CS314 Project 4, by Wai-Hin Wayne Ngan

SharpShooter (for Windows)

In a few minutes, you will be inside a target range. You can walk
around and challenge different stages by stepping into the blue circle
in front of each stage. When you step into the circle, you'll receive
a brief description of what you are given and your objective. As soon
as you understand the objective, start shooting!



Controls to walk around:

mouse - look
w - walk forward
s - walk backward
a - move left (strafe)
d - move right (strafe)
ESC - quit



Controls to shoot:

mouse - aim
left click - shoot
right click - exit stage
r - reload



How to play:

For each stage, the general objective is to shoot down all the targets
before running out of ammo (also with a time constraint in the "hard"
level).



How to beat the game:

You... can't. You're free to shoot until you get bored. Still, you
pretty much beat the game if you can finish "hard", since the other
levels would be pretty meaningless if you manage to finish "hard".



Advacned functionalities implemented:

-First person navigation (forward/backward/strafe/pitch/yaw)

-First person collision detection against walls, with tangential
 movements upon collision
-Simulated dynamics: Target fragments fly off in parabolic
 trajectories. Each fragment rotates about a random axis and bounces
 against floors and walls.

Known Issues:

-If you shoot too fast, sometimes you might end up in the ceiling or
 stuck in some weird place. Please refrain from doing that. You won't
 win just by wasting all your ammo ;)


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Objects Hierarchy:

Stage
 -Gun
 -Targets[]
   -TargetFragments[]
   
StageEasy : Stage

StageMedium : Stage

StageHard : Stage



Arrays:

-Textures
-Bounds of current area
-Number of Targets in each stage
-4 fragments in each Target



Enumerated variables:

-Current stage (WALK, EASY, MEDIUM, HARD)
-Status of current stage (INTRO, BEGAN, CLEARED, FAILED)


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Low Level Mechanics:

Keyboard Movements: Each a/s/w/d key has a boolean variable
associated with it. When a key is pressed, the variable is flipped to
true (when released, it's flipped to false). The idle function
monitors each variable to see whether the camera should move.

Collision Detection: The entire environment is sliced up into 8 areas. 
Each area has its own set of bounds (stored in an array of size 8). 
After deciding which area we are currently in, we can use the area
information to access, in O(1) time, the set of bounds in the array
that surrounds the current area. This is much more efficient than
simply checking against the player's position against every single
wall.

Navigation: Relative transformation is done similar to that in
Projects 2 and 3. All translation and rotations are done prior to
applying the viewing transformation. SetCursorPos() is used to lock
the mouse position so that you can turn your head in any direction by
any amount. (Since SetCursorPos a Windows API, the game is Windows
only.)

Shooting (Picking): I used OpenGL's built-in implementation to
implement picking. When you left click, the scene will be drawn in a
small window centered on the screen (since your cursor is locked at
the center of the screen). As the program deciphers what's being hit,
it uses the depth information to decide what's closest, either a
target or an obstacle. If an obstacle and a target are both being hit,
and if the target is deeper than an obstacle, then the target is not
hit.

Timing in "Hard" level: We keep track of when we started, and how much
time is elapsed since we began playing this stage. This can be done by
clock(), which returns how much time elapsed since the program has
been running, in the time.h library. If the time elapsed exceeds the
time limit and there are still targets left, you lose.


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Sources:

Tutorials:
http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/lessons/lesson.asp?lesson=06
http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/lessons/lesson.asp?lesson=08
http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/lessons/lesson.asp?lesson=32
http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/picking/
http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/glut/index.php?strokefont

The idea of a first person shooter (FPS) game, along with this
particular set of controls, is inspired by an overwhelming amount of
FPS games over the history. But the idea of a target range is inspired
by a mission in Grand Theft Auto Vice City by Rockstar Games.

Sound effects are from Half Life: Counter-Strike


Special Thanks:

Jackson Wong, for coming up with the name "SharpShooter"!

Jonathan Lee, for committing numerous attempts to find bugs (by
screwing my game up)