RicardoCruz < People < TWiki

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Name: Ricardo Pereira de Magalhães Cruz
Address: Porto, Portugal
Homepage: http://rpmcruz.planetaclix.pt/
E-mail: rpmcruz@clix.pt
I've already successfully sent a JCA.

Subject: #102 - 3D Desktop Games

Title: Vortex

Description

Do you remember those old games where you'd travel through a top-view cave-maze and you couldn't hit the walls? Well, I'd like to add a 3D twist to that; instead of going through a cave, you go through a vortex, think in a circular tunnel, where you have to avoid obstacles, and grabbing bonus.
You might also have the ability to jump, through holes in the vortex and obstacles. You might also be able to control your speed. Maybe crossing it a bit with the now old SkyRoads.

One of the advantages of such a game is that the tunnel could be randomly created. Thus, you'd have infinite levels, that would get harder and harder.

Being a desktop game, mouse playability should be taken in consideration, and I think it would work just fine. Mouse movement would be equivalent to the arrows, and one of the buttons could be used for jump. Left and right movements should be balanced, so there shouldn't be a problem of the player running out of table below the mouse. Controlling speed moving the mouse up and down should work fine, but maybe using the scroll wheel might be better, or just avoid the need of speeding up or down when using the mouse.

I don't think there would be a problem of having an action game distributed in a desktop. Microsoft, for one, didn't find a problem distributing Pinball with Windows NT. And several vendors ship tetris and breakouts clones with desktops.

Benefits for the LG3D^? users

They would get an exciting and addictive fun game. Also, the environment of the game (the space) is great for graphical effects. I would like to have lighting, translucent and reflective tunnel tiles, as well as parallax effects.

Approximate Shedule

The development path cutted into ordered steps that should take one to two week each.

Make of the circular tunnel structure together with a hard coded level, which would be rendered to the screen with the ability to go back and further, and rotate the tunnel.
Produce the space ship artwork. Add it to the screen and make it controllable through the keyboard with movement physics. It can fall on holes.
Add 3D obstacles support. Produce artwork for explosion. Add the ability to jump and make space ship blowing up when colliding with an obstacle upfront.
Create an algorithm for the automatic creation of the levels. Add an interface that shows some information (like scores), allows for pausing and let's user setup difficulty, and see high score and help (maybe through a menu).
Eye candy. Tunnel tiles should be translucent and reflect the player. Some lighting effects of when going through special tiles. Render background with stars and celestial bodies, with a parallax effect.

Background

Skills:
I've good knowledge of both C++ and Java (dunno the language you might want). I've done some basic stuff in OpenGL^?; you may see one in my homepage pointed below. But I must be honest and say I'm not very comfortable with it. Though I'm very motivated, and I am also a fast learner.

About me:
My name is Ricardo Cruz, I'm 20 years and I'm in my 2nd year of college for a computer science degree.

I love programming, and I am knowledgeable of a few programming languages, like C, C++, Python, Java, Haskell and Bash, as well as libraries like KDE/Qt, wxWidgets, SDL, OpenGL^?, as well as the C POSIX system libraries.

Some basic stuff that I've done can be found in my webpage: like a bytecode language compiler/interpreter, a shell command interpreter, an advanced calculator, Haskell bindings and a few simple games.

I've participated in some OSS game development. From sending patches, like AI support in Jump'n Bump, to being one of the main programmers in SuperTux, which is distributed in a few distributions.