Hazel McKendrick » YinYangYou

Next Level Dundee Showcase Video

Hazel — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:35:34 +0000

If you’ve seen some of the videos of YinYangYou on the site, hopefully you’ll enjoy seeing the other projects which were completed as part of Next Level Dundee. Here’s a Showcase of what was created; bear in mind we only had a week!

YinYangYou at Neon Public

Hazel — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:12:55 +0000

Team Be were demoing YinYangYou at Neon Public yesterday. When we developed it as part of the week-long Next Level Dundee project I don’t think we really imagined just how many opportunities would follow so it was fantastic to be able to show the game to the public and get some feedback.

Look out for us at Dundee Winter Night Light on November 27th.

101 Dalmations Blog Posts!

Hazel — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:39:19 +0000

This is my 101st post on KillerCodingNinjaBunny so I thought I’d use it to give a bit of an update about recent changes to the site.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, I’m currently trying to settle on a topic for my honours project. Updates to my (at least weekly, as it’s a requirement of the module) blog on that subject will be found here.
http://killercodingninjabunny.com now redirects to http://hazelmckendrick.com rather than the other way around. Hopefully all previous links should still work, but please let me know if there’s a problem.
There are now 350 approved comments on the site – thanks to everyone who has left feedback or advice! It is greatly appreciated.
Finally, videos of YinYangYou are available on my youtube channel. Here’s a sample:

So, thanks again to everyone who has contributed or helped me along the way. This is by far the longest I’ve managed to keep a blog for and I feel I’m really improving in terms of writing posts which benefit me as a programmer.

Image thanks to Dave Morris.

YinYangYou – Next Level Dundee Completion

Hazel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:24:34 +0000

So, a week since my previous Next Level post and the project has come to completion.

YinYangYou, our game, is a top-down two-player race to collect energy and skew the balance of the playing field. By throwing orbs into their opponents’ “holes”, each player can increase the amount of ground they control on the opposite side of the board, eventually claiming an entire side and winning the game. A range of exotic energy pickups, such as time control and hole switiching, add variety and tactical elements to the gameplay.

Developed using XNA, our prototype includes all the features we originally planned – although that isn’t to say the week went without a hitch. Lengthy code merges, a lack of shared source control and model import problems were exacerbated by the fact that having just met, our communication levels were far from ideal. However, by remaining flexible and getting to know each team members strengths and weaknesses, our workflow improved hugely throughout the week.

Even though this project was really short, I feel I got a lot from it. Spending time in groups with the same people for the past year let us refine development and programming methods which worked very well for us. Suddenly being dropped into an entirely different group challenged some of my beliefs and ideas, and reaffirmed others. The opportunity to talk to industry mentors about this game and about development in general was also hugely beneficial.

Finally, I just want to say thanks to Iain Smith for organising the event, all the mentors and other participants for their help and to the rest of Team Be for making YinYangYou a success.