CIS 300 Spring 2005

1
CIS 300Spring 2005
2
Introductions

• The Mastrix team
• Jim Babcock
• Eric Hayes
• Christian Montoya
• Yi Xu

3
Story
HELP!
4
Goals

• Fast paced space shooter
• First person shooter feel
• Variety of levels
• Unique weapons
• Challenging AI

5
Game Play

• 16 thrilling missions
• Each has specific tasks
• Get to a specific location
• Destroy enemy fighters
• Collect resources
• Levels are arranged into campaigns that develop
  the story
• Lots of power-ups
• Lasers
• Missiles
• Nuclear launchers
• Temporary invincibility shields
• Damage repair

6
Game Play continued

• Heads-up-display
• Shield meter
• Engine indicator
• Radar / mini-map
• Weapon selector
• Fun stuff
• Some areas have high gravity
• Orbiting planets
• Drifting asteroids

7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
Physics

• Initially, simple asteroids / space war physics
• Hard to aim and slow
• Update ship always faces cursor
• Inspired by Wasteroids
• Faster pace and allows strafing
• Update camera follows the cursor
• Inspired by Alien Swarm
• Solves view problems
• Adds FPS feel
• Update afterburners
• You get an initial kick when you start thrusting
• End result Completely different from asteroids!

10
AI

• Implementation
• Waypoint graph
• Dijkstras algorithm
• State machine for decision making and steering
• Overall principles
• Beatable
• Slower movement and shot speed, lower health
• Competent
• Lead their shots, avoid obstacles
• Fully implemented
• Modified physics
• No friendly fire

11
(No Transcript)
12
Music

• 3 songs, all created in Reason
• Mastrix Fanfare
• Space Rock
• Ether
• Most sounds are public domain downloaded
• Except for the shot sound, created in Reason
• All songs are available on the website

13
Multiplayer

• Our game is networked multiplayer!
• Death match was our first game objective
• Was playable before single player levels
• Multiplayer is a very different experience
• Weapons are balanced for deathmatch
• Extremely fast paced
• Number of players is limited only by bandwidth
• Powerups appear randomly

14
Networking

• Based around simple message-passing
• For example
• SendMessage msg(message_updatehealth)
• msg.putFloat(health/maxHealth)
• msg.sendToClient(clientID)
• Biggest challenge was setting it up initially
• Not very efficient
• Uses TCP/IP
• Too much bandwidth
• Vulnerable to lag and jitter
• But great on a LAN!
• Server finder
• Central server tracks games
• Its actually PHP on a web server

15
(No Transcript)
16
Scripting

• Easy to interact scripting with main program
• Bad syntax, no control flow or arithmetic
• Very easy to add commands
• Can tweak game parameters through console
  variables
• float maxPlayerSpeed 1000.0
• -vs-
• ServerConsoleVariableltfloatgt maxPlayerSpeed(playe
  r_speed, 1000.0)
• Can then change this in game
• player_speed 1500 Make the player faster

17
Scripting cont.

• Can call game functions through console commands
• void screenshot(void)
• static int screenshotNumber 1
• Screenshot(retprintf(screeni.bmp,
• screenshotNumber).c_str())
• -vs-
• CLIENT_CONSOLE_COMMAND(screenshot)
• static int screenshotNumber 1
• Screenshot(retprintf(screeni.bmp,
  screenshotNumber).c_str())
• Can then call this in-game
• bind f3 screenshot make F3 take screenshots
• All of the controls work though the scripting
  system

18
(No Transcript)
19
Level Editing

• Implemented through scripting with menus
• Menu options
• Add planets, spawn points, waypoints, regions,
  and power-ups at mouse cursor
• Set flags like collision type
• Console commands
• Save current level
• Specify boundaries
• Set gravity
• Level files
• Add triggers, functions, and timers
• Set advanced entity properties, such as initial
  motion

20
(No Transcript)
21
Art

• No artist in the group, so we had to be creative
• Most art drawn by Jim (mines by Eric)
• Heads-up-display done through code by Eric,
  except for shield orb and icons
• Star field uses parallax scrolling, continuous
  depths, and relative brightness
• Plain shots have a cool jitter effect added
• PARTICLE EFFECTS! LOTS OF PARTICLE EFFECTS!
• Easy way to make game look good without drawing
  everything used for engines, explosions, weapon
  draw effects
• But, to get them running smoothly, we dropped
  GameX for SDL/OpenGL

22
(No Transcript)
23
(No Transcript)
24
Summary

• Thrilling single player mode with unique levels,
  innovative physics, variety of objectives, and
  challenging AI
• Exciting multiplayer mode that makes great LAN
  parties
• Useful level editor for endless fun