Chris Barr

Christmas Cannon

This game was made in Macromedia Flash (now owned by Adobe) for a class on writing Actionscript.  The project was to make a game, completely in Flash and write all the code to make the game playable.  It was nearing Christmas time, so I decided to make a Christmas-themed game.  There’s a turret at the bottom which fires Christmas trees, and your goal is to shoot them at Santa to blow up his sleigh, and to shoot down the parachuting elves!  You use the keyboard arrow keys to rotate the turret, and the spacebar to fire.  Take a look at the screenshots below, or you can actually play the game here!

Galaga 2

Growing up, one of my favorite games to play on my old Nintendo was Galaga.  When it came time at school to write our first games using Macomedia Director, what else could I choose to base my game off of?  I wrote all the code and logic for this game using Director’s “Lingo” language, and I created all the visual assets as well.  The game is controlled using the standard keyboard arrows to move and spacebar to fire.  Enemies will move around, and fire green lasers at you, while you must avoid these lasers and fire back with your missiles!  Again, there are screenshots below, but you may also download this game and actually play it. Download Mac Version (13MB) or Download Windows Version (13MB).

Renderware Level

This isn’t as much of a game as it is a playable level in a 3D game engine.  This was made for a class where we learned how to make 3D models for video games.  We got together in teams and we made models that would all fit well together in a game level.  I did make a few models for this level, but my main job for this project was to use a program called Renderwear Studio to combine all the models into the level, placing lights, making warp points, and generally just make the level work as we wanted.  There are some screenshots below from the level we made, and it is also available for download for Windows only (24MB).

To play this, your computer must have at least Windows 2000 or XP, a 1.2+ Ghz CPU, and 64MB video card.  To walk around the level, press W to move forward, S to move backwards, and A and D to strafe left and right.  To look around move your mouse, and to fire the weapon press the mouse button.  And please do remember, there’s nothing to actually do in the level other than run around, ride the elevator and find the warp points.  There are some technical bugs with how the level plays, but our job was only to make models and put them in a level, so don’t blame me if you fall of a cliff!

Additional images

In 2005, Apple released the 5th version of their operating system Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger.” With this release then included an incredibly useful tool called Dashboard.  Inside dashboard you could run a number of different widgets, which are tiny applications used for a single task like calculators, notepads, timers, etc.  Apple made it incredibly easy to develop these widgets, so in my free time at school I decided to give it a swing.

First I made a simple clock widget.  Dashboard already came with an analog clock widget, but I knew many others as well as myself would prefer a digital clock display instead.  It was well received, so I decided to add a few more features such as multiple sizes and colors.  One simply had to flip the widget over, and choose the options they wanted.  This widget is still available for download on Apple’s site.

Next I made another simple widget that would perform a search on BibleGateway.com.  Type in your query, and your web browser would take you to the page with your results. Flipping the widget over would reveal all the multiple translations and languages of the Bible that Bible Gateway had available for searches. This widget is still available for download on Apple’s site.

Around the same time I noticed there were a lot of simple widgets that would read a news feed from a site, but nothing existed for CNN’s site.  I put together a widget that would read all the different news feeds from CNN’s website, and if you only wanted to see a certain type of news you could simply flip it over and select the feed you wanted to see.  I originally made this widget match CNN’s website style at the time just for consistency, unfortunately that didn’t turn out to well.  When this widget was recognized by Steve Jobs at WWDC 2005, he made a particular note that it didn’t look as nice as the Business Week widget!  What an honor to receive a design critique from Steve Jobs himself!  After the shock wore off, I decided that it did look pretty bad, so I gave it a facelift, and hopefully Steve liked this revision much better.

Unfortunately, CNN has since changed how their feed works, and I no longer have time to develop for this widget, so it is no longer available for download.

Additional images

I was first introduced to 3D modeling at Full Sail, and it’s now a task that I respect, admire and enjoy.  When ever I watch a movie with any kind of 3D special effects, I think about how I might build a similar model if it were my job to do.

The iMac featured below was my first 3D project.  The images of a pool hall were also made for a school project where we had to make not just a single model, but an entire scene.

The Eject Media and the sunrise image were things I made in my free time.  I saw things that inspired me, and I wanted to see if I could adapt them for my own use, which turned out great.

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These 3D models are made for efficiency.  If a model is made too complex, the game they are placed in may not run as smoothly as possible.  A model for a video game must convey as much information as it can, with as few polygons (triangles) as possible.  The ideal number of polygons for a large model is about 1000, and for smaller less important things like background items, somewhere under 200 is the ideal target.

The red BMW model below was made as a class project at Full Sail, where the goal was to make a complex model for a game in under 1000 polygons.  The rest of the models were made for the student game Ack! Zombies! as part of a class project.  These models were mostly made as background objects and debris that would be found in the street.

The final image is a scene I rendered out of all the models I made for this game.

Additional images