The mobile games development module was a crash course in web technologies to those with a more traditional programming background. Students were expected to write a 2D or 3D game using a popular JavaScript framework to showcase their understanding of basic web technologies. While the game that had to be developed did not need to be overly complex students had to meet a set of goals for their submission to be considered valid. It was a fun module that I really enjoyed.
The assignment was rather simple. First students had to write a design brief which set out their project but this design brief was to be short and to the point. Then students just needed to develop it using good development practices and make a playable version available online. However to be a valid submission the game made must have two or more of the below listed features.
Required Features
- A two-player or multi-player mode using either point-to-point networking or a web-service
- 2D or 3D Physics using an existing library (Box2Djs, or the Phaser physics library for example)
- NPC 'intelligence' – i.e. computer generated game characters should incorporate some form of coded intelligence, such as path-finding (e.g. using the A* algorithm), a state machine to control the NPC's behaviour or some for of situation-based learning to make their behaviour unpredictable
- Use of an online data store for either asset or level distribution or some other game feature (e.g. a shared high-score table) – an existing online high-score table app is already available and so you app would simply need to be able to upload possible high-scores and download the current state of the game's high-score table
I submitted a 2D platformer called An Edge of 5 Kingdoms which met three of the four requirements. The application ran on any device including mobile very well thanks to Phaser which was used to create the game. Also developed was a node based server which would manage high scores and news to ensure I met advanced criteria for the submission. The submission was a resounding success in which the marker stated it was the best one submitted that year.
Apache 2.0