Stacks (Nintendo Wii Project)

  • Release: 2009
  • Publisher: DigiPen Institute of Technology
  • Platform: Nintendo Wii
  • Genre: First Person Shooter
  • Developed in: Wii Revolution SDK, C++
  • Team: Individual (1 person)

DigiPen Institute of Technology was founded by the same person who founded Nintendo Software Technology. Both companies also share the same building and had a good relationship with each other. Nintendo provided us with Wii dev-kits, as well as classes specifically on how to best utilize the Revolution SDK for game development.

Stacks is a first person shooter where you have to shoot through walls of stacked boxes to make your way to the end of the level. It’s a simple demo to test out the capabilities of the Wii and accommodate code for its hardware.

The Wii is not a very powerful machine, so I created a customized version of my physics engine, utilizing simplified box stacking and spatial partitioning to optimize performance. I also ported my OpenGL 3D graphics engine to render the graphics because the Revolution SDK uses a very similar graphics API to OpenGL.

Controls for the Wii Remote were made to match similar FPS games on the Wii, such as the Metroid Prime series.

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