Game Development

This class taught the fundamentals and many lessons of game development and design. I took it because I grew up playing video games and have dabbled with game development in the past. It was fun to learn the “proper” underlying skills involved as opposed to hacking solutions together from YouTube tutorials (though that itself is an extremely powerful self-teaching method).

As I learned more about the world of robotics, I realized how important simulators were to it. So I also took this class to potentially learn more about using game engines in my research.

Below are snippets of different projects I completed in the class. These were completed using Unreal Engine and the open source engine Godot.

The above assignment was one of the MPs of the class. This was assigned to us to learn the basics of Unreal Engine and level design. I enjoyed designing the enemies and levels even if it ended up being a bit clunky

Void’s Edge is the name of the above game. It was completed for the final project, done in a team. It was supposed to be a 3D story platformer and puzzle game. I really liked implementing planetary physics, and I saw how this could translate to making or working within robotics simulators in the future. I helped develop the planetary physics, weapon, collectables, enemies, and most of the assets for the game (models, animations, etc).

This last game was what I developed for the 4-credit hour assignment. I called it Wizard Dungeon. This game is more akin to something I’d play in my free time. In years past, I have experimented with some level generation techniques for a couple different 2D-style games, so I was glad to implement that here. I also thought long and hard about the spell system. I enjoy games that let the player come up with their own strategy for how the game is best played, so I wanted to offer combinations for spells the player uses.