Downloadable to follow

Language/platform:
C++/DirectX

This is both a game and demo. I created a model for a football game inspired by tactical chalkboards. The player can direct the team’s movements and passing in real-time, as well as pausing the action to give commands. The game and techniques are ideal to be run and used on relatively low-powered hardware.

The number of attackers and defender vary with level or scenario, while the objective can either be to complete a number of passes, to score a goal or to get an attacker into the area with the ball. The defenders are either given set actions to perform or use a team AI algorithm I devised. Rather than using some of the standard AI approaches, my technique calculates defensive movement based on the relative positioning of on-pitch agents. It allows for the quantitative variation of:
Aggressiveness towards the ball
The tendency of defenders to mark attackers
The team’s cohesiveness
Positional rigidity within the set formation

This means different defensive tendencies can be created and modelled, either for the defending team as a whole or to create variation between individual defenders.
The algorithm was further changed and refined to eliminate its main weakness (as illustrated in the video). The video shows some of the features of the demo and the game - the code contains many more examples and variations.

Downloadable to follow

Language/Platform:
C++/DirectX

This is a port of my original XNA package but with Timer Run replaced with a version of another game, Boat Fighters.

I recreated my two games, Pong Turismo & Asteroids Orbital, but now written in C++. The games and front-end menu have some minor changes, mainly as a result of tweaking. The third game is a port of someone else’s XNA game, Boat Fighters. The game is for two players, with each one driving a boat and trying to shoot the other. My approach to re-making it was to use my own game engine and particle system to recreate the original visuals. Since this also used my own physics engine, this allowed for the addition of collisions to the game, which hadn’t been in the original.
For the overall package, sound effects & music has not been implemented yet.

Extra acknowledgements: ‘Boat Fighters’ design and game originally by Fabio Franconeri.

Language/Platform:
C#/XNA

As part of a group, we created a real-time animation engine that allowed the user to move a model around and perform actions.

In the motion-capture studio we recorded a number of actions to map to our skinned 3D model. The recording was then cut up and processed into walk, run and idle cycles, as well as the extra action animations. As the player-character moves around and stops these cycle animations play automatically, while the actions are triggered by the user. Changing from one action to another results in a smooth blended transition between the two, using spherical linear interpolation.
The parts of the engine I was responsible for were the frame timing/selection, tying the locomotion to the animations and blending between animations.

Extra acknowledgements: Fellow team members Fabio Franconeri, Thomas Manning, Kester Sheridan, Murari Vasudevan

Demo Code to follow
Language/Platform:
C++/DirectX

Working with a team-mate, the two of us created a demo that allows the user to apply forces to points on a textured cube, which will react and deform in an elastic and ‘cartoonish’ manner. The project was split into 2 parts - free-form deformation and physics. I was responsible for the physics including the engine, constraints and motion.

The vertices (or control-points) are simulated as simple point masses, linked together with springs to give the elasticity. When the user clicks and drags a control-point it applies another spring-force to that point. Although the body is never considered or simulated as a whole, the spring-forces make the cube acts as one body - the difference being that it is a very stretchy, bouncy body instead of a rigid one that requires rotations to be considered. The linked-point-masses approach automatically handles rotations as a side benefit.
At every update, the spring forces are calculated based on the position of each end-point for each spring. The forces are then applied to each control-point, along with any other forces such as gravity, air resistance etc. The resultant force gives a resultant acceleration applied that point. This gives a new point velocity and from this the new position is calculated. Finally, any wall collisions are detected and resolved.
In order to keep the cube stable, every control-point/vertex is linked to every other vertex with a spring.

Extra acknowledgements: Rendering, deformation & mouse input by Murari Vasudevan

This game is installable from here

Language/Platform:
C# & XNA

Major Features Implemented:
2D Physics Engine
Gravitational System
Particle System
Sound & Music

3 games were created and incorporated into one package with a menu front end. The games share a base engine I created to handle all the physics, rendering and game logic for each game and each in-game object. At a basic level, the physics engine simulates simple Newtonian linear motion. It also handles collision detection and resolution, with simple elastic collisions modelled. The game engine can also handle gravitational simulation and particles, both of which are demonstrated on the front end menu screen. The sounds and music use a wrapper class I created to use XNA’s in built audio handling. You can see the individual games in the other posts: Pong Turismo, Asteroids Orbital and Timer Run.

Extra acknowledgements: All music & sound effects are public domain

Main Menu Screen

This game is part of ‘3 in 1′ which is downloadable here

Language/Platform:
C#/XNA

Asteroids Orbital is based on the classic game Asteroids. The player pilots a ship aiming to destroy asteroids for points while also avoiding collisions to stay alive. For Orbital I introduced a black hole and the notion of gravity. All objects have a gravitational pull on each other and a ‘black hole’ in the centre sucks in both rocks and the player - he must keep himself out of the hole while destroying rocks. There are a few other changes - the player has a recovering health bar and can bounce off the rocks without instantly dying, but will take damage. The collisions are all modelled using the game physics engine. A particle system is used to illustrate the black-holes pull as well, with the particles affected by all objects’ gravity and colliding with them - speed affects their colour, which makes for an interesting effect. A replenishing timer forces the player to keep engaging the asteroids.

This game is part of ‘3 in 1′ which is downloadable here

Language/Platform:
C#/XNA

Pong Turismo - The Ultimate Pong Simulator is based on Pong but I tried to change the gameplay to ’simulate’ Pong as a real sport. The players can now move back and forth. As they move they lose stamina - that recovers as they stop - which determines how quickly they move, the strength of their shots and their effective reach. When the ball hits a player, the angle, spin and speed of the ball is affected by the movement and speed of the player. The ball now decelerates through the air and curves according to its spin.

This game is part of ‘3 in 1′ which is downloadable here

Language/Platform:
C#/XNA

Timer Run is a driving game where players navigate round a course to find green pick-ups to add to your score and yellow pick-ups to keep the countdown timer running. An indicator shows the player where the next timer pick-up is while the player has to search for points themselves. The vehicle is modelled using the game physics engine with a locomotion system that allows the car some sliding and skidding.