XNA Archive

I just realised some of my old XNAGPUParticles project videos have gone walkies. So I have reposted them on youtube. These are my old projects from my final year of uni, binary and source code can be found in the relevant post for each video.

http://www.mikecann.co.uk/?p=163
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxrg1YavBIg

http://www.mikecann.co.uk/?p=169
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wdIiCCAb9U

I have another reason for these old re-posts, something a little more flash orientated.. Stay tuned for more info ;)

XNAGPUParticles 1.1

I got bored of revision for my final exam so i decided to play around with my XNAGPUParticles abit more and came up with this thing.



Basically it takes a texture and picks out pixel colours from the texture and maps it onto a large vertex buffer which then is used as the input to my Vetex Texture particle system.

I have made a few adjustments to the way the vertex texture system works, now each particle has its own centre of gravity that it revolves about.

You can grab the new binary: http://www.mikecann.co.uk/Work/XNAGPUParticles_v1-1.zip

As per last time if you wish to see the source please dont hestitate to email me.

Particles Video

This is the video of the XNAGPUParticles project i have uploaded for those peeps who doent have the requirements to run it but want to check it out anyways.

XNAGPUParticles (1,000,000 Dynamic Particles)

This is another submission of work i have done in my final year. This time the project is all my own work.

The project is a continuation based on work from before Christmas and is an experiment into state preserving particle systems. I started out with examining the basic particle systems such as a static system and one that updates on the CPU. I then moved onto more advanced systems such as the GPU based system described by Lance Latta and others. I soon discovered however that XNA doesn't support "uber buffers" and as such had to invent a new solution using vertex textures. The result is a particle system written in XNA that is able to update and render 1,000,000 particles at about 22 frames a second with 4 forces.

To view this demo you first need to have the XNA runtimes. If you dont have those just go HERE.

Once installed you can grab the binary for this project http://www.mikecann.co.uk/Work/XNAGPUParticles.zip

If you are interested in seeing the source code for this project, just drop me an email: mike.cann@gmail.com

Oh also, the written report for this can be found http://www.mikecann.co.uk/Work/GPUParticles2003.doc

Portal 2D - Alpha

Okay this is a very very alpha release of a game that was created for a team project at the final year of university.

The game is a 2D version of Valves up and coming game Portal. You are a scientist in a lab experimentig with the new handhelf portal device that allows you to create portals anywhere that allow you to pass through to the other side. The goal of the game is to solve puzzles and get to the exit in the fastest time possible.

As i said the game is very very alpha and as such has many holes. The reason i am releasing this now as i dont think im going to have time to work on it in the near future so best get this out now.

I personally worked on the engine of the game, the menus were done by another team member. The engine features full bloom lighting effect to make all those shineys abit more umm shiney :D

Anyways, to play this game you will need the XNA runtimes, use THIS to get them installed.

Once that is done you can go ahead and dowload the game HERE.

Enjoy!

ShadowShader in RenderMonkey

This is my second dabble in HLSL and this time it was just for personal reasons. I wanted to create a shadow effect for a 2D game that we are developing for our group project. Its actually very hard to find any resources on the internet about this but i did stumble accross one resource (which i have now lost the link to) where someone has created a basic shadow effect purely in shaders.

So i decided to have a go and this was the outcome. In the end however its too slow to be used in the game but serves as a usfull learning tool when the hardware catches up.

To view this you will need to download RenderMonkey.

Download: ShadowShader.zip

Particles in RenderMonkey

Well in my final year at university we have been working on shaders. I decided to concentrate on particles as it ties in nicely with my final project (more on that to come).

This is my first little dabble with the excellent shader creation tool, RenderMonkey. To view this you will need to download the free app.

This was acually a peice of work for one of my modules so the .zip file contains the written report too.

Download: Particles01.zip

BumpSpace -- Spring 2005

This was a tech demo I created for one of my final projects in my second year of university. Due to the severe time restrictions at the end of the term i wasnt able to do the project i wanted to (ToyTown MMORPG) so insted of trying to struggle and force a large project into a small time frame i decided not to do a MMORPG. Over the year i had seen several nice effects and snippits of code, such as Dot3 Bump Mapping, Particle Effects and Bezier Curves. I decided to have a go at these effects and others myself, the result being this application, it isnt a game but rather a demo of some of my programming skills. Used: Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (DirectX 9c), 3DS Max Download: BumpSpace-v1.0.zip (3.89Mb)

MazeHunt -- Winter 2004

This is another little project i did in the earlier part of my second year at university. It was my second project i ever did in DirectX and as such is rather limited. The theme of the project was maze generation and AI solving. I developed my own algoritm based on square weighting to create two bots, one called a hunter bot which will actively hunt the player down, and a flee bot which will flee from the player. Used: Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (DirectX 9c), 3DS Max Download: MazeHunt-1-00.zip (694 KB)

Avatar Creation -- Autumn 2004

This is my first ever project i did in DirectX. It was created again for a university project at the start of the year in 2004. I had ambitious plans for a dynamic mesh manipulation application so the user could create their own personal avatar for a MMORPG. After much struggleing and pain i had to scale back my plans. Despite this, i still managed to implement a system of mesh editing using sliders and was extremely proud of it at the time. Using the "AvatarCreation" executable the user can create thier own custom avatar and then save it ready for use in the future MMORPG game. Using the "AvatarView" executeable i was able to demonstrate that the custom avatar could be loaded and simply animated. Used: Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (DirectX 9c), 3DS Max Download: Spudman-v1.00.zip (694 KB)

Code Drop V2

CodeDrop came about mainly by accident. I wanted to see if i could create a 2D particle explosion effect. After i discovered how easy this was to do i decided to create a whole game around it! The game is now in its second version, and has many new improvements over the last, check it out, tell me what you think. Used: DarkBASIC, PhotoShop 7 Download: CodeDrop-v2.0.zip (16.8Mb)

Code Drop V2 - 2003

CodeDrop came about mainly by accident. I wanted to see if i could create a 2D particle explosion effect. After i discovered how easy this was to do i decided to create a whole game around it!

The game is now in its second version, and has many new improvements over the last, check it out, tell me what you think.

Download: CodeDrop-v2.0.zip

DarkPOOL -- 2003

DarkPOOL was created as a project for one of my  first year university modules. It was created primarily as a test into the physics of pool. The game is in 3D however the main camera view is directly over the top of the table giving a 2D appearance.

NOTE: Unfortuanately i have lost the latest version of this game and hence it doesnt play as well as it should, the physics worked properly in the full version :)

Download: DarkPool-v1.zip

SnakeZ - 2003

SnakeZ was created as a project for one of my modules. We were asked to re-create an old game using the newly learnt DarkBASIC programming language. I decided to re-create the classic "Snake" game.NOTE : I seem to have misplaced the latest version of this game, and hence it is missing several features and sounds. If i find it i will put it up Used: DarkBASIC, PhotoShop 7 Download: SnakeZ-v1.zip (16.9Mb)