For the “GMTK Game Jam 2023“, as a team of 4, we created a game that “plays itself”. We came up with the idea that you’d build a jump king like level, which an ai will try to play. The AI is presented as a rage game streamer.
In my university module “Higher Mathematics” we learned about projective space and the different representation with the hemisphere. (Or as we lovingly called it: “salad bowl”) This was part of the basics to understand Elliptic-curve cryptography.
Since I had a hard time wrapping my head around the secondary representation of projective space, I decided to create a visualizer in the game engine I was familiar with at the time: Unity3d. I built a very crude module that can creates a 2D plane with a translucent mesh which can morph between the two representations. And I also added the intersecting lines together with the points to visualize where the points are at all times. This helped me understand the topic more deeply and didn’t take too much time to make.
For the “Mini Jame Gam #16” I decided to try completing a jam on my own. I focused on the programming and polishing part and didn’t really bother with graphics (I just quickly made basic little sprites in paint.net) as well as audio. Still I am very pleased with the outcome.
Stick it is a little puzzle platformer in which you have to “break the rules” which are objectives that you have to figure out on how to solve.
Full title of the thesis: Non Destructive Reverse Engineering of Printed Circuit Boards using Micro Computed Tomography and Computer Vision
This post only aims to illustrate the main contents of the bachelor thesis, for the full overview, the original paper is best read in it’s full form.
Here is the abstract of the thesis: Reverse engineering (RE) of printed circuit boards (PCBs) is used for a variety of purposes, such as in computer forensics and quality assurance. Usually RE is very labor-intensive or destructive, since it pertains either manually measuring all visible contacts, including desoldering the components for the covered pads and mapping them out individually, or the process is done by milling away layer by layer to see inside the object and uncover the traces. This thesis aims to automate the process as much as possible while being non-destructive. To achieve this, micro computed tomography (µ-CT) will be used to scan the PCB while information will be extracted with the help of computer vision.
The thesis researches the possibilities of using x-ray to reverse engineer PCBs. This makes it possible to understand PCBs without the need of damaging them using different methods.
The program was not finished at the end of the thesis, since the reconstruction part was still missing, but the whole procedure was shown to work in theory. Here are a few pictures taken from the thesis to visualize the problems:
Left to right: CT scan, pre-processed CT scan, edge detection visualized, original picture
This is a comparison of the fix by tilting the PCBs when scanning in a certain way:
This picture shows the edge detection up close and explains the coloured lines:
The picture below shows the algorithm recognizing two traces on the PCB
In our biggest time with the longest jam at the time, we created this mystery walking sim in a week.
We had a total of 6 people working on this project and created it for the “UDC Jam #25“.
This walking sim makes impossible geometry in the way you walk, and the tech behind it is very complex. It was very fun working on the system that made it possible for the map to spawn/respawn on a whim according to a defined map in a custom level editor. I was very proud of the level editor and system in particular.
A friend of the usual group and I wanted to try to compete on a gamejam with a team of completely new people, so we did for the “Global Game 2023“.
With a team of 7 people, we created a small top down base building game in which you play a beaver that tries to plant various “buildings”, on always corroding soil. You can stop the soil from corroding with the roots of trees, which enables you to place the other plants to generate more ressources. The goal is to upgrade the central Lotus to it’s maximum upgrade level.
For the Ludum Dare 52 in a team of 5, we tried to create a space game with a modular space ship, but unfortunately a team member had to drop out suddenly and we had big troubles to due to little manpower. In the end we didn’t get actual gameplay in the game. It is more of a technical showcase. But it turned out very pretty.
The game “Stickler” was made for the “Secret Santa Jam 2022“. The idea of the jam is, that you write a letter to your Secret Santa, which makes a game for you based on the letter, while you create a game for the giftee you were chosen for.
Since my giftee wanted to reminisce in old flash game like games, I wanted to recreate the game “One Finger Death Punch”. At least in a basic way. I ended up not having much time during the December the jam took place and didn’t put as much time into the game as I wanted. But it is functional in the end.
