website/projects/dawnchaos/index.md

---
title: Dawn of Chaos
date: 2004
dev: delphi, directx
---

During the first year of undergraduate study at Epita we have to develop a
project in either Delphi or OCaml within a team of four to validate the year.
Since this is the only year we are allowed to make a video-game, we chose to
create a Diablo-like in Delphi as our school project in 2004.

For most of the student, and for my team, this is the first programming project
we do ourselves. As such, we were lacking best practices and we learned along
the way. The development was quite hard, because at the time we had no
programming skill. Moreover, our team quickly fell out, with one member quitting
the school after a few months and another one struggling with programming. It
ended up being a two-persons project.

Nevertheless, this was a truly rewarding experience since I learned the basics
of video game creation and DirectX programming.


GRAPHIC ENGINE
--------------

We had the choice between DirectX and OpenGL for developing our graphic engine.
Most of the students chose OpenGL but we thought DirectX was more suitable for a
Windows game because we had no intention to port the project to Linux.

We used the [Jedi Project](http://www.delphi-jedi.org/) headers as a means to
use DirectX with Delphi. The first contact with DirectX was harsh but after
carefully reading the SDK documentation I was able to grasp the basics. I would
like to thank my fellow student Buckman for helping me figure the logic of
DirectX out.

The 3D models should have been generated with Maya but we were not able to
produce any good 3D assets by ourselves. So we searched graphism websites for
simple models and we modified them with Maya. For the texturing part and the
conversion of the Maya file format to the DirectX one, we used Deep Exploration
(by Right Hemisphere).

In order to make things dynamic, we just added a game loop with mutable
variables (by pressing keys for moving the camera for instance). Unfortunately,
the game loop was not set on the time but on the cpu cycles. As a result, it
runs as fast as your cpu can, making things lagging.

Finally, I added a 2D display for game informations such as health. It was done
using DirectSprites and DirectFonts. A bug with the proportions forced me to
tweak the sprites size manually in order to make the game look as expected on
screen.


PATHFINDING
-----------

For the pathfinding, I used the classic A*. Each tile of the map is enabled or
not, make a boolean map on which I applied the pathfinding.


SOUND ENGINE
------------

"Sound engine" might sound a bit fancy for what was done. At first I thought I
would use the DirectSound library since our graphic engine was done with
Direct3D but I quickly changed my mind.

DirectSound allows you to use incredible 3D sound effects like reverberation but
it was a nightmare to use it. I spent an entire night just for trying to play a
simple .wav file. Without success.

Then I tried Fmod that everybody was using at the moment and I was able to play
a .mp3 file in 10 minutes and 3 lines of code.

For the needs of the game, I included a background music and I added step sound
effect when the player is walking.


AI
--

The AI is just some nested conditions ("if .. then .. else"). The principle was
the following: an enemy is making his rounds and it attacks of the hero is close
enough. The enemy goes back to making his rounds if he is almost dead or if the
hero is getting away (the hero is of course faster than any enemy).


WHAT WAS DONE BY OTHERS
-----------------------

My friend created a truly rich map editor that was used for making the game. He
also created the elements of the world. He was then able to define position and
rounds for the enemies directly from his editor. Our game engine only had to
get his data from the editor in order to generate the levels.

At last, he was in charge for the management of the hero: life, equipment, etc.


LAST WORDS
----------

Our game was quite pretty but it was very slow due to the too detailled models
used for the hero and the enemies. It lacks animation too. I really wanted to
incorporate animation but I wasn't able to.