melee weapons, ridable rockets, simple platform based vehicles, high powered air weapons, foam guns and other sorts of nonsense.

I also developed a rudimentary console, menu system and asset pipeline.

XeRn ended up as my capstone project at Ithaca College and while it was ultimately a failure it was an enlightening experience.

You can download the XeRn source (Win32 C++) here.

Harry Potter Mystery at Hogwarts

In Fall 2006, as part of fulfilling my Bachelors of Arts in Computer Science requirements for Ithaca College, I took part in a four person project for Introduction to Software Engineering. Working with Ross Skaliotis, Brendan Vavra, and Chris Cimala, we were assigned to implement, in Java, a networked multiplayer version of the Harry Potter Mystery at Hogwarts board game.

Going above and beyond the rest of the class, our game featured scanned art from the game, a custom menu screen, and live chat.

Part of the design and development process was the detailed and precise project planning and documentation through Use Cases, Use Case Diagrams, UML Diagrams, Informal Scenarios, and a Supported Activities List.

As a programmer I implemented a large portion of the game’s networking structure. As an artist, I created the custom art assets and like the title screen.

You can download the full game plus source (Java, Win32 binaries) here.