I wasn't sure where to post this so i'll post it here.. Ok I'm planning on starting work on a reasonble-sized programming demo over this summer (2005) so that I can maybe show it to prospective employers when I graduate summer 2006.. I want to do something reasonably clever (in 3D btw..) to show off my knowledge-base but at the same time make it interesting and cool.. So I was thinking..: How about a room.. It would be a decorated living room of a very small old house. Inside would be two chairs (with a table sat next to one) facing a fireplace with a door and a window at opposite ends of the room.. On the table would be a grammar-phone playing music in real-time and an old man would be siting on the chair next to it.. The room would contain two light sources, one being the fire (in the fireplace) and the second would be the moon shining through the window.. The old man would be animated in a loop of sequences (from sleeping to waking up to looking around, back to sleeping again..) and the fire would also have animated flames dancing (I'd use particle effects for those..) Now for interactivity.. The player/user would be able to pan the camera around the room and use the mouse to interact with stuff like turning on/off the music, opening/closer the window and waking up the old man by clicking on him.. Also I plan on implementing some real-time physics if I have time so that maybe their could be more interactive objects (like books on the desk and stuff) and more ways to interact, maybe allowing the user to pick up objects with the mouse cursor too.. This is everything I have so far, I'm not looking for technical details on how to achieve this, more ideas on what you guys think about it..? Is it a good idea for a technical demo? What kind of things could I change/alter or improve to better show useful skills as a programmer? Is it even feasible in the 12 month time frame I have to work with as a solo project? I hope I can get some good feedback on it because i'm excited about working on this as it will be my first "BIG" demo project and I really want to make it as impressive as possible.. So any advice you can give me would be great (whether it stinks or if its ok.. anything really..) - ArchangelMorph

The fire lighting may prove tricky, since it kind of changes from frame to frame, in theory at least. Maybe you could get a lit television, instead, which would represent a different lighting each three to ten frames, instead? and always shades of blueish light, instead of colors ranging from dark red to bright yellow...

Ok that would be a good idea.. so I should leave the fireplace unlit?

So should a TV just be fuzzy? Or show an actual program or something..?

Also do you have anymore ideas which might help?

I really wanna create something that will show prospective employers that I have a broad knowledge base and so any ideas I can get to spice up the design or just comments would be very much appreciated..

Go ahead and call me strange, but I think it could make an amusing screen saver.

The only problem with doing such a scene is that you would have to do a decent job on the 3D models, unless you got someone else to do them for you. (From my own experience, programmers don't make good artists).

Put in a night/day effect (speed up time). Show it off with small window that lets you see the sky. During the day - make a nice Bloom effect that makes the inside of the room darker then it really is. During the night, project the moonlit night sky as it moves across the floor/walls. That would be pretty cool.

I think this is a great idea for showing off your abilities to a potential employer. Short and sweet and to the point, yet also containing some depth if the employer wants to spend some time with it.

For the fire, I would recommend an orange light that flickers, and for the TV a mix of static and live video (you could perhaps play an mpeg and capture each frame as a texture).

Some really awesome ideas here, thanx people!

Also I was thinking of doing the modelling myself since i've had around 14 months experience with 3DSmax and I think I should be able to make some half decent ones, just to fill in until I can get someone to make me some better ones..

I really don't wanna get too carried away but them at the same time there soo much that could be done.. I like the idea of day and night cycles (however its starting to sound more and more like "the room" demo that was shown by the lionhead guy at GDC this yr, I don't know if anyone here saw it?)

I was thinking of making everything look as nice as possible so I was gonna try and learn how to do pixel shaders and that kind of thing (I'll try and get all the basics in place first though..)

Maybe I could get an MPEG of game footage for the TV and then have a console sat underneath it, just for novelty purposes.. lol

That sounds fine. The fire wouldn't be that much of a problem; you can modulate the specific properties of the light per frame to make it flicker.

However, when you describe this demo, I suggest you go to the RAD game tools web site and download their "granny" demo -- it does a lot of what you're describing. It's almost scary how close it is to your description in some regards :-)

Anyway, showing that you can do the same thing as them (who are pros) would make for a good demo. I would start simple, and keep adding features as I go along. The TV could start off, then go to noise, then if you have time start playing an AVI...

Quote:

Original post by hplus0603 That sounds fine. The fire wouldn't be that much of a problem; you can modulate the specific properties of the light per frame to make it flicker. However, when you describe this demo, I suggest you go to the RAD game tools web site and download their "granny" demo -- it does a lot of what you're describing. It's almost scary how close it is to your description in some regards :-) Anyway, showing that you can do the same thing as them (who are pros) would make for a good demo. I would start simple, and keep adding features as I go along. The TV could start off, then go to noise, then if you have time start playing an AVI...

R u serious?

Damn I thought this was an original idea.. aww man!

Do you have a link?

Quote:

Original post by ArchangelMorph Do you have a link?

http://www.radgametools.com/gradown.htm
The description also reminds me of "The Room" demo from GDC session: Gameplay Moves Forward into the 21st Century by Peter Molyneux (view: http://www.pqhp.com/cmp/gdctv/