Misc

Some music I've made

Projects

1. Actual
1. Labyrinth: Some work I did with Julian Kenwood for Prof. Tony Fairall from the Astronomy Department at UCT. Originally an honours project for the Astronomy Department by Carl Hultquist and Sameshan Perumal in 2004. The program reads in a database of galaxy co-ordinates, groups them to form clusters of higher density areas and displays them in an intuitive manner (basically creating solid blobs around Large Scale Structures). It had proven a very useful program for the Astronomy Department and needed an upgrade. Hence myself and Julian, we did a whole lot of developing and added a whole host of new features including:
   - Increased control of program variables (more menus and controls)
   - Orthogonal viewing, reference grids, loadable labels
   - High-resolution screen-shot rendering (up to and over 15000x15000)
   - Debugging
   - Optimisation
   - Refactoring
   
   TODO: put some links and stuff to it. In the meantime email me if you have any questions about it.


2. Maze of DOOM: 3rd-Year Games Project. FPS where you fly around and shoot these dumb green alien things (we didn't choose the models). Has 4 weapon, Homing Missle, Machine Gun, Shotgun and grenade and a basic (broken) physics and collision detection engine. Also was able to try my hand at programmable shaders in the game. Put a hell of a lot of effort into it but it eventually degenerated into a bit of a hack after trying to put AI in it. I implemented a neural network and on the weekend beore the hand-in after 6 (yes 'six') restarts from scratch I got it right. The enemies can learn how to turn to face you and chase after you, no emergent NN behaviour though... pretty good for a first time I think. Don't ask me how to use the AI though, it's too complicated and embarisingly hacky. The whole thing was a good experience for a first time try at programming a game engine. Dear goodness help us if we were asked to hack anything else onto it!
   
   TODO: put some links and stuff to it (both the pre-AI version and the complete hack/mess post-AI version). In the meantime email me if you have any questions about it.


3. JOGL (Java Open GL bindings) Game API: I made this for the 2nd year Game Design Course practicals (2008). Basically allows one to create games easily without having to get bogged down in technical details. And it's in Java! ... which is a good and bad thing depending on who you are. Programmed to be easy to use and hard to break. It's still in development but it's pretty much done.
   TODO: put some links and stuff to it. In the meantime email me if you have any questions about it.


4. RayCASE T: A volumetric data visualisation tool my partner (Wesley King) and I made for our 2nd year Computer Science project.
   Source and project writeup


5. Alone: A fairly crappy game made with Gamemaker for my Game Design Course. It got a good mark but I wouldn't really spend too much time playing it :p .
   Alone (Windows)



2. Planned/Hopeful:
1. Genetic Algorithm with Neural Networks
   


2. Scripting Real-time Strategy game


3. Image Retargetting program
   I've made a hacked together prototype that only shrinks in the horizontal (which has more leaks and holes in it then a busted up pirate ship... and goes about as fast as one - but I made it!), maybe I'll put in the effort to make a real program someday

Otherwise...