4Lennie.nl

Hi All,

it has been a long time. A lot has happened in the last couple of months. Not to mention the fact that a lot has also been getting done :). I won’t share all of it here but I’ll give you the most interesting part.

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at NASA AMES Research Center in California. This presentation would be about my bachelor thesis which I’m currently doing here at the Dutch Organization for Applied Sciences(TNO) in The Netherlands. The bachelor thesis involves helping to design a multi-agent system which will be used to support astronauts on Mars. It is called the Mission Execution Crew Assistant, or MECA. The project is still in its early stages and involves experimental research to refine the baseline requirements for such a system. In a few years they hope to have completed a basic prototype based using these requirements.

Together with two co-students I have been working on integrating an agent language called Brahms and a policy provider for multi-agent system called KAoS. As a sidestep, Brahms is a language that was being developed at AMES so coupling these two languages together was the focusing point for my presentation.

The combination of these two languages allowed for an interesting setup in which Brahms could be used to model the work practice of astronauts and other smart systems. While KAoS allowed us to specify several policies which ensured crew and equipment safety.

Currently we are working on the final stage of our project, writing up our report :(, but more importantly creating a Graphical User Interface which can be used in a human-in-the-loop experiment. This experiment will be useful to further refine the requirements of MECA.

The presentation went pretty well, it is not every day that I get to present my work to people at NASA. However nothing beats the awesome experiences that is called Google I/O, maybe more about that in some other post.

-Lennie

And here it is, the RTS made with XNA and the Cannibal Engine. You’ll take control of a group of gorilla’s who are taking reving on the monopolistic, nature-abusing people in a Brazilian rainforest. For more info and downloads click here.

Expect the next game sometime after the summer, but for now it’s studying for exams :(.

 -Lennie

I’ll let the picture do the talking :).

-Lennie

Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of updates but I have been very busy lately. The game of wich the concept art is showed in the previous post I made is coming along nicely. So nicely even that my group has been selected to present this game at this years Microsoft Dev Days in the Amsterdam RAI. All this thanks to Cannibal Gamestudios who’s engine we are using for this project.

 The game is called “Nature Strikes Back” and it is an RTS with a lot of micro management for the units. It’s written in C# and makes use of the mentioned engine. The goal of this small game is to rid the land of a big nasty company that is trying to destroy your habitat. You’ll take control of an army of gorilla’s to take down the human capitalistic empire that is threatening your home. The deadline for this project is in a few weeks so expect a release by then.

- Lennie

This is my entry for this years Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. It was made within one busy month. I dont expect to go through to round 2, but who knows. Anyway, I’m planning on competing for real next year. So expect more.

 This game is the first level of a platform game in wich the world is threatened by a flood due to global warming. In this first level you ‘the player’ have to collect items that will help you survive after the flood has hit your city.

 You can play this game either with the keyboard or your Xbox Controller.

 You can download the .ccgame file here. The complete source for this game can be found here. You will need XNA 2.0 installed to play the game. You can find that here.

What a wonderfull process. Just take a look at the following screenshots. It’s the game that’s being developed for the Microsoft Imagine Cup ‘08. It’s not gonna be a pricewinning game since me and my teammate only started working on it at the beginning of 2008, but still it’s a lot of fun to do. Especially the placeholder content, what a memory.

Gather your friends it’s time for some old-school multiplayer game on one (yes, 1!) keyboard. In this game you are drawing lines to block your opponent. The more people that die before you the more points you’ll get.

 You can download the game and source code here. You’ll need .Net 2.0 and XNA 2.0 to get it working. You can download those, here and here.

On the horizon is a game that’s possibly going to be a Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 competitor(although the plans are to have fun this year and really compete next year.). And a big project together with my university and Cannibal Gamestudios.

Ey there,

I’ve completed my own version of Tic-Tac-Toe featuring 3 difficulties and a 2 player mode. This is one of my first of simple games in C#. There will be more to follow (atleast when I get the time, darn Uni :P). You can download it here.

On the other side, UT3 is looking awesome. It’s much faster then UT2004 wich makes it even more interesting. Too bad Epic didn’t put my favorite gamemode into the demo, Warfare. So I guess I’ll have to wait till the retail version comes out.

-Lennie

So while I’m working on my project and thinking about almost finishing it more ideas seem to pop up. I really see now that an RPG is a versataille gametype that delivers countless possibilities. But of course there must be some point where one should say, OKAY enough!

A lot of brainstorming will be done arround a story soon and perhaps I can post a screenshot in the near future.

But enough about that, I’ve been playing a lot of Quake Wars lately and I must say that the game is pretty okay. But I’ve got the feeling that it’s only fun to play with friends. Because there seems to be no I involved in this game, it is all based arround teamplay. So I suggest you put up your friendly hat if you are planning to buy this game. And perhaps poke some of your friends to buy it too.

4 days till Nintendo Press Conference, keep smiling!

- Lennie