UFO Invasion

Developed: 1st Semester 2009
Genre: Shoot Em Up
Engine: Microsoft XNA 2.0
Team:
Chris Rhodan (Initial Concept, Programming)
Aaron Findlay (Level and Sound Design)
Ian Calligeros (Level and Game Design)
Ben Rokesky (Game Design and Art)

UFO Invasion was developed in a team with three other students for a game design subject at University; we were given the broad task of developing a game over the semester (~10 weeks) that would appeal to teenagers, and fit into a PG or lower rating. From this broad goal, we then set ourselves some limitations based on time constraints and team constraints (all four of us are design majors, only one of us [me] having any programming experience, and only one [Ben] who could draw well):

• - Only one or two players (it would take too long to balance for more players)
• - 2D graphics (easier to program for as well as draw and animate)
• - Simple core mechanics that could be expanded upon easily (rather than planning large and having to cut features out, we planned small and expanded with extra features as we had time)

Personally, my contributions to the game included the early design stages of the game design; helping to produce the initial game concept and develop it into a full fledged game proposal, and contributing all of the programming for the game; much more programming than I’d ever done alone before.

From these concepts, our game developed into UFO Invasion, inspired by Space Invaders and Shmup’s such as Gradius, we made a few major changes to the genre; mainly changing the “target” of the enemies from the players (who are invincible in our game) to a key structure (White House or Opera House depending on the level).

This encourages the players to work together to defend the structure, however, we also wanted to try and make the game very competitive between the two players, and as such, we designed the game so only one player can actually “win” if all UFO waves are defeated, and only one player will “lose” if the structure is destroyed. We decided this mechanic alone wouldn’t develop the competitiveness we were seeking (especially since player’s wouldn’t notice it until they won or loss at least once) and so we expanded our gameplay to include power ups that either upgrade your own abilities (firing two shots at once or doubling your score for ten shots) or can cripple your teammate’s abilities (immobilizing them with a net or reversing their controls).

Also, being a 2D game we decided to go for a cartoony feel to the art style and game elements; such as explosions being “Pow, Kapow, Zappo!” etc in the campy style of old Batman, the win and loss screens, the idea of advanced alien technology suicide bombing their targets and the fact that they often miss their target.

Unfortunately, due mainly to myself being a fairly inexperienced programmer, there are a number of small issues with the game. Occasionally enemies will disappear off the screen (which I’m going to claim as being intentional… see above about UFO’s often missing their target ), though this doesn’t prevent the game from completing, it can cheat players out of points. Also, some of the collision detections are slightly off (a side effect of the spinning animation that I couldn’t full correct before the date the project was due).

Finally, the game only supports 1440×900 or higher resolutions (playing it on a higher resolution will result in a green bar along the side of the screen outside the 1440×900 area. Unfortunately, I hadn’t programmed a full screen game before and completely overlooked the fact people have different monitor resolutions than my laptop (including my desktop computer /facepalm), and so didn’t set the code up to support multiple resolutions. Unfortunately, by the time the problem became apparent, I didn’t have time to go back and fix the problem as I had other more pressing concerns to finish before submission. One day I will go back and fix this up, but for now it should only be played at 1440×900 or higher (any lower will cut off portions of the game area).

Download the game (hosted on mediafire) here (instructions included in the folder).

Whirlpool Wipeout

Developed: October 3-5th 2008 (48 hours)
Genre: Top Down Shooter
Engine: Microsoft XNA 2.0
Team:
Ben Glock (Design/Art)
Jason Harwood (Programming/Music/Sound)
Abbey Miranda (Lead Art/Music)
Kyall Henricksen (Programming/Music)
Lal Goh (Design/Sound/Art)
Chris Rhodan (Design/Programming)

Whirlpool Wipeout was completely produced, from initial concept to final build, in just 48 hours as part of the IGDA 48 Hour Game Making Challenge 2008, for which we were highly commended (and for a team of students, we were very happy as the winning team was comprised of developers in the industry at the time). All teams were given three items they had to include their game design, but otherwise were free in their design, the three words for 2008 being Melon, Sunshine and Astronauts. After much deliberation, we came up with the concept of extraterristrials invading Earth in Melon-shaped spacecraft, interrupting a group of Astronauts on holiday in the sunshine of the tropics.

1-4 Players take control of an Astronaut, armed with Frisbees and whatever debris they can find floating into the water (ranging from beach umbrellas and sharks to yahtzee) as they attempt to defeat the aliens in the center of the Melon-ship. The game features a whirlpool caused by the crash landing of the watermelon, with realistic physics, as well as a deforming melon space ship, support for up to 4 players and 4 different difficulty levels. Quite an impressive set of features for a game produced in just 48 hours by 6 students, if I do say so myself.

Personally, I was heavily involved in the early design concept of the game, fleshing out the game idea from a rough initial concept. Once our concept was developed, I served as the buffer between the art and programming team, taking the raw high-resolution artwork and compressing it into a size suitable for use in the game, as well as programming all the content management in the game, importing the resized textures into the game engine and setting them up for the other programmers to easily implement.

Once all the content management systems were in place, I focused mainly on playtesting the constantly evolving game and tweaking settings in the game engine to correct balancing issues and attempting to fix any bugs found, while  Kyall and Jason focused on implementing the new content.

Note: the game was developed using XNA for the Xbox360, and though the game is only playable on Windows without an XNA creator’s club membership. As such, it is recomended you play it with a Xbox360 controller as this is what Whirlpool Wipeout was designed and balanced for.

The completed game can be found along with installation instructions on Team Equidna’s website.