Project X - Inverse Game Design

–> Launch Project (Boston, MA)
–> Launch Project (mirror, TX)

~ UPDATE! I have managed to bring the character down to ~1 kilopoly and have as a result restored Raycasting as well as object collision, object generation and the health system. You can now drop items and “monsters” into the world and interact with them.

~ Inverse Game Design, started in 2002, is a project which intends to build out the main feature sets found in popular video games, and make that code and modeling available to everyone as open source under the Creative Commons attribution license.

One of the goals of this project is to democratize access to interactive 3d. Educators, storytellers, and enthusiasts who are confronted by the programming barrier can, over time, fully realize their vision through using the code provided in Macromedia (now Adobe) Director and the Maya 3d package. Each line of code is commented (example below), and the creator has FULL CONTROL over every aspect of the environment, objects and characters therein.

The feature list is below. Currently work is being done on more character behaviors, and improving frame rate/playback when collision detection and physics are enabled.

Thank you for your interest in Project X!

~Bret Kulakovich, April 2007

Project Stills:

Project X Milestones 4/2007

√ - complete
• - in progress

√ Usable character w/skeleton and walking animation
√ Keycode controls to walk, turn
√ Playstation 2 Gamepad control *
√ Independent camera control *
• Level of Detail
• Physics - Havok or Custom
• Chat/Multiplayer
√ Flexible world file

√ Keyframe/Bonesplayer solution
√ Raycasting and terrain (NEW!)
√ Camera control *
√ perspective
√ orthographic
√ zoom in & out *
√ Interpolated camera motion

√ Painting terrain elevation as per Kai Krause *
√ Light colors raises terrain
√ Dark color lower terrain
√ Import DEM files
√ Camera overlays (vignetting, UI)
√ Collision outside of Physics (NEW!)
√ Interactive polygon rollovers *
√ Characters store own data

√ Rollovers trigger display of stored text overlay *
√ Character generated text overlays (toward chat) *
• Playstation 2 Gamepad control (comparable to PS/2 Jak3 franchise)
_ Parabolic motion and direct intercept, point to point

(* features suspended in this release due to framerate and web-based display)

Actual code sample from the current project file:

This portion of the project was completed as a part of Professor John Craig Freeman’s VM626 Computer Animation II course.

Special thanks to Craig for a great class, and my classmates for a great semester!