Help me pick a final year project!

[Ride The T]

Hey guys, I’m about to enter the final year of my degree in computer games development and I need to pick a project to work on.
The projects I picked initially were assigned to other students, so I need to come up with one of my own, or significantly change one of my original choices.

Here are the brief details of the projects that I wanted to do:

1. Evaluating XNA - evaluate whether XNA really provides a productivity boost for almost anyone to create professional cutting edge games. Create small programs or a simple game using XNA and then C++.

2. Updating and old arcade game - pick an old arcade game, e.g. pac-man, and investigate ways in which the game could be brought up to date. Develop a prototype which features modern features such as 3D graphics, or more advanced AI. Evaluate whether the changes are beneficial.


There were also some other projects on subjects such as, adaptive A.I., randomly generated graphics, a 3D version of connect 4, and other stuff like that.

All I really want to do is make a simple game, but It needs to have some sort of legitimate research element to it.

If you guys have any ideas or suggestions, I’d be forever in your debt.

Cheers – T

p.s. sorry if this is in the wrong forum.

[yaustar]

Ideally, I would choose something that would give you a demo piece for your portfolio and in an area that you are interested in.

Option 1 is certainly interesting but may require more time then you have as it needs two applications/games to be developed (one in C++ and the other in C#).

Option 2 would be great especially if you can do something like Pac-Man CE.

Other ideas include developing squad based AI for Pac-Man ghosts to be played against a human player with variance on 1-4 ghosts at a time. AI Bots for FPS games is favourable as well.

What area of programming are you interested in?

[Adrir]

Originally Posted by yaustar

Ideally, I would choose something that would give you a demo piece for your portfolio and in an area that you are interested in.

What would you reccomend for someone who was interested in advanced collision detection, networking and artificial intelligence? Is just writing AI bots worthwhile? I figured you'd want to be a bit more deep down and algorithmy.

[yaustar]

As long as there is some serious research beyond the AI of the bot, it is worthwhile. Things like making a bot look and move like a human player is incredibly difficult, especially to fool another human player.

Then later you can add adaptive difficulty and team based AI if time allows.

[ArvindRajaYadav]

In my opinion option 1 is certainly interesting, and a complete analysis of RAM usage, Frames per seconds, etc. will be interesting but time consuming as you have to make 2 games instead of one.

And about option 2, what do you think about making something like a geometry wars remix ? it would be interesting, considering you are interested in collision physics and AI.....I hope this hasn't come too late

[Adrir]

Geometry Wars 2 is awesome!