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Game Description
 
Elemental Wars is a game I worked on for my final year project. It's a multiplayer First Person Shooter for the PC built in XNA. I worked on this as part of a team of 4 with each person taking on specific roles. When we decided to make this game we weren't trying to be innovative and break new ground or come up with an original idea. We made this game as a technical exercise so we could attempt to create a practical implementation of a topic we had researched in the previous semester.
 
I researched the area of collision detection so I was in charge of all the all the physics and collision implementations. I spent about half of my time on this game working on my own collision detection method, A working implementation turned out to be a more daunting task than I had expected and time was running out so I had to use a third party bsp method to meet my deadline. Although thanks to everything I had learned from my own attempts at creating collision detection I was able to get the new code working in about 2 days. I was responsible for the implmentation of player to environment collision, player to player collision, bullet hit detection, dynamic bullet decals, hit indicators, item pickups and a couple of other things I can't remember.
 
We built the game in about 8 —10 weeks with limited time available each week for working on the game. The team project was just 1 of 5 modules that we had to take during the semester
 
The official website for the game is here
 


 
Download
 
You can download game directly from this link:
 
 
You can also get it here if that link isn't working
 
 
 
How To Get It Working
 
For this game to work your computer must have a requires a full installation of visual C# 2005 with the sp1 upgrade, XNA 2.0 and the .net 2.0 framework.
You will also need some kind of network connection in your computer. The networking component is built using the Games for wWindows Live service which requires a network connection in order to host a game. 
 
 
Visual C# express 2005 iso:
 
 
Visual C# express sp1:
 
 
 
XNA 2.0:
 
 
 
With those installed you simply have to run the ElementalWars.exe file and the game should work fine. It will start out windowed but it can be changed to full screen in the options menu.
 
To have someone else join your game you must change your ip settings so one person can act as the default gateway and every else can connect through them. Then they simply have to run the game and select join game when a session is already in progress.
 
N.B. if the game says it has stopped responding when you are loading a level, don't worry. Its just loading resources and the game will start in a moment.
 
How To Play


The game uses typical first person shooter controls.  
 
 
Keyboard Controls


 
W,A,S,D keys are used for moving forward, back and strafing left and right respectively
 
Space jumps
 
R reloads
 
Tab brings up the current score
 
Esc exits the game back to the main menu
 
 
Holding left shift while jumping will do a high jump, useful for getting to those hard to reach places
 
 
Mouse Controls
 
The mouse is used for look rotation (It can be very sensitive depending on your mouse)
 
The left button fires the current weapon
 
The scroll wheel cycles through weapons (Marine only)
 
 
Hosting and Joining the game
 
Hosting and joining is done from the main menu. 
 
When a player joins they will be added to alternating teams.
 
 
Weapons
 
The marine has 3 different weapons while the alien only has 1 but due to weapon balance issues not being worked out the marine only has one weapon that can compete with the aliens, his assault rifle.