The goal of this weeks game was to manipulate a viewpoint. Initially I envisioned making a sentry game where the player would have to manipulate camera positions to catch an enemy. I worked on this for awhile and eventually discovered it was difficult and the amount of work I put into it would not be worth it. So I changed my mind and decided I wanted to make some sort of puzzle game based on a shape that you would spin around with the mouse. Hedron Shooter is this game. The goal is to shoot the Red targets that pop up. These targets get smaller and the game concludes if they go to zero. The idea behind making the targets smaller is to combine to aspects of the game. One is to spin to the new target fast so you can hit it while its big. The other is to be precise when spinning to the target so that you can take a better shot. The targets shrink faster as the game goes on.
-Hold Left Mouse: While the left mouse is held you can spin the camera around the object -Tap Left Mouse: Tapping left mouse fires a shot at the target -Hold Right Mouse: Holding the right mouse slows down whatever speed the camera had. -Hold Middle Mouse: While the middle mouse is held you can zoom towards and away from the object.
The goal of this weeks game was to manipulate a viewpoint. My game is completely based around moving the camera around. Manipulating the viewpoint also implies that the game is in 3D unlike the last two games.
The game is completely done with OpenGL and SDL. The tetrahedron is created by selecting 4 points from a cube. Some of the objects in hedron_shooter.hpp are taken from the 15462 framework provided to us. This provided nice objects for the Camera and the Lights. The shooting is done by firing a ray between the camera position and the crosshair center and then calculating the bayesian coordinates of the point that intersects the triangle plane.
The game is novel because it combines a speed and precision in a game that gets harder as you get better. Games like this are fun because the more you play the better you get. The unfortunate side of games like this is you plateau to a point where you will not get any better and the game gets dull. Some other things I would have done if I had more time is make the object spin when it is shot on a given side. This would add another level of complexity to the game. Other added effects would be an environment map so the player could understand how they are moving in respect to the whole world. Also more visual effects and sounds would make the game better.
I am satisfied with the way this game came out. As I mentioned earlier since this is the first 3D game it really added a learning curve that was hard to get over. Much of my time was speant debugging openGL bugs. Once I overcame those I was able to concentrate on the core of the game instead of the Graphics.