| Submitted by , posted on 24 November 2003 |

Image Description, by These are two screenshots from the game Xazzon, a 3D shoot-em-up inspired by Zaxxon. The game was the winner of last years KTH Game Awards 2003 competition, a game development competition at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
The game has a playlength of about 15 minutes, and moves through four different settings - The Canyon (lower screenshot), The Tunnel, The Lava and The Boss (upper screenshot). The player can pick up shields, extra lives and weapon upgrades such as the homing missile shown in action on the lower screenshot.
The game was developed using OpenGL for rendering, DirectX for music/sound effects and gamepad access, and Maya with a slighty customized exporter as a level modelling tool.
The game engine is simple and uses the following techniques:

> - An octree for rough clipping, rough sorting and hitdetection
> - Hitdetection with no physics (ie. hit or no hit)
> - Multitexturing with light/shadow maps exported from Maya
> - Spherical and cylindrical billboarding
> - Stencil shadow for the ship - this was originally meant as a visual aid to determine the ships orientation during early development when the perspective was placed similar to Zaxxon (seen from above and right of the ship). This perspective was later scrapped in favor of the above-behind perspective, but the shadow was left in the game.

You can download the game at http://www.xazzon.com. Please feel free to mail me and say what you think of the game, or if you have any questions.
Credits:
Programming - Viktor Lundström
Modelling and graphics - Adam Blomberg
Music and sound effects - John Lundin
I would also like to thank NeHe for a lot of useful tutorials.
/Viktor Lundström

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