Saturday, September 26, 2009

SGD Resumé Panel

On Thursday, October 15th at 6pm in Olsson 001, SGD will be holding it's first Resumé Panel. This will be a panel of SGDers who all have had some form of experience tailoring their resumé's for the games industry, ready to answer questions you have for them about the best way to format your letters, stuff about cover letters, and how to make yourself stand out. This panel will be held exactly one week before the SRRN Games Talk, so if you want to make sure your resumé is top-notch so you can ever-so-casually hand it to them the week after, this is the perfect opportunity!

Of course, before we can hold this panel, we need some members to be ON the panel! Therefore, SGD, it is up to you all to nominate the panel members. If you have a nomination in mind, write back to me at dnm5z@virginia.edu (with [Nomination] as the first thing in the subject line, followed by the nominee's name) and tell me why your nomination is fit to be on this panel.

You can nominate yourself too, I guess, but that would kind of be a dick move.

I look forward to hearing your nominations, and we will announce the panel at LEAST by a week before-hand.

Laser Lockdown Engine Demo

The Laser Lockdown team has done some groundwork towards exploring the basic capabilities of the Ox Engine. Below is a video of a very simple level that the design team put together. I've also added a script to one of the models. While this isn't anything earthshattering, the impressive thing here is that we're integrating content between the design team and the programming team in the first week of development, which has never been done before in the club as far as I know.



Thursday, September 24, 2009

Microsoft career talk

Microsoft will be hosting a talk on Wednesday, September 30 2009 detailing career opportunities within and information about the company. The talk starts at 5:00 PM, will run until 6:00 PM, and will be held in Room 223 of Rouss and Robertson Halls at the McIntyre School of Commerce. Food will be served and raffle prizes will be awards.

Empyreal: Progress Report

The Empyreal project has made significant progress since the engine proof-of-concept demonstration two weeks ago.



Evident additions in this video include:
  • new player ship model (another placeholder as our artists are producing multiple ideas to work from)
  • working radar (in the upper-right-hand corner; critical enemies show as red dots, NPCs to protect show up as blue dots, and non-critical enemies show up as white dots)
  • working collision detection (notice when the in-game cubes flash red as the player intersects each of them)
Improvements not evident in this video:
  • radar resolution is mutable (i.e. it can zoom in / out)
  • front-end UI is present
  • game can be paused, resumed, restarted, aborted to front-end UI
  • game has a start-up screen sequence
  • work on level editor is underway
In addition, a number of under-the-hood classes for entities such as weapons, projectiles, and environmental props are in development.

Notable topics to be addressed in the near future regarding the engine include weapons, enemy AI routines, and level success and fail conditions checking. Similarly, notable topics to be addressed in the near future on the development timeline regarding the game design are the final player model, the artistic theme for enemies, environment design, and weapons ideas, and the beginnings of implementing these ideas.

The development of Empyreal is on-schedule and the game is due for release in December 2009.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

SRRN Games Information Session

Local upstart video game company SRRN Games will be conducting a presentation hosted by SGD on Thursday, October 22. This presentation will be at 6 PM in OLS005. Topics of the presentation will include job and internship opportunities within SRRN Games during both the academic year and the summer and the potential commercialization of SGD projects.

SRRN Games is located in Charlottesville, VA and was founded by Aujang Abadi and Tyler Carbone, both of whom are presently graduate students at the Darden School of Business at The University of Virginia.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Gladiators Engine Test Video

Gladiators director Justin Holmes has posted the following demonstration of the work-in-progress engine that project will employ. The engine was originally to be displayed at one of the pitch meetings but due to technical difficulties with the projector this portion of the presentation was hindered.

The engine features support for two 2D sprite-based animated characters, melee attacks, projectile attacks, collision detection and resolution via hitboxes, and a working concept of player health. The video also demonstrates the WhiteCap visualizer effect, which is planned to be integrated into the game.

Check back soon for more information on Gladiators.


Saturday, September 12, 2009

Empyreal: A Closer Look

Hi there gamedevs, I'm Chris Hooe, fourth-year BACS major and director of Empyreal. I'd like to take a moment to more thoroughly introduce the motivation for and goals of the project.

The goal of the Empyreal team is to take the game's spiritual predecessor, Skies of Fury, and expand on it in every way possible. The most evident expansions to the player to begin with will be the shift from 2D sprite-based graphics to 3D rendered graphics, and the freedom to roam this world on a 2D scale (in Skies, the player was locked to constant forward progression). Many changes are planned for the game mechanics as well; rather than extreme arcade-style gameplay, Empyreal will provide a more tactical slant of air combat, as players will have multiple choices of aircraft with clear strengths and weaknesses, choice of weapons loadouts (with great differentiation between available weapons), and enemies who (you guessed it) have their own strengths, weaknesses, and AI routines.

Another game mechanic to push towards this goal is the introduction of missions. Missions will consist of multiple pass/fail objectives that the player must complete to pass a particular level. Mission scenarios might potentially include: standard sorties, where either a specific group of targets or all in-range hostiles must be neutralized; escort missions, where the player must protect an NPC from being destroyed by hostiles as it navigates through a series of waypoints; base defense missions, where the player must defend a stationary target for a slew of enemies; and finally, assaults, where the player must take out a heavily-defended stationary enemy base. Ideally, several missions could be played in sequence for a campaign mode, and icing on the cake would be a story loosely tying all the missions together.

As one can probably tell, game options and variance is of utmost importance to this project; if this goal of clear differentiation and strategy beyond what was establised in Skies is not met, then this project cannot in my mind be considered a success. As such, making sure all gameplay additions add a clear, concise, and unique function to the gameplay will be mission-critical and emphasized through the development of the project.

There has to this point been significant work done on the base engine, and a preview video is embedded below:



Features showcased in this video include:
  • 3D environment generated from a heightmap, texture applied to generated mesh
  • 3D player character (the green cube) flies around the environment; player can turn, and player character model rolls to the side a bit during a turn
  • non-player characters (the larger two cubes) are present; currently they have no distinguishing features. Non-player characters can include enemies, NPC allies, NPC characters to be escorted by the player, and environmental props.
  • Culling of 3D game entities that are outside of the player's view screen; the camera is intentionally zoomed out too far to show this effect
  • Spritefont messages can be drawn on top of the 3D gameplay screen
Be sure to check back for updates on the development of Empyreal soon!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Mid-Semester Expo Scheduled, Rosetta Stone Game Jam Info

Thanks to everyone that came out to the SGD Project Pitch meetings and signed up for SGD projects! We look forward to seeing what the end result of your collective work is at the end of this semester.

In the meantime, the SGD Fall 2009 Mid-Semester Expo has been scheduled for October 29th. Location and time will be announced when that information is available. Progress of all SGD projects will be displayed (or at least explained and elaborated upon at worst) at this event.

In addition, SGD is looking for members who would be interested in participating on an official SGD team in the Rosetta Stone Game Jam competition. The Rosetta Stone Game Jam is a competition between individuals and teams to produce a working video game with an educational component in 48 hours or less. The competition is scheduled for January 8, 2010 through January 10, 2010 and will be held in Harrisonburg, VA at Rosetta Stone's location in that city. For further information, please visit the Rosetta Stone Game Jam website by clicking here. If you are interested in signing up to participate in this project, let the SGD directors know by emailing us; the team signup deadline is November 16, so please let us know as soon as possible if you wish to participate.

Project Pitch: RecursiO(n^2)

A reimagination of the prior SGD project Recursion (which might appear in the archives eventually), RecursiO(n^2) is a puzzle game which requires that players think recursively to win. Players will utilize and manipulate several instances of their character through time to solve puzzles, defuse traps, and find a way out.

The project is to be completed over the course of one semester using C++ on the Nintendo DS platform. At least five and up to ten positions are available, focusing in the game design and programming facets of the project. RecursiO(n^2) is directed by second-year CS major Dan Epstein.

Click here to download the Powerpoint presentation for RecursiO(n^2) (which contains more information and a gameplay mock-up).

Project Pitch: Gladiators

Taking a step off of the tried-and-true path, Gladiators is a 2D fighting game with a twist: rather than placing the emphasis on close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, the game focuses instead on the unique supernatural abilities of its characters, with each engaging his respective opponent with spells, chants, and magic instead. The abilities players use will have a noticeable effect on the fight beyond inflicting damage, as each ability has a unique effect on the game's music and produces its own special effects.

The project is to be completed over the course of one year using the XNA platform. Up to five positions are available, focusing in the gameplay design / programming and content generation areas. Gladiators is directed by third-year CS major Justin Holmes.

Click here to download the Powerpoint presentation for Gladiators.

Project Pitch: The Yggdrasil Engine

One of the more ambitious projects the Student Game Developers has attempted to this point in its short existence, The Yggdrasil Engine is a portable engine intended for massively multiplayer online games. While no physical game will come out of the project this semester, this project will lay the foundation for future projects in subsequent semesters.

The project is to be completed over the course of one semester using the Ogre 3D graphics engine, the Raknet networking engine, the Boost libraries for multithreading support, and C++. The project is co-directed by fourth-year CS major John Will and third-year CS major Dan Magnusson.

Click here to download the Powerpoint presentation for The Yggdrasil Engine.

Project Pitch: Empyreal

The spiritual successor to last semester's Skies of Fury, Empyreal is a top-down view 3D shooter which returns the player to the fight for control of the heavens in an advanced tactical fighter. This time around, however, the player is free to roam the gameplay environment as he pleases, and he will engage in a variety of tactical gameplay challenges through various mission types, ranging from simple “kill everything” sorties, escort missions, base defense missions, and enemy base assaults.

The project is to be completed over the course of one semester using the XNA platform. At least three and up to six positions are available, focusing in the game design, programming, and 3D asset modeling facets of the project. Empyreal is directed by fourth-year CS major Christopher Hooe.

Click here to download the Powerpoint presentation for Empyreal.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Reminder: Pitch Meeting II on Thursday

The second of two project pitch meetings is this Thursday, September 10, in OLS005 at 6:00 PM. Projects to be pitched at this meeting include Dan Epstein's RecursiO(n^2), a time-bending 2D puzzle game for the Nintendo DS, Justin Holmes' Gladiators, a 2D spell-based fighting game, Christopher Hooe's Empyreal, a 3D top-down shooter, and John Will's and Dan Magnusson's Yggdrasil, a game engine which will be utilized in a subsequent semester to produce an massively multiplayer online game. Detailed information on all of these projects will be posted to the website at 7:00 PM EDT after the meeting.

If you wish to participate in SGD this semester, you must apply to work on a project (or projects) of your choice at one of the two pitch meetings; i.e. attending this meeting is your last chance to sign up for the SGD project of your choice this semester. Team rosters are initially at the discretion of the projects' respective directors, though members wishing to participate in projects who either A) missed both pitch meetings, or B) were not initially accepted onto a project will be added to projects by club officers on a per-project need basis. If you fall into either of these categories, please email us notifying us of your desire to contribute to an SGD project, along with the top three projects you are interested in, and you will be placed onto the team most in need by an SGD officer.

Finally, if you are a current SGD member and have yet to pay yearly dues, you may do so during Thursday's meeting. Dues are $10 and should be paid in person directly to our Treasurer, Dan Epstein

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Project Pitch: Laser Lockdown

The second of several projects the Student Game Developers will pursue this semester, Laser Lockdown is a player-vs-player first-person shooter centered around a game of laser tag. Unique to this project is the use of Nintendo's Wiimote to create a head-tracking control scheme.

The project is to be completed over the course of two semesters using the Ox Engine in the XNA platform. At least three and up to seven positions are available, including Wiimote specialists, 3D artists, gameplay designers / programmers, and audio specialists. Laser Lockdown is directed by fourth-year CS major Chris Dodge.

Click here to download the Powerpoint presentation for Laser Lockdown.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Project Pitch: T-Cubed

Beginning...well, now, information about projects the Student Game Developers will pursue during the Fall 2009 semester will appear on the website. SGD intends to develop at least five games this semester, and by the end of next week overview information regarding all of these projects will be posted. The foremost project we are formally announcing is T-Cubed.

T-Cubed is a multilayered puzzle game based upon one of the most popular video games of all time, Tetris. Players will have to combine their reflexes and joystick jockeying skills with their quick-thinking Tetris skills, as players must compete in a variety of mini-games to earn money which can be used to blow up completed rows and purchase other useful power-ups to score higher and continue the Tetris game.

The project is to be completed over the course of one semester using the XNA platform. At least two and up to six positions are available, focusing in the game design and programming facets of the project. The T-Cubed project is directed by second-year CS major Andrew Gaubatz.

Click here to download the Powerpoint presentation for T-Cubed (which contains more information and a gameplay mock-up).

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Reminder: Pitch Meeting I on Thursday

The first of two project pitch meetings is this Thursday, September 3, in OLS005 at 6:00 PM. Projects to be pitched at this meeting include Chris Dodge's Laser Lockdown, a 3D Wiimote-controlled laser tag game, and Andrew Gaubatz's T-Cubed, a 3D puzzle game project. Detailed information on both will be posted in a future post following the formal pitch presentations to the SGD club proper at this meeting.

If you wish to participate in SGD this semester, you must apply to work on a project (or projects) of your choice at one of the two pitch meetings. Team rosters are initially at the discretion of the projects' respective directors, though members wishing to participate in projects who either A) missed both pitch meetings, or B) were not initially accepted onto a project will be added to projects by club officers on a per-project need basis.
Although this organization has members who are University of Virginia students and may have University employees associated or engaged in its activities and affairs, the organization is not a part of or an agency of the University. It is a separate and independent organization which is responsible for and manages its own activities and affairs. The University does not direct, supervise or control the organization and is not responsible for the organization’s contracts, acts or omissions.