RESEARCH INTO DEVELOPING 3D GAME PROGRAMMING ...

RESEARCH INTO DEVELOPING 3D GAME PROGRAMMING TOOLKITS USING OpenGL™ and DirectX™ 1

17th Annual Student Research Poster Symposium and 60th Annual Eastern Colleges Science Conference, St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA 1

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Greg Land , Chad Billman , Matt Harris , Jon Hollinger , Matt Bush , Steve Waldon , Roger Webster, Ph.D. , Gary Zoppetti, Ph.D. , 1 Department of Computer Science, Caputo Hall, D&E Communications Wing, Millersville University, Millersville, PA 17551

Abstract

Results

Programming a 3D video game or graphical application using the OpenGL or DirectX API's can be daunting. To facilitate development, we have created object-oriented toolkits for OpenGL and DirectX that abstract away many of the low-level details and provide enhanced functionality. For example, both of the MU-developed toolkits (MUopengl Toolkit and MUDirectX Toolkit) provide easy-touse objects such as camera; moveable with MoveForward(), MoveBackward(), MoveX(), MoveY(), MoveZ(), Pitch(), Roll(), and Yaw(); positional 3D sound; 3D Studio model loading; skyboxes; billboards; animated TGA textures with alpha channel support; Cal3D animated characters with quaternion interpolation; MD3 Quakeanimated characters; explosions; particle systems for smoke, fire, fog, and simple fluid dynamics; weapons; and collision detection. The toolkits also have an extensive library of vector and matrix operations.

Additionally, the networking classes simplify packet sending so network games can be developed with up to 8 people playing highly interactive, fast, 3D first person shooter games. The OpenGL toolkit has been used successfully for over five years in the undergraduate courses CS375 3D Graphics and CS475 Game Development and Computer Animation. These toolkits allow students to focus on programming the game play, computer animation, artificial intelligence, and overall compelling 3D virtual world interaction. The success of the OpenGL toolkit inspired the creation of a complementary toolkit using DirectX. Demos of the games and more information can be found at http://cs.millersville.edu/~webster/gametechnologytrack/resources.html.

Figure 3. (left) Screenshot showing 3DS model of city. Figure 1. (left) Screenshot of networked doom2 game where up to 8 players can play in the same virtual world. Figure 2. (right) Screen shot of Cal3D animated characters. Animations include: walk,run,jump,shoot,skip,walk backwards, pain left, pain right, shot front, shot back, shoot, and taunt.

Tools

Figure 4. (right) Animated character in 3D world.

References: [1] James Van Verth, L. Bishop, Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, California, 2004. [2] Rick Parent, Computer Animation: Algorithms and Techniques, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, California, 2002. [3] David Astle, and K. Hawkins, Beginning OPENGL Game Programming, Thomson Course Technology, Boston, Massachusetts, 2004.

- Dual Pentium processors with Windows XP

This research supported, in part, by the: National Science Foundation under

- Nvidia GeForce graphics OpenGL accelerator.

grant numbers EIA-00116616, DUE-9950742, the MU Noonan Grants Program,

- C++ OpenGL graphics software.

Willard O. and Dr. Catherine Gibson Havemeier Endowment in Computer Science, and

- MUopenGL Toolkit and MUDirectX Toolkit API.

M.U. Faculty Grants Committee.