Press feed: rbgames.tumblr.com

Status: Released on Xbox LIVE Indie Games

Release Date: April 2010

Team: Daniel Frandsen, Jesse Thompson, Gordon van Gent

Platform: Microsoft Xbox LIVE Indie Games, Microsoft XNA, C#

Description: Dive into this rhythm-based rail shooter and track down an artificial being born in an isolated network. As the music drives you and you will drive it. Feel the pulse as every action is represented through rhythm, visuals, and rumble feedback. Straddle the analog and digital worlds to prevent the artificial life-form from gaining control.

History: This started as an individual project to make a game similar to Rez, which is a rhythm-based rail shooter game. The game was developed as my undergraduate Honors Thesis at Western Michigan University over the course of Summer 2008, Fall 2008, and Spring 2009. After graduation, I spent most of the development time polishing and adding production value to the game. Although I’ve finished other projects (like the one listed below), this is the largest, most complex, and first project available for purchase. I’ve learned a lot about presentation, user experience, feedback to the user, and a lot of other things that don’t normally cross your mind when you think about making a game.

Videos:

Older gameplay trailer

Older tutorial trailer

First recorded footage

Screenshots:

Development Blog

Old version:

Team: Justin Constantino, Daniel Frandsen, Philip Rowan, Simon Tower

Platform: Microsoft XNA, C#

Assignment: Third project in CS 595: Game Programming.  The assignment was to make a top-down shooter which limited your vision based on the objects around you.  We were also required to have advanced AI (with things like patrolling, chasing, and navigating around obstacles).

Description: The game is a top down shooter where you play as a prisoner trying to escape from a prison camp.  You have very limited vision to start (but you can still see the buildings around you), but you can get a flashlight powerup to increase your vision range.  You start with a pistol, a machine gun and a knife, but you can also pick up a magnum and a shotgun.  The game allows for controls with the keyboard or an Xbox360 controller.

Controls:

• Up, down, left, right: Move character
• Space: shoot
• ] : Change weapon
• F: Use flashlight
• Enter: Use doors and stairs
• R: Reload

Xbox 360 Controls:

• Left control stick: Move Character
• Right trigger: Shoot
• Right shoulder button: Change Weapon
• Left trigger: Use flashlight
• A: Use door, stairs
• X: Reload

Screenshots:

Evaluation: We were moderately pleased with the results, but there are a few issues we would have cleaned up before the deadline if we had time.  First, after playing for an extended period of time, the game starts to get a little bit of slowdown and we couldn’t find the cause.  Second, the AI uses nodes to travel through each part of the level, but they only go through the path in an ascending order, which means that they stop moving once they reach the final node.  We would have fixed the problem by changing the way the guards traverse the nodes.

Download (requires Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework)

Team: Jeff Choate, Daniel Frandsen, Erik Reishus, Sasson Jamshidi

Platform: Microsoft XNA, C#

Assignment: Second project for CS 595.  The requirements were to create a 2-d side-scrolling shooter similar to Contra or Metal Slug.  The game had to have at least 2 levels that were 5 times the size of the screen, have three different weapons, at least one of which you could pick up, and have at least three different enemies.

Description: We decided to make our playable character a ninja, and branched out from there.  For our three weapons, we chose a ninja star, which does a moderate amount of damage, a kunai, which does a small amount of damage but shoots through walls, and a katana which does a large amount of damage but has a very limited range.  The three enemies we chose to make were a stationary turret, a flying enemy, and an enemy that jumps as it travels through the level.  We had extra time at the end of the project to put more polish on, which included a nice-looking menu and a cheesy storyline.

Screenshots:

Evaluation: We were pleased with the outcome of the project, but there were a few things we would have done differently (after getting feedback from classmates and the professor).  First, most of the art for the game was thrown together, and of poor quality.  If we had spent more effort on the art it would have looked better than it does now.  Second, a feature we wanted to include but decided to throw out due to time constraints was upgradable weapons.  For example, once the throwing star was upgraded it would do more damage, and once the kunai was upgraded you would throw more than one at a time in a spread pattern.

Download (requires Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework)

Team: Jeff Choate, Daniel Frandsen, Erik Reishus, Sasson Jamshidi

Platform: Microsoft XNA, C#

Assignment: First project in CS 595: Game Programming.  Make an Othello game that supports Player vs. Player, Player vs. Computer, Computer vs. Computer, and local network play.

Description: The game plays like a normal Othello game.  You can choose which type of game you want to play, then click the spot on the board where you want to place the piece.

Screenshots:

Evaluation: We were pleased with the results of the game, with only a few minor changes we would have made if we had more time.  First, there is some clashing styles of graphics between different parts of the UI (such as the buttons on the main menu, and the buttons in-game).  Second, the AI for the computer is very simple and could be improved upon from the simple AI it currently uses.

Download (requires Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework)

Team: Daniel Frandsen

Platform: OpenGL, C++

Assignment:  Semester project for CS 527.  The assignment was to create an application using OpenGL.  The assignment was open-ended so I decided to make a 3-d version of Pacman.

Project Goals: Make a 3-d version of Pacman, where each side of a cube is a Pacman level, and you can move from one side of the cube to the other.

Description: The game plays in the same way that Pacman does; you navigate a yellow character around a maze, picking up small pellets for points, being chased by ghosts, and picking up big pellets to allow the player to eat ghosts.  When the player reaches the side of the maze, the game moves onto the next side of the cube.  The level is contained in a config file which specifies where the walls and dots are in the maze, along with where the ghosts start.

Screenshots:

Evaluation:  I was pleased with the results, but looking back a year later I see plenty of improvements I could make on the original game.  First, the player and the ghosts are just spheres, and I could have changed the player and ghosts to look like they do in the original.  Second, the game only loads one level, so once the level is cleared the game is over.  An addition I could make is the ability to load more levels after the first one is complete.  Thirdly, the AI for the ghosts is expensive and is calculated in real-time during the game.  An alternative would be to pre-calculated the needed information when the level loads, and that would eliminate the need to calculate it in real-time.

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