Lifes a beach until you've been to the River

Kane Carroll
CPE 471 Spring 2012
Zoe Wood

Project Description:

For my final project I developed a video game. I came up with the idea of a timed water skiing event, in which the player controls the left and right swing of the water skier and tries to weave through a slalom course to accumulate the fastest time. If the player misses three pylons while going through the course, the game pauses and goes into "Chug Mode". Chug Mode allows the user to regain energy and continue along the course. If the player is successful in completing Chug Mode, the game will resume. If the player is unsuccessful in completing Chug Mode, the game will end and reset the player to the beginning. The more the player enters Chug Mode, the harder Chug Mode becomes.

Main Features:

Hierarchical Modeling
Point/Collision detection
Phong shading
Camera Transformations
Texture mapping

Keys:

w - Turn player left
d - Turn player right
s - Start
r - Reset
c - Chug (Tap real fast to acheive success)
q - Quit

Specifics:

Texture Mapping
- The first thing I incorporated into this project was texture mapping. I texture mapped a water image to the ground plane of my level to simulate a river atmosphere.

Hierarchical Modeling
- Hierarchical Modeling was incorporated into the character of the game. The character consists of 13 body parts and 9 movable joints (hinges) connected together. The arms and legs as well as the tilt angle of the character animate as the character moves left and right across the screen. If the player misses three pylons while playing the game, the game freezes and goes into "Chugging mode". In Chugging mode the object is to get the drink to the characters mouth by repeatedly pressing the chug button. The chug button rotates the arm towards the characters mouth. The arm however is on a negative rotation axis fighting against you. If the arm points straight down, you spill your drink and lose. If drink touches the mouth, you win and can continue along in the game.

Point/Collision detection
- Point detection of the players x,y, and z coordinates to determine if the player is inside the two pylons or outside the two pylons.