Mouse Heist
A game built to experiment with making my own game engine
Mouse Heist was my final for Intro to Game Programming and where I first encountered how graphics are processed on screen. This was my first game programming class and I struggled with it at first. I like to look back at my first attempts at game design and think about how much I’ve grown in terms of programming and design. It has a basic rendering pipeline, level logic, enemy ai, and collision. Even though it is rough and unpolished, I count this experience as a crucial stepping stone in my game programming career. This early struggle felt more like a challenge rather than a setback.
Introduction
A lot of the implementation is rudimentary but I had some great resources from my professor. I tried my best to understand each part and slowly implement more systems over time. For example, I built the first room as a test room to make sure systems like the enemy AI, player movement, and level switching worked.
Process
This final was a student’s choice of game. It required three levels, assets for characters and the world, at least one enemy ai, music and sound effects, and one shader through OpenGL.
Premise
My first real exposure to game programming came with a real learning curve. Areas like the collision detection, some of the level design, and enemy AI leave much to be desired. But getting that far with concepts I did not fully grasp yet taught me more about what’s happening behind the gameplay than any tutorial could have.
Challenges
I consider this to be a spark of curiosity that ignited my interest in game development. This instinct to understand what’s happening beneath an engine that shows up in my work today originated in this class.