CS 248 2005 Video Game Competition

CS 248 - Introduction to Computer Graphics
Autumn Quarter, 2005

The final project for CS248 was to write a 3D video game. To help inspire our students to delve deeply into the wonderful world of graphics, we also held a public competition, with a panel of expert judges selecting the best game.

There were 7 finalists. The winning group won a trip to Siggraph 2006, while second place won a free dinner for two at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto. We also had a "wackiest, most creative" prize consisting of an Xbox 360, generously donated by Microsoft. All finalists also won video games donated by Electronic Arts.

Contents:


1st place: Deadly Soccer Ball

Jean-Gabriel Morard

Deadly Soccer Ball


Windows: theDeadlySoccerBall.zip
Linux: theDeadlySoccerBall.tar.gz

Imagine yourself as a space soccer ball shooting missiles around... Imagine you have to follow bad guys from a planet to another, through star gates dugg in the ground... Imagine your missiles coming back to hit you after they run around the planet... Now imagine long snakes crawling around in your way... You'll get it all in the Deadly Soccer Ball!


2nd place: Baron von Puttyngton versus the Cancerous M.C. Escher Maze of Cheese

Bill Dwyer

Baron von Puttyngton


Windows: Baron_1.01.zip

You are Baron Von Puttyngton, a jiggly cube made of putty. You are in a maze made out of cheese that looks like an M.C. Escher drawing. i.e. the stairways are facing all kind of strange directions. All the yellow cheese is cancerous, i.e. it keeps sprouting new cheese in front of itself. The goal of the game is to turn everything into blue cheese, which is not cancerous. The level ends when everything is blue cheese. In each level the mazes get more complex, but the cancerous cheese still grows at the same rate. The player traverses the maze by rotating The Baron or by rotating the gravity vector 90 degrees, which makes forward into down and up into forward. The game never ends, and you never die.


Wackiest: Labyrin3D

Tina Dong and Jesse Levinson

Labyrin3D


(Executable not available, as Tina and Jesse may have bigger plans for the game).

Labyrin3D is a revolutionary user gaming experience. A takeoff on the familiar Labyrinth(tm) board game, Labyrin3D is a fun and intuitive game in which the user attempts to navigate a marble through a maze while picking up score pieces and avoiding deadly holes, all in as little time as possible. Instead of using a keyboard or mouse for input, Labyrin3D takes advantage of a special sensor in Apple Powerbooks and allows the user to tilt the board simply by tilting the laptop itself! In this manner, the game is played simply by tilting the laptop in order to control the movement of the ball.


Finalist: Formula Inverse

Gary Luu and Nathan Marz

Formula Inverse


Linux: formula_inverse.tar.gz

Formula Inverse is a high-speed, multi-player hovercraft racing game with a twist: gravity is always pointing into the track, regardless of what crazy way the track twists. Navigate sharp turns, use boost packs, ram your opponents into the the surrounding forcefield, and experience the thrill of victory!


Finalist: Firefly Laser Tag

James Conner and Ranjitha Kumar

Firefly Laser Tag


Windows: fflylasertag.zip

Firefly Laser Tag pits laser-equipped fireflies against each other in a battle for points. In a foggy bamboo forest clearing you must navigate among flowers and gravitational lanterns, pursue your opponents, and flee your pursuers.


Finalist: War of the Penguins

John Adams, Hau-Jia Chew, and Tom Wang

War of the Penguins


Windows: WarOfThePenguinsExe.zip

Combining elements of everyone's favorite childhood games, War of the Penguins is a fusion of many fields of addictive gaming. The premise is that you are a vengeful penguin on a jetpack seeking to destroy all enemy penguins with a variety of armaments and special power-ups at your disposal.


Finalist: Heart Attack

Lee Hendrickson, Jens Pillgram-Larsen, and Tarang Vaish

Heart Attack


Linux: HeartAttack.tar.gz

In Heart Attack, you play a futuristic nano-robot whose mission is to combat infections in the human body. Heart Attack features technologies such as GLSL pixel/vertex shaders and octree collision detection along with fast-paced, dynamic gameplay.


Last update by Josh Wiseman: January 11, 2006