The Game Presentation

1. The Game Presentation B00109817 Jonathan Callaghan The Bad Seed(s) From the start of the module I had a bunch of different ideas as to possible games. When it turned out that I would be working on my own the potential level of the game dropped as it would now be a solo effort and I know the limits to my programming skills. Opted for a Pacman styled game where the object was to capture the other sprites, and not run away from ( mightily original, I know). I was going to make it a side-scroller but that would have needed an engine and I didn’t want to venture that alone. Originally I thought that a high-score table would be the ideal for the advanced technique used in the game but after some frustrating failures with it, opted to try and code some for of AI.

2. Development Style To me the style didn’t really matter as I could decide to change it whenever I wanted to suit my needs. Agile development is generally suited to small teams and how can you get smaller than a team of one!? So I suppose it would fall under this. I still coded and worked the way I would if I was in a team, so my work was commented when suitable so that I wouldn’t forget what I was doing or anything of the sort.

3. Development Cycle I pretty much stuck to what I projected. Early concepts and ideas followed by the majority of the time which would be coding heavy. In summary : week 1 - design week 2-12 - code monkey

4. Game Changes Due to bugs, errors, failures in general. The game changed from the original concept to make it..playable. I will list the changes: • Only one mob spawns • There are no animations for when capturing or moving • Instead of a timer, the player gets 150 moves to get the target • Instead of a High-Score, I attempted some basic AI • There are no power ups or power downs.

5. Documentation As stated in the previous side, one side of documentation was simply the comments in the classes. These were kept brief but made sense to me and since I was the person it concerned it suited. The JavaDoc file allowed for easier reading of what methods done what exactly.

6. Subversion I created a subversion server on xp-dev.com as was required in the submission needs. However since I was the only person making changes, I didn’t really use it to do anything other that just keep a backup online in case my pen drive and my pc...and my university home drive all lost it.

7. Online Applet I opted to use Zymic as a webhost for the application as I don’t think that wikispaces was allowing my applet to load. Signing up to Zymic, along with using FileZilla to upload the index.html and the game project’s jar file was really easy to get working.

8. Optimisation Unfortunately I had enough problems getting the game working to have any time to optimise the game. As stated in the design document I wanted there to be a bunch of enemies to capture, along with various upgrades and whatnot to make it an actual fun game.

9. Re-Design If I was re-designing the game. Firstly I probably wouldn’t have went with the maze that I did. I would have created a level that maybe consisted of a few blocks. I would have included animations for the sprites But in summary I wouldn’t have been as ambitious as I was especially when I didn’t have a partner to work with. Right from the start it was an uphill challenge.

10. Difficulties Since there was a maze Applet available and my game would require one, I figured to use this 3rd party class and incorporate it into my game to save time and effort. I was fairly successful in this as I got the maze working really early into the project. Double Buffering seemed to provide a speed bump on the road to success but I managed to stop the screen partially drawing before the next update. However it occasionally flickers for a split second which leaves me to think it wasn’t entirely fixed. The High-Score implementation just wasn’t going to happen with my programming skills so I had to abandon that before it was too late, this called for a slight restructure in my code . The AI was difficult because at first the sprite wouldn’t move, and then he would move but only up and down...and only in micro moments before moving the other way. All in all very frustrating and it felt I was bashing my head off a wall at times. In the end I had to settle for really simple AI, which was picking a random direction every go to keep the player guessing. I realised that with the way the maze was, not allowing him through the walls was going to make for a really easy game as generally 1 way out of every place. Also, having him react to your presence being close would mean you would almost certainly never catch him within the turns. For a user I made the decision as it made the game more enjoyable of those playing options.

11. Reflection I’m kind of on the fence as to whether I was happy or unhappy as to working on my own. On one side I had freedom to do whatever I want, and a chance to do what I haven’t really had a chance to do so far in university...code a game solo. Real Time 3d Graphics last year was similar and I surprised myself at being able to meet the requirements with no help and passed the module, but it was around then I realised I wasn’t a programmer and seen me switch course to Computer Games Development. I enjoyed the freedom but the challenge would have been far more enjoyable if I was working with someone, even if they weren’t heavy programmers because it would have given me the chance to bounce ideas off of people. I was sometimes able to do this with class mates but often they were busy doing their own thing.