Game Name:

Cow Chompers

Development Team:

Dave Mowatt (dmowatt@andrew.cmu.edu)
Steve Onorato (sonorato@cmu.edu)

Game Genre:

Multiplayer Strategy-Adventure

Game Description:

In Cow Chompers, the players each control one of several farmers.  They must defend their stock of cows from being abducted/eaten/eliminated by aliens.  They defend their cows by killing the aliens with their farm equipment and leveraging alien technology.  The game will basically progress with the party exploring the current area (on the farm, in a cave, on an alien mothership, etc.) until they get into range of an alien, at which point the game enters combat mode.  Combat mode will progress in small time intervals of action, separated by short intervals of the players and AI simultaneously choosing what they will each do during the next interval of action.  To keep things interesting, there will be a limited amount of time for choosing actions and when firing weapons and throwing things, there will be a skill-based interface (like in Worms or field goal kicking in football games). 

Significant Technical Features:

·           Terrain deformation

·           Per-pixel lighting

·           Skeletal-based character animation

·           Hit-box collision detection

·           Vehicles

·           UFOs with environment maps

·           Shadow volumes

·           Rocking soundtrack

·           Particle system for exploding cows, smoke, etc.

·           "Melting" meshes (Using modified subdivision algorithms)

·           Character growth system

Implementation Plan:

Original code and content that will be developed:

·           DirectX Graphics library

·           User Interface

·           Game logic

·           All animated models

·           Sounds and music

Source previously developed:

·           Shadow Volumes for DirectX

·           DirectX Music library

·           DirectX Input support

·           Small matrix / vector library

·           Quadtree visibility culling

·           Cow Model

·           Hardware billboarding

Schedule:

April 6: Milestone 1, Prototype complete with combat system in isolated battle running DirectX

April 20:  Milestone 2, All major game features in place.  Adding minor game play extras and new art.

Week prior to Launch: Feature freeze, only tuning game settings and artwork.

Actual launch date to be announced.