Why Make a Game?
• Something I’ve always wanted to do• More fun than previous projects• Graphics programming• Uses concepts learned in CS courses
Storyline
• Background– You are a duck– Your parents lived in a small country
pond– They were killed by a cougar just before
you were hatched– You don’t know what happened to them
Storyline
• Game entrance– You enter game as a newly hatched
duckling– You know nothing about your parents
death– You are alone in the pond
Storyline
• Pass various levels (only two in “The saga begins…”) to gain clues about what happened to your parents
• In “Revenge of the Duck” (not part of this project) you actually confront the evil cougar
Design
• Data Structures/Algorithms– Tree– Disjoint Sets– Collision Detection – Game mode
• SimpEngine– Simple Graphics Engine– It’s pretty much most of my class design
Disjoint Sets
• Used to generate a maze• Every maze cell is it’s own set• Disjoint Sets randomly selects cells
and checks if they’re in the same set• If not, it combines both sets• Keeps going till all cells are in one set
Game Mode
• Big If Statement• There’s several modes, including…
– Main Menu– Load Level 1– Level 1 instructions– Playing Level One
• Easy to add new modes• This allows me to turn off key/moue input
based on game mode• This controls what is drawn
Problems
• SimpEngine a blessing and a curse– Almost no documentation– No “how to do this”– I’d spend lots of time trying to do
something, then realize there’s a much easier way
• Phantom Errors• Time – ROTC• Senioritis