Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Madcap

With 5 months to develop a game, 2 of which were strictly for planning, bringing Madcap to fruition was no easy task. Myself and a team of 5 other programmers came together to create this game from start to finish, always striving for excellence as we went.

I'll let the dust jacket story do the talking for a summary of this project: "Completely surrounded by enemies, your machine gun is your only friend. As pilot of a giant war machine known as a Helix you have been contracted to stop the spread of a computer virus. The virus is capable of infecting Helix, causing them to attack anything in sight. Fire rockets, shoot machine guns, and swing your sword to destroy all Helix who get in your way. You’re in it for the money. Saving man-kind – it’s simply a way to earn it. "

At its heart, Madcap is a customizable mech 3rd person shooter. During the process of this game's creation I was able to further refine my ability of game engine design by architecting and overseeing the development of the game's code from start to finish. I learned a lot about rendering in OpenGL and even wrote a 3D Studio Max mesh importer/exporter for my custom 3D file format. The part I enjoyed most about working on this project was being able to learn more about 3D scene management and rendering techniques in general. The entire team put a lot of effort into this project, and given the time constraints it's a little buggy, but give it a try anyway. You can download the demo Here.

The Legend of Roto

This was probably the most fun of all the projects I worked on during my time at Full Sail. In a 3-man team, my partners and I developed a full game from start to finish in a mere 2 months. The Legend of Roto is meant to be a prequel to the Dragon Warrior series. It is meant to be an explanation as to how the warrior Erdrick -actually- became so well known, and why his armor, token, and sword are found in random places throughout the world of Dragon Warrior I.

In The Legend of Roto, the player takes on the role of Lota. The player has a bird's eye view of the world. All actions, such as fighting and exploration, take place in real time. While deviating from traditional RPG format, this maintains a seamless adventuring experience for the player. Lota, with the help of a brave and friendly Slime, will have to fight and survive the treacherous caves which are inhabited by many foes. The caves are generated randomly upon the start of a new game, giving the player unlimited exploration experiences. During exploration, the player can interact with many other characters, find maps and helpful items to guide Lota along.

During the course of this project six-week, I was able to expand upon the 2D engine I started with the Lil' Ninja game, as well as learn what it takes to code a complete game from scratch. I also designed and implemented my customized scripting language for this game, known as LoRScript, which is used to program the behavior of all NPCs and enemies in the game. Thanks to Seth Gorden's awesome tools and map editor, we were able to create an enormous world populated with completely randomly generated dungeons and humorous NPC encounters. Unfortunately, with the amount of time that was available for the project we weren't able to fill the world with as much content as hoped, so expect a few empty walks from town to town as you journey on your way. This project is available for download Here.

Lil' Ninja

This project was more of a tech demo than a game. It was written in DirectX as a graphics test for what would be my next project: Legend of Roto. Written in a weekend's time during the class Structure of Game Design, I was able to further my knowledge of graphics programming and got to try out a cool technique, parallax scrolling.
There really is no storyline or particular point to this game. You can traverse the level using one of three characters: Hibiki, Kyosuke, or the cute little hardhat character from Mega Man. If you want to check it out, you can download it Here

DM's Pong

This was a game developed in just a couple of days during my stay at Full Sail University. It is written with basic Win32 and utilizes GDI for graphics. Quite unfinished, but it was a fun little project none-the-less.


Featuring the Street Fighter characters Sakura and Ryu, DM's Pong is a simple pong clone with a twist. You must attack the ball in order to knock it away. Failing to time your attack correctly will result in being knocked down. If you are knocked down 5 times, it's game over. The game features a 1 player and 2 player mode, as well as a spectator mode where the CPU will play against itself. If you're interested, the game is available for download here

The Beginning

Hello everyone, my name is Robert Walker, a software developer currently doing contract work for a private company. In my spare time (what little spare time I have) I enjoy gaming and playing with new technologies, and such is the reason for the existence of this blog. Here I will post different projects I have worked on for everyone to see.