Master’s Projects
The Master’s degree involves many smaller projects during each course, but there are three main programming projects that are accompanied with essays. These three are a culmination of the individual tutorials during each course to demonstrate all or most of the technique we learned. The first two mentioned are from the DirectX 9 courses and the third is the Console assignment which is done on the Playstation 2. Below is a summary of the projects chose to do for those assignments.
DirectX Project 1
The first assignment in DirectX 9 required several things including loading models, using textures, materials and alpha blending, adding lights, using the stencil and depth buffer, and implementing controls with the keyboard. I chose to built a small scene using free models from TurboSquid.com. Separate textures and materials were applied to the plane and boxes, which are simply DirectX cubes. The user is capable of moving the camera as well as the light and controlling the strength of the light.
 View from one side... |
 ... and from the other side. |
DirectX Project 2
The second term project required the use of shaders, inclusion of sound, and mouse control. The project also had to be a game of some sort, so it had to have a point to playing it. I chose to create a game inspired by Q*Bert, though myBert was simpler. It took place on a pyramid which the player could spin with the mouse. It also had enemies, which were black as opposed to the yellow ball that was the player, which would change back the cubes and could be killed by the player. The game would end, of course, when all of the cubes were changed. The timer would stop and the player was allowed to reset the pyramid for another try. The shader was used to light the pyramid and player, and sounds played when the player moved.
A 3D game inspired by Q*Bert
Console Project
The last significant project for the Master’s degree I will mention here is the Console Programming assignment. The assignment requires the student to create a small game or technology demonstration on the Playstation 2. I chose to create a small tech demo involving a campfire, using sprites for the fire and smoke. I created the simple model of logs and drew the animated sprites. I coded the behavior for the smoke, which float upwards for a predetermined distance and move randomly within a threshold. The final part of the demonstration was the incorporation of a point light into the provided framework, which originally only allowed three directional lights. This involved rewriting some of the assembly code for the Vector Unit. The light also changed colour to flicker similar to a fire. Finally, the camera was restricted to rotating around the fire to ensure presentation quality.
Campfire demonstration
Project Videos
Below are videos of these projects in motion.
- All done. A sub followed by a community breakfast. It is a good day already.
- One breakfast done. Just waiting on number two.