First Week

First Week

  
    Well, we had our first lecture for Game Engines.  Since it was the first lecture, most of the class was used for dealing with administrative stuff and course structure.  After we were done with that, we got into what we will be learning about and what we will be doing.  I have to say, once we started talking about the course, it got me really excited.  We will be using Havok as our physics engine, and Ogre for our graphics and rendering engine.

  
    These engines will help out greatly in improving the quality and mechanics within our game.  Before, we had to create our own engines from scratch, which was invaluable in providing us with knowledge of how engines work.  The caveat to this is that since we have such a short amount of time to create our game, our game engines lack the more advanced functions that these third party, pre-built engines have.  It also takes up a lot of time having to program in the basic engine functions like collisions, animations and physics calculations.  With these engines, we can now focus on adding more gameplay and creating better and more enjoyable game mechanics for our games.

    Now, with all that said, I still enjoy developing my own engines and I believe that learning how to build an engine and the basic functions that go into engines should be learned before you go using pre-built engines.  This will then allow you to understand what is going on within the engine and allow you to better use the engine to it's full extent.  It will also allow you to use the engine as an extension to/or a plug-in for your own engine.

    Now onto my game idea.....

    My game idea would be a puzzle game where you are a mouse with a solar staff.  The staff manipulates light and dark energy.  Each level would hold several different puzzles which would need to be solved by channeling these energies.  Some passages of the level might only be accessible when day turned to night, and vice versa.  You could change the time of day by using the necessary light or dark energy on a stone, situated in a central room.  From there, you would proceed to solve each puzzle until unlocking the final door.  These puzzles could be anything, from putting weights on switches, to completing a circuit.  Once all of the puzzles were solved, the door to the next level would open up.

    Entities apparent in the game would be a main character entity, as well as enemy entities.  Items within the game would be the solar staff and the different puzzle items (things like blocks to fill holes, wires to complete circuits, etc.).  The main feature of the game would be the ability to control dark and light energies (solve puzzles, change day to night, unlock passageways). 
 
    I think these features, mixed with the Havok and Ogre engines could produce a quality and enjoyable game to play.