Comp201: Principles of Object-Oriented Programming I
Spring 2007 -- Student Final Projects   

Below is a listing (in no particular order) of the final projects conceived by the named students for this semester.

Comments from the staff are in red. To update your description, please send a revised version to comp201, using the same format as below.

General Advice

• Keep your game simple. Avoid the urge to overly complicate the system.
• Get the basic functionality working as absolutely soon as a possible. Life is a lot easier from working code.
• Think in terms of extensibility--install simple, basic features now, but use an architecture that allows you to add fancier stuff later.
• Work together with your partner in the same placem, even if you are currently working on different pieces--the immediate communications will solve many problems very quickly.
• Work incrementally, adding a little bit at a time. Do not make huge changes without recompiling and testing along the way.

"Deathblow" by Sarah Zelonis and Reid Henkel

This game is based on the game Asteroids. We want our ship to be a triangle centered in the middle of the display. When you push the right arrow the ship rotates to the right, the left arrow will rotate the ship to the left and the space bar will shoot the bullets. There are asteroids that fly towards the ship and you have to shoot them to break them apart. Any asteroid that is bigger than your ship can kill you, so you have to keep shooting the asteroids until you break them into small enough pieces.

There will be three difficulties: easy, medium and hard. Within each difficulty there will be three levels which differ based on the speed and the amount of asteroids coming at you. The difficulties differ by the amount of times you need to shoot an asteroid to break it apart. If an asteroid hits you, you will lose a life.

Win by completing all levels on the Hard difficulty.  Lose by losing all three of your lives.
 

Based on the BallWar code base.

"Save My Bubble" by Lu Sun

Goal of the game:  To feed My Bubble and achieve the highest score.

Objects in the game:

1. My Bubble: the specific bubble controlled by the player
    
2. Various other bubbles
   1. Bigger Bubbles: Bubbles which are larger than My Bubble
   2. Smaller Bubbles: Bubbles which are smaller than My Bubble
   3. Poisonous Bubbles (in black): Bubbles that will kill My Bubble.

Rules:

1. My Bubble can be fed by ‘eating’ Smaller Bubbles. Whenever My Bubble touches a Smaller Bubble, My Bubble will grow bigger.
2. Bigger Bubbles will hurt My Bubble. Whenever My Bubble touches a Bigger Bubble, My Bubble will shrink.
3. Poisonous Bubbles will kill My Bubble. Whenever My Bubble touches a Poisonous Bubble, My Bubble will explode and Game Over.
4. Game is over when
   1. My Bubble touches a Poisonous Bubble
   2. Running out of time (2 minutes)

Score keeping:

1. Touching Small Bubbles: +10
2. Touching Bigger Bubbles: -5

Based on the BallWar code base.
 

"Dr. Device and the Terrible Space Aliens Game" by Bryan Berry and Brenton Loeffelman

Description: Your standard Space Invaders/Gradius clone, a shoot-em-up game in which the player is at the bottom of the screen and has to kill enemies coming from the top. Enemies will appear randomly; the player has a laser which shoots straight upward and can be used to kill enemies.

No stages per se, just a more or less continuous stream of (random) enemies. You gain points from killing enemies; the player's score and the current high score are tracked.

Player capabilities: Can move left/right (and possibly up/down), can shoot upward. Player starts with a set number of lives, can get more lives by collecting a certain number of points/kills, can lose lives by getting hit by an enemy's projectiles (or by colliding with any enemies that happen to get down that far). If an enemy gets past the player, you lose some points.
 

Player can win by: No actual win condition; the goal is to score as many points as possible, ideally to beat the high score. Game ends when the player loses all lives.
 

Based on the BallWar code base.

"BallPong" by Rob Lewis

The typical Pong game, with a twist: the balls don't necessarily move in a straight line. There could be CurveBalls, BreathingBalls, multiple balls in play at once, walls in the middle of the field, traps that are triggered when the ball goes through, really any number of changes.

The goal of the game, of course, is to get balls past your opponent's paddle without letting any pass you.

You lose when all your lives are gone, and win after a certain number of levels.

Use the 'up' and 'down' keys to move your paddle. The player can choose at the beginning which types of balls can come into play at each level.
 

Based on the BallSwarm code base.

"Save Your Country" by Derrick Roos

To countries are bombing each other, however each has a special machine that can catch bombs and absorb the explosion. Each players goal is to prevent their cities from being destroyed. To to so you must absorb/catch the bombs until the other side runs out of bombs or is destroyed.

You have one machine located at each city so you can control one with the arrows keys and the second with the other set. Each side has a specific number of bombs. Before the game begins each player can choose a strategy of what kind of rate they what to release there bombs (ie steady pace, spurts, fast pace, random). They also may be able to choose if they want to invest in bigger bombs that do more damage if they hit or cheaper smaller bombs. After each players has made their choice the game begins. Also when a bomb strikes a country will lose some of their remaining bomb supply.

Goal: Save your country, defeat the other if possible.

Win/Lose: You lose if the number of bombs that land in your country exceed the damage that the city can handle. You win if the other country is destroyed, in the case where both countries are still not destroyed the winner will be which ever country incurred the least damage.

"Air War" by Frank Tamborelli and James Russell

Description: A simple game, using the interaction of objects in BallSwarm as a basis for a side-scroller game akin to many seen on the original NES and varioius arcades. The game will be kept simple, with a few choices for the player on which aircraft to use (each will behave slightly different), which will then initiate a side scrolling sequence (or appear to be a side scrolling
sequence) in which enemy aircraft may be shot down. The object interaction in BallSwarm will allow for everything to be defined as ABall, with each having different way of interacting with it's environment.

The object of the game is to achieve a high score, which is done by destroying the most enemy aircraft.

Alternate: If the opportunity presents itself, we will set up 'levels' by arranging the order in which objects appear. The object of the game will then be to complete all levels.

Features

• •Avatar Strategy to draw gifs and animated gifs rather than plain old balls • Game play dynamics affected by game objects that use:
  • Gravity
  • Magnetism
  • Mass of varying degrees
  • Explosions
  • Teleportation
  • Force Fields
  • Shields
• Game objects that chase
• Walls and other barriers
• Power-ups:
  • shields
  • increased maneuvering speed
  • increased firepower
• Experimentation with controls
  • first order (velocity)
  • second order (acceleration)
• Scores
• Bonus features (time and programmer expertise permitting)
  • Incrementing levels of difficulty
  • Boss fights
  • Local multiplayer
  • Remote internet multiplayer

Based on the BallSwarm code base.

"Ball Blasters" by Will Howison and Embre Smith

This game is based on an old arcade game called Buster Brothers. The player is limited to moving back and forth at the bottom of the game field, and shooting straight up. There are balls in the game field that bounce randomly and the player's objective is to shoot them. Upon being shot, the balls will split into two balls half the size of the original, until a certain point at which they simply disappear when shot. The player scores points by shooting balls, and wins by different means depending on game mode.

Features:

• Two player support
• Two selectable modes of gameplay
  • Survival (Balls continue spawning at fixed rate until the player dies, try to accumulate a high score)
  • possible implementation of increasing difficulty over time
  • Campaign (Complete a level by destroying all balls in that level to progress. Finish all levels to win)
• Enemy" balls of different types with different behaviors

Note: There are many other possible additions, but we think this should require enough modification to fulfill the requirements and given my short timetable we don't want to overextend this. If it needs more, we can certainly do more

Based on the BallWar code base.

"Shuffleboard" by Matthew Seaworth

Players will use the mouse to play one of the eight pucks (two players with four pucks each) attempting to get the puck into the scoring areas on the other side of the board. After the pucks have been played the player with the highest scoring puck(s) will be awarded points at which time the game will reset.
 

• The first player to 21 points wins
• There are three scoring areas awarding either 1, 2, or 3 points.
• Score is not calculated until after the final puck has been played using the horizontal location of the puck.
• Velocity of the thrown puck is calculated through mouse location and time elapsed.
• Pucks must be released before the first foul line(the second foul line is right before the scoring area with a third foul line after the last scoring area). Pucks are movable before the first foul line but not after.
• Each player will choose the color of their pucks.
• Players are allowed to define the spin of the ball (this affects how the puck behaves in collisions). The player will define spin by inputing an integer value into a dialog box, the defualt is no spin.
   

Based on the BallSwarm code base.

"Save the Planet" by Jessica Cruz and Robert LiKamWa

<movie voice>

You and your team of scientists have taken it upon yourselves to save the world from many destructive elements that are coming from space, including meteorites, cars, whales, chickens, ...

Fortunately, you are very resourceful people and have a super- powerful flux-capacitating magnetolava nyookyoolur continuum fractal eggbeater laser to destroy these oncoming objects.

The object of the game is to make it through all of the levels, thus saving planet Earth from impending doom.

</movie voice>

Features:

• Mouseclick induced FCMNCFE laser
• The laser is "point-and-click" on the target to shoot it.
• Enemies with varying attack patterns
• You cannot dodge the objects.
• You only have one life; objects that hit you remove some "health"
• Bar indicating the advance of global warming (Health (or lack thereof) Bar)
• Power-ups
• Point system
• Music
• Sound FX
• You win the game when you pass all of the levels.
   

Based on this game: http://www.addictinggames.com/defendyourcomputer.html  (Be careful. It's addicting.)
 

Based on the BallSwarm code base.

"Ballistic" by Joe Cavazos

Description: Based on the old computer game "Scorched Earth." Two players play, each in control of a little, immovable tank at a random spot on the ground. The game is turn-based, and during a player's turn, he gives his tank a launch angle and a power level, after which the tank fires a ball, hopefully towards the enemy tank.

The goal of the game is to impact the enemy tank with your ball.

• Both players start with a budget, and the size of ball they fire (ranging from particle-sized to comically-sized) determines how much money they spend each shot.
•  If a player is out of money, he can no longer fire. If both players are out of money, both tanks explode and the game is a draw.

Based on the BallWar code base.
 

Last Revised Thursday, 03-Jun-2010 09:50:16 CDT

©2007 Stephen Wong and Dung Nguyen