Index

1. Programming Proverbs

• 2. ‘‘Think first, Program later.’’
• Henry F. Ledgard, ‘‘Programming Proverbs: Principles of Good Programming with Numerous Examples to Improve Programming Style and Proficiency’’, (Hayden Computer Programming Series), Hayden Book Company, 1st edition, ISBN-13: 978-0810455221, December 1975.

2. CS3S665 Game engine design: Profecta scaenam

• 100% coursework assessed
  • two pieces of coursework
• Coursework 1
  • enhancing Chisel and enhancing Python bots in Doom3
• Coursework 2
  • enhancing a Physics engine to implement a 2D game in Python
• both are available for view on http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Southwales/gaius/gameengine/html.html

3. Doom3

• we will be using the dhewm3 fork of the doom3 code with heavy modifications which include:
  • gore, speed ups
  • python bots!
• about 681075 total lines of code
  • however this includes many tools and libraries
• actual engine is closer to 137905 lines of code

4. Game engines

• there are over 50 open source game engines
  • of differing size and quality
• require a balance between: complexity and resource requirements
• resource requirements are not always obvious
• for example the time to recompile Panda3D was 50 minutes on a 4 GHz AMD black
  • dhewm compiles in 3 minutes
  • pge compiles in 1 minute

5. Doom3 advantages

• code base is very clean implemented in C++
• it does not use the STL
  • most libraries are implemented from scratch
  • highly portable codebase and fast
• Doom3 lineage is strong!
  • many eyeballs keep bugs shallow
• Doom3 codebase can be extended and makes an effective teaching tool
• all maps and models are stored in text format! (Excluding images/sounds)
• uses the MAP and BSP format which is the Rosetta stone to game engine design

6. Morloc Tower

• Morloc Tower was a game written in 1980
• the tower had six stories and consists of 30 rooms total
• the wizard Morloc was the boss enemy which you had to defeat to complete the game
  • the quicker you killed him the higher your score
• it had adventure elements to the game (pick up magic sword or hand grenade)
  • which would take time to find
• there were smaller monsters to kill before you reached Morloc
  • single player real-time adventure game

7. Penguin tower

• Penguin tower is a multiplayer 2 dimensional game which was inspired by Morloc Tower
• Penguin Tower is a very different game it does retain a similar screen layout and many of the key commands are the same
• the goal of the game is to stay alive as long as possible and to inflict the most damage on other players
  • genre is a graphical multiuser dungeon with a limited graphical interface and limited number of objects and weapons
• architecturally it consists of three main components, a client, a server and a protocol
• the client is written in Python and it utilises the pygame libraries
• the server is mostly written in Modula-2 and a small amount of C
  • the protocol is entirely character and string based
• the penguin tower server code was written during two Augusts in 1985 and 1986 and originally ran on a 6 Mhz PC clone connected by two Visual 200 terminals (making it a three player game).
• the maps were drawn with simple ASCII characters, and it was quite playable (for those days!)
• the 6 Mhz PC ran the server code quite comfortably, it occasionally slowed down, which perhaps added to its charm.
  • normally when someone pulled the hand grenade

8. Penguin tower demo

• demo screenshots

9. Doom3 mod

• how difficult would it be to produce a Penguin Tower mod for Doom3?
  • utilise the monsters from Doom3
  • generate very simple maps in the style of (Morloc Tower and Penguin Tower)
• very simple maps have the advantage of only having 90° corners
  • ideal teaching vehicle and also it should be possible to generate maps quickly

10. Penguin tower maps

• there are a number of penguin tower maps and a tool to randomly create large maps
• the Penguin tower file format is simple and easily extensible

11. Penguin tower map: star.pen

• ROOM 1
  
  WALL 1 1 1 20
  WALL 1 20 20 20
  WALL 20 20 20 1
  WALL 20 1 1 1
  
  
  DOOR 9 20 12 20  STATUS CLOSED LEADS TO 5
  DOOR 20 9 20 12  STATUS CLOSED LEADS TO 5
  END

• etc
  

12. Chisel

• Chisel
• is a github project containing command line tools to create doom3 maps
• the tools allow anyone with basic computer skills to generate small doom3 maps

13. Map: one.txt

• define 1 room 1
  define s worldspawn
  define o monster monster_demon_imp
  define n monster monster_demon_hellknight
  define i light
  define a ammo ammo_shells_large 16
  
  
  ############################################################
  # 1    i       i                    i                      #
  #                                                          #
  # s        a                                          n    #
  #                            o                             #
  #                i                             i           #
  ############################################################

14. Map: two.txt

• define 1 room 1
  define 2 room 2
  define s worldspawn
  define o monster monster_demon_imp
  define n monster monster_demon_hellknight
  define i light
  define a ammo ammo_grenade 16
  
  
  ##################################
  # 1          i   # 2        i    #
  #          o     #               #
  # s              .               #
  #                .               #
  #                .               #
  #                #       g   n   #
  #       i        #    i          #
  ##################################

15. Compiling a map

• $ txt2pen -o one.pen one.txt
  $ pen2map -o one.map one.pen

• notice the txt file is compiled into a pen file
  • the pen file is compiled into map file
    

16. Conclusion

• continue next week!

Index

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