Microwars
| Abstract | |
| Game Name: | Microwars |
| Development Team Members: | Kenneth Chan (Concept, Game Engine, Controls), Eric Chen (Art, Audio) |
| Game Genre: | Top-Down Shooter |
| Brief Description: | Microwars is a simple top-down shooter with 360-degree movement and shooting scheme similar to that of Geometry Wars. You are set out to fight against an infinite amount of harmful microorganisms and get more powerful as the game progresses, but at the same time your ship will receive upgrades. |
| Overview | |
| Game Story / Objective: | You are a nanobot set out to destroy an infinite onslaught of harmful microbiological agents |
| Game Mechanics + Controls: | XBox 360 controller:
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| Technology: | We are using OpenGL with SDL as the windowing manager. SDL_mixer is used for sound. Cg is used for the bloom effect shader. All of these technologies can be cross-compiled on Windows, Macs, and Linux machines, but we've tested it to work only on Windows and Linux machines. We use XInput for the Xbox 360 driver for windows and also have tested it to work with the native Linux joystick drivers (thru the xpad module). |
| Aesthetics: | Everything in this game is rendered with the basic OpenGL draw line or draw point functions with its native alpha blending and a bloom shader effect. |
| Reflections | |
| Three Greatest Challenges: |
- Team communication - Perfecting the grid wave effect - Synchronizing the game experience for multiple platforms |
| Three things that went right: |
- Smooth controls - Sleek graphics - Cool custom sounds |
| Three things that went wrong: |
- Little code optimization (display lists, etc.) so it runs sluggish on less powerful computers - Lots of gameplay features missing from original intention - Too much like Geometry Wars |
| Media | |
| Screenshots: |   |
| (Optional) Download: |
- Win32 Binary - Source - Libraries required to compile on Linux: - freeglut - libglew - SDL and SDL_mixer (x86_64) - Cg 2.0 |