Program Overview
Along the roadside there are invasive and non-native trees known only as 'Dark Trees'. These Dark Trees are dropping Dark-Tree-Bits and damaging the cars below them. Since Dark-Tree-Bits are deadly to most humans, no one can get close enough to save their cars! The locals live in a commuter culture, making their cars extremely important to their livelihood and wellbeing. Without their cars, the locals will face horrors untold.

As an accomplished tree chopper with high resistance to Dark-Tree-Bits, the duty of eradicating the Dark Trees falls to you. With your honed chopping ability, resistance to the Dark Tree toxins, and general tree-bit dodging skills, the Dark Trees will have found themselves a worthy adversary.

Program Features
  • Hit detection
  • Health tracking for both Dark Trees and player
  • Sky-box and grass textures to better immerse the player into the First Person Chopper experience
  • Collision detection for cars and Dark Trees
  • Blinn-Phong shading on all objects
  • Falling particles to represent Dark Tree Bits
  • Particles to represent a Dark Tree leaking its Life Sap when hit
  • Animation for swinging the axe
  • Controls:
  • Technologies In Practice
  • Collision detection
  • Directional lighting
  • Blinn-Phong shading
  • Hierarchical animation
  • Particle effects
  • Texture mapping
  • Screenshots
    Any choppyness in the below images is from doing a print screen

  • General Scene
  • General Scene

  • Tree Sap Particle effect
  • Tree Sap Particle effect

  • Death Screen Fade In
  • Death Screen Fade In

  • Dark Tree Collapsing
  • Dark Tree Collapsing
    Lore
    In a time before there was light, there were . . . Dark Trees. In the cataclysm of the big bang the Dark Trees were cast far away into dimensions unknown, where they took root once more and continued to grow. For a time, the universe as we knew it progressed peacefully- blissfully unaware of the danger that lurked only 3 and a half dimensions over (3 and half UNKNOWN dimensions over). This peaceful universe spawned many worlds which would develop sentient life and complex cultures. The world Earth (Beta-10635) was one such world. Although the earliest colonists had unimaginative naming conventions, Earth (Beta-10635) would prove to be plentiful in resources and the colonists were able to successfully develop their new world.

    Years passed, seasons passed, then more years passed, and these were followed swiftly by more seasons- each were all more peaceful and tranquil than the last. Even so, there was an age where uncertainty began to grow. For during the earliest centuries of Earth (Beta-10635)'s development, rumors began to spread of areas where the shadows were longer than usual. Places where the voices of men and women seemed faint and where the sound of one hand clapping did not travel far through the heavy and frigid air. As the rumors seeped into everyday culture, adventures would take vacations to search for these places of mystery and curiosity, if only so as to place one foot into the shadows and confirm for themselves what they had been hearing.

    It came to pass that a young gardener named Lorius journeyed to one of these places of shadows and thick air- a small grove of Great Blue Trees that lay westward of the Longflake Mountains. Great Blue Trees were the oldest of trees on Earth (Beta-10635), planted all around the globe in the earliest days of settlement by Goosenold Bluetholomew. Lorius was enthralled by the sight of the Blue trees, for they were very rare and very beautiful. Despite the unpleasant nature of the grove itself, Lorius decided to stay in the grove to better study the Blue Trees. His complete and total dedication to the gardening arts would allow him to do little else. Lorius stayed in the grove for many years, and as time went on, he found it harder and harder to imagine leaving the grove. After nearly seven years of this lonely hermit hood, Lorius made a discovery. While digging in the long shadows of a Blue Tree, Lorius found that in some areas of the shadow he was not digging up dirt, but something else entirely. When Lorius reached his hand into the shadow he grabbed a handful of what felt like air on the other side. Lorius looked at his hand and was surprised to find fine grains of black matter which had no discernible corporeal form. Lorius could see the sand in the palm of his hand, but he could not feel its weight, nor feel the grains of sand themselves. Lorius stayed by the shadow and kept clawing and grabbing at the black sand 'till early evening. As the sun began to set behind him, Lorius felt something unsual inside the shadow, something different. Pulling his hand back out, Lorius found a seed nestled within the sand in his palm. Frantically, Lorius pulled out as many seeds as he could from the shadow before eventually collapsing in exhaustion.

    The next day, in a fit of madness, Lorius cut down the entire grove of Blue Trees and planted in their place the seeds of darkness he had found inside the long shadow. Eventually large darkly colored trees emerged from the soil and grew tall. These Dark Trees began to drop leaves and other tree bits all around the area, poisoning the entire forest itself. It did not take long before Forest Seekers from the eastside of the Longflake Mountains caught wind of the ailing forest and began to seek out the source of the poison. Upon finding the grove they immediately set out to chop down the Dark Trees. Although the Forest Seekers suffered serious casualties, they managed to destroy every last tree. Several members also gave chase to Lorius, but lost him in the confusion and failed to capture him. It is said that Lorius disappeared into the one of the long shadows himself, for he was certainly never seen nor heard from again.

    After the incident, the shadows seemed to shorten again, the air returned to normal, and everyone got on with their lives. Eventually, few would even remember the struggle, only remembering the popular rhyme it inspired: "In 1332, Lorius cut down the Trees so Blue". Earth (Beta-10635) continued to grow in prosperity and all imagined that the legends of darkness and Dark Trees were all in the past.

    Little did they know that some seeds of darkness still lay planted in the soil, both inside and outside the shady grove. The seeds laid mostly dormant, slowly germinating deep within the ground. It would only be a matter of time before the RETURN of the Dark Trees.

    Stay tuned for future installments that will cover the past of Legends Dark! Coming soon:

  • Legends Dark- Trees of Darkness Part 0.2: Lorius the Shadow Gardener
  • Legends Dark- Trees of Darkness Part 1.5: "What's with all the Dark Trees, did the city just put these in?" "No, no, I think they've always been here actually." "Oh really? Must just be one of those things I guess, funny how you just don't notice stuff sometimes."
  • And more!

    Resources
  • Tutorial on Lighting
  • Table of Materials, I used a slightly modified silver material from here
  • Tutorial on creating bit maps
  • GLFW Documentation
  • Axe .obj from Turbosquid
  • Tree Trunk .obj from Turbosquid