Dominator

Dominator was our first successfull first person shooter multiplayer game, and fracly our first playable game altogether. It was designed and built for our first games unit at university and for a prize that was given to the best game at the end of the year. The requirements were simple, it had to be 3D, you had to be able to win, no external applications could be used (eg. 3D modeling programs), and any other addition for extra credit. We were told that no one had been able to successfully implement multiplayer in their game in the past years so we desided to go for just that.

The game was built around the university (Murdoch University) and the main aim in the game was to earn money, upgrade weapons or build defence turrents, and destroy the opposing player's relic. Players could buy and deploy robots that harvested money, and to protect those robots the player could buy and deploy armed robots that tried to destoy the opposing player. This design turned out to be very enjoyable and we had many hours of fun play testing our game.

One of the requirements was that we could not use any external applications to help us build the world so we had to hard code the entire univeristy, not to mention all the extra little bits such as chairs, sofas and towers. This was very long and painfull but it did teach us first hand the importance of using external tools.

The game was programmed entirely in C++ using the OpenGL graphics library. This was our first attempt at anything this large and was voted to be the most entertaining game of the year. We achieved a higher distinction for this project and that was before our additions came into consideration.

Dominator Trailer