Fun Stuff

DiveMaster, The Game of Shooting Fish

When C# was introduced by Microsoft a few years ago, I decided to explore the art of possible by making a game using the new language. My effort let me to make an addictive fast-paced game (in about a month) which I called DiveMaster. I got it well tested by getting my flatmates, friends and family to play with. They soon became competitive against each other since everyone wanted to get a higher score.

By observing them, I learnt a great deal on what works and what doesn't. For example, getting the pace right was critical. I also had to make sure the game was uniformly fun throughout. As players went to higher levels, everything became faster and more challenging. However, I had to introduce new concepts, so that the player didn't get bored. For example, by introducing goodies, mermaid, grenades, etc., I managed to break the repetitive tasks a player had to perform and made the game much more fun. I still get request for new features.

Another lesson was that by including the end user in the design process, you will end up making a product that is very close to what the user wants. Usually however, the user doesn't know what he wants. It is the responsibility of the designer to come up with ideas and carry out the creative work. The user however should be kept in the loop, or otherwise you will end up designing a software that is neither good for you or him.

Years later, when I was involved in much bigger projects involving underwater to space robotics, these lessons where all confirmed. What amazed me was that there were still many designers in the industry who didn't grasp this simple but critical lesson.

C# also proved to be a fantastic language to work with. It was easy to use and performance was very high. In games, one has to always care about the efficiency of algorithms.

If you want to give it a try, here are teh details for downloading and installing this game. It is programmed using C#, managed DirectX and the .Net framework. DiveMaster is freeware, so you can download and distribute it as you wish.

Full installation file:
- Dive Master v1.3 Full Installation file - 32MB
MSI installation file. Use it if you already have .Net installed.
- Dive Master v1.3 MSI installation file - 12MB

Requirements: This games requires DirectX 8.1 or later. You can check this by going to Start menu, then select run and type 'dxdiag'. If you had any problems, please contact me.

Microsoft world Domination

The pace of technology progress is getting higher and higher. Companies produce a variety of products everyday and considering a relatively fixed market, it feels as if there is a battle going on between the large and small players all trying to win the game. It made me think that if this feels like a battlefield, perhaps it can also be illustrated as one. This idea came to me a few years ago and I went so far to demonstrate the concept by making a graph. In the process, I got carried away a bit and ended up designing the map with the scenario editor of Age of Empires (AoE). I was a fan of the game at the time, so I guess I can’t be blamed! After all, I was trying to show a battlefield and AoE was a real-time strategy game.

After a day of work I ended up with this.

Microsoft World Domination, Technology battlefield using Age of Empires

This was based on the events in 2003. At the time, Microsoft was cruising along while the other major players were competing with them on all fronts. When I finished it, I stood back and stared at it for a while wondering how it could unfold in the future. In fact in AoE, I could let the scenario run and see the battlefield’s progress over time. However, the scenario was designed for illustration and wasn’t really a valid AoE scenario, so after a lot of wall-bashing, sword fighting and fire throwing, a lot of armies got killed and packets of armies were left scattered around the battle zone.

At the time, I printed the poster and put it up in the IAS Robotics lab in University of West of England which is still up there to this day. You can download the print quality poster here:

Microsoft World Domination Poster (Print Quality)

What amuses me now is how the world looks like in comparison with what it looked like in those days. There was certainly no sign of Google or Yahoo as contenders. Even though I was using their services everyday, they were not big enough or perceived to be big enough to be included in the map.

I have been interested to redo the map for the present time, but I am far too busy to be able to afford another attempt on it. Perhaps, an interested reader can have a go and come up with a more recent representation of it. As the markets have expanded and players have become larger, the map must be bigger and more complex and even multi-dimensional. If you can guess how the map will look like in the future and are confident enough to bet on it, you can potentially make money! Well, lots of money ... I leave the challenge to you.