End of Semester Expo

The end of the Semester is upon us! The time has come for the Student Game Developers' annual End of Semester Expo, where all the games we've worked on throught the semester will be on showcase. Come for the games, come for the (free) snacks, this Saturday (5/1) in Thn E303.

There will be 4 SGD games on showcase, along with several games from the Game Design class (CS 4501).

Games:

-Dual

-Impact

-Laser Lockdown

-Recursion

SGD Featured in Cavalier Daily

We are featured today in the Cavalier Daily, UVA's student newspaper. The article discusses iPhone development and the opportunities many of us have had with SRRN Games.

From the article:
Clearly, he added, when Carbone and Abadi offered jobs to members of SGD, the mutual benefits were readily apparent.

“Things have worked out great for us because SGD works really hard to get opportunities for its members, but it’s also been great for SRRN because they have access to really talented people who are passionate about making video games,”

You can read the full article here: http://www.cavalierdaily.com/2010/04/29/app-madness/

Recursion update

Recursion has been moving along slowly this semester, but we new art, levels, and a new powerup to show for it. The art style is now significantly more "electronic", with the main character now being a blue computer. The terrain for some of the earlier levels has also been updated to match these changes, which result in the screenshots attached.

The powerup that we added this semester was the parachute, which slows your rate of falling after a jump. This allows you to reach new areas and make jumps that wouldn't be possible before. We've been working on adding some more difficult levels, and we have now removed all RGBDS levels because we have enough to merit a complete game.

Laser Lockdown Project Update

The vision of Laser Lockdown was to create a laser tag simulation in the UDK. I'm proud to say that we're most of the way there.




As you can see from the screenshots, Andrew put together a new model for the laser gun that looks sweet. The screenshots were taken in the old level from the mid-semester expo; Michael and Andrew have both been working hard on getting a new one put together. It's looking great so far; it'll be done in time for the end-of-semester expo in two weeks.

The game mechanics have been implemented for the most part. Most laser tag games "stun" a person when they've been shot for a few seconds; this is one of the mechanics that we've added to Laser Lockdown. This stun time gives the player a chance to react to being shot and also discourages focusing on one target alone. We're also working on the scoring system which will decrease the points per tag when the same target is hit in succession.

If you're going to be in Charlottesville in the next few weeks, make sure to come out to the end of semester expo! It'll be your only chance to play a Wiimote version (with headtracking) version of Laser Lockdown!