Deathfighter
Deathfighter VII is a cheesy codename for a games project I took part in during my 3rd year at uni. It's an arcade shooter game inspired by MechWarrior where a player is controlling a huge robot. There is something special about our game, though. We have a piece of hardware in our faculty building called MotionBase Explorer/1 which is a virtual reality pod. A player gets inside, straps the seat belt on and off it goes! Our game features walking motion simulation and shooting feedback so a player feels like he/she is actually inside a robot. The pod is equipped with 3 screens, audio speakers and a joystick.
Because it took us a lot of effort to make our game feel good inside the pod, it is almost unplayable on an ordinary PC. However, we are working hard in our spare time to bring the game onto the PC! Check out our Google Code Page.
Our project supervisor Chris from Netsight was one of the first unlucky guinea pigs. :)
Motion pod (picture taken from I AM ORB web-site)
Demonstration day. Seng Ham Lim is guiding a player as he plays the game inside the pod. Computer in the background is running a "pod server". Because that computer was the only interface to the pod, we had to create another application that received game client commands.
Demonstration day. Our game allowed network play with players helping the Mech pilot or playing against him/her. On the background an interactive map is visible that shows enemy, objective and player locations. Foreground: our supervisor Chris is chatting to members of team Totoro who created a game called I AM ORB.
Working hard! From foreground to background: Timothy Wood, Seng Ham Lim, Artyom Arabadji.
With all the fun come some of the horrors of bad planning and crunches. Don't let them bring you down!
Pictures are by Thomas Alterman, our team captain.
From the morning, past the evening, 'til the end of the Light
