Video Samples

Hello and welcome!

I am Ben Green, a graduate of the University of Derby. Below are video samples of work that I have done over the past four years. More information about me can be found using the navigation bar at the top.

Code and executables are available for most of the work below, if you would like to receive a copy of any of the samples, please use the comment box below.

Thanks for your interest.

The Light Watchman 

(June 2010 – July 2011)

This video shows a play through of the Light Watchman, soon to be available on Xbox Live Indies.

I was unsuccessful at securing a placement due to the highly challenging conditions of the credit crunch. Rather than returning  to university early, I joined with other students in my position to establish Endoepic Games.

Endoepic was a full time development studio for 11months. We worked on engine and technology development for the first half of our time, concentrating on generating games in the second half.

The Light Watchman is a puzzle style game where players are tasked with the job of saving citizens trapped outside in the dark.

I personally worked on the AI, gameplay and physics systems for the game. Additionally I coordinated the team and secured the collaboration of the talented audio engineers who have added depth and feeling to this project.

Situnica Middleware

(Jan – Mar 2011)

Situnica is an event driven music transition middleware that allows users to tie music tracks to in game situations.

It has been designed to be robust and to work with any audio middleware and is demonstrated using FMOD.

The guiding principle in its design was that it is self contained with low cohesion and that it can safely and cleanly integrate with any audio middleware.

The Features of this sample are:

1. Users define and trigger audio with predefined transition times using only a string to activate
2. Internal reference counting and manual implicit shutdown prevents premature destruction
3. Flexible track data container allows any audio data to be available to users at the front-end
4. Bootstrap functionality allows for the middleware to be cleanly added at any point in the project without compromising existing systems
5. Optimised to reduce memory footprint
6. Users may replace back-end functionality to accommodate any audio API
7. Sample presented using FMOD for back-end functionality

Gamebryo Framework

(Jan – May 2011)

This is a demonstration of a set of middlewares and a framework implemented in gamebryo for my computer games programming degree.

At this stage I had already made my middleware (Situnica). This represents the incorporation of several middlewares including Situnica with a gamebryo based framework.

AI Formations

(Sept – Dec 2010)

This is a video demonstration of a formations AI application that I made.

The features of the sample are:

1. Units arrange into a formation from random starting positions
2. Formation parameters (spacing or rank capacity) may be altered on the fly
3. Units respond to these updates in a relatively sensible manor
4. A range of predefined formations may be applied at anytime
5. All movement is constraint based, units may only move forward
6. Formations feed targets to the units
7. The user can place or remove formation path nodes anywhere on the map
8. Formations will navigate between path nodes until the no more exist
9. Additional “special” units can be added to the unit
10. Formations pivot around the front and centre position where one exists
11. Units and formations turn to the direction of travel neatly

Collision Demo

(Sept – Dec 2010)

This is a DirectX 11 reimplementation of the collision model used in The Light Watchman.

This sample better demonstrates the collision response aspect of the technique

The Light Watchman – Early Concept

(June 2010)

This is a video capture demonstrating the grouping and collisions systems used in the Light Watchman. I designed and implemented the collision system for this sample. It uses an efficient per-pixel check that detects if the dots are illuminated at O(n) speed.

The red dots are those that are not fully illuminated and the white are those that are.

The collision detection extends to the buildings, where collision response is also calculated using the texture itself rather than a geometric calculations. This aspect of the collision model was based on the work of Faure et al.

Colour Safari

(Jan – May 2008)

Colour Safari was designed and built using XNA 2.0.

It is a vertical slice of a game that challenges players to use both sides of their brain at once. The paddles must be selected, moved and coloured using the thumb sticks and buttons. The object is to collect the animals using the paddles.

This game was shown at the Gamecity festival in Nottingham.

Software Renderer

(Sept – Dec 2008)

This is an example of my early 3D work. This project was developed in the first semester of my second year. The only graphics API that is used is the GDI. Everything else, including the matrix and vector implementations were all built from scratch.