Petals of Pandora

Petals of Pandora is an online 3rd person shooter. The game features 3D graphics, a plethora of artwork, audio, LAN support, and much more.

It was created for CSE 125, a course at UCSD, in Spring 2006. Along with four other students, we had 10 weeks to design and complete a game that sported 3D graphics and online capabilities. My primary role in this project was GUI, audio, and joystick support.

While the screenshots look good, the game itself, however, is not very fun, and requires a very, very good graphics card to run. During development, a sharp rift developed. On one end, the graphics programmer and game engine programmer argued for a sensation of superfluous visual effects which added nothing to gameplay, and slow the game to a crawling 3 FPS (yes, 3) on a modern gaming machine with an ATI Radeon X1400. At best, the game achieved 22 FPS on a very high end machine that cost over $4,000 USD. On the other end, the two 3D artists and myself argued for a reduction of visual effects to make the game actually playable. The project also suffered from the poor choices on behalf of the graphics and game engine programmers to not share their work with other team members, and ignore the almost every piece of advice from myself and beta-testers.

Despite these issues, the team was able to rally together enough to complete and present the game on time. Lessons learned: how to work with bad team members.

Media: