2024 – 2025

Now that I am nearly 2 semesters into this project, I think it would be appropriate to talk about why I chose this project as well as whether the project itself is living up to my expectations.

Why did I choose this project?

When I was looking through the senior capstone projects, I was torn between a couple of them. There was one thing common between them and that was ‘Game development’.

The main reason I chose this project was because I wanted to do something involving game development. I have done some small personal projects in the past, but I have never completed a full-fledged game. This gave me the desire to do a game as my senior capstone, not only to prove to myself that I can complete a game, but also in hopes for future employment in the gaming industry.

Has it met my expectations.

Personally, I love challenges. The challenge of this project has been a huge plus towards my positive outlook on this project. Finding out the best way to simulate a wildfire that is affected by a weather system has been extremely challenging. How to set the speed of the fire spread? How far should the fire spread between trees? How hard should it be to put out the fire? These are all major challenges my group has been facing. The project has honestly become more challenging than I expected and due to this, I believe it has exceeded my expectations in both complexity and enjoyment.

I am beyond excited to continue working on this project in the upcoming months. There is a chance my expectations may change, but I believe for the rest of this project I will be happy I have given it a shot.

Love

My personal journey using Unreal Engine so far has been amazing. So much progress has been made in the last couple months, and I couldn’t be prouder of my team because of it.

One of the main reasons I love Unreal Engine is the ability to work as a team asynchronously. Having the ability to directly integrate version control into Unreal Engine without having to personally keep a session running has been a life saver. Using Perforce in conjunction with Unreal Engine was likely the best decision we made as a group. The initial setup was a headache, but now we have smooth sailing with no errors in site.

Another thing I liked about Unreal is how easy it is to make beautiful projects. Here is a snip of a forest on fire:

This is in the extremely early stages of project development, but I already feel like our game visually is coming together. This may all change later in development, but due to the ease of creating beautiful effects and so many amazing free assets on the Unreal Store, I don’t see that being an issue.

Hate (Dislike, Hate is a strong word)

Finding things I dislike about the Unreal Engine is honestly a difficult task but not impossible. One thing I personally dislike about the Unreal Engine is how resource intensive it is.

I often find my computer working harder running the Unreal Engine than playing most of the games I have in my library. Due to the resource intensiveness, I don’t see it being a widely accessible option which I personally don’t like.

To add onto resource intensiveness, it is also a HUGE engine. Huge meaning taking a lot of storage space. The engine alone is over 40GB. This does not include the game you are developing, assets you download, models, textures… you get the picture. Having such a large engine puts up a wall for some developers. Those who can’t afford fancy new drives may not be able to create the project they want.

P.S: My drives always somehow end up full.

What would I change?

If I were to change anything with the Unreal Engine, it would be accessibility. While the engine is free, it is clearly designed to run on high-end systems. If some of the unnecessary components could be removed to create a more accessible option for all people, I think it would be an amazing step towards unlimited game development for anyone. Afterall, who doesn’t like unlimited?

Assigned Project – Sim Firefighter game

In the first couple weeks of our capstone class, we were tasked with finding a project we wanted to develop. I was given the Sim Firefighter game project as well as three of my other group members. We have made major progress since we were initially assigned the project.

What have we done?

Over the past couple weeks our group has made major strides towards our Senior Capstone project. We discussed what technology we wanted to use to create our game, the mechanical intricacies, and what the final goal of the project will be.

Technologies:

Through careful consideration and research our group has decided to develop our game in Unreal Engine 5. Why? Because Unreal Engine 5 is a powerful game development tool offering amazing experience for future employment. We believe that by developing our game in Unreal Engine 5 we can create a product that will strike the eyes of future employers giving us a better chance in the future.

Additionally, Unreal Engine 5 offers a multitude of free features/assets that will increase the speed of our workflow allowing us to create a better product. A major feature we will be using within our game development process is known as Houdini. Houdini will help promote a procedural workflow significantly reducing development time.

Mechanical Intricacies

While creating multiple designs: Preliminary designs, a requirement design, and our final team design, we have developed a concrete plan on how we want our game to work. A list below shows a basic rundown of how we want the game to function. As a person who likes surprises, I have hidden the details in an expandable menu.

Show game mechanics

• The game will consist of a tile-based terrain system. The terrain system will procedurally generate maps which include 2 different types of areas. Burnable and unburnable areas. Procedurally generating maps this way will create seemingly infinite replay ability.
• Using the tile-based system our game will simulate natural wildfire occurrences. Fires will start based on natural occurrences or human activity. Fires will spread to burnable tiles based on simulated algorithms such as wind, temperature, and humidity.
• The player’s goal is to fight these wildfires using a limited pool of resources. Players will be able to earn more resources by completing good actions (Stopping wildfires).

Final goal?

The final goal of our project is to develop a game that is fun but also educational. We want the game to be engaging enough to where players will want to play the game, if the game isn’t fun players likely won’t want to play it. We also want the game to be realistic enough to educate players on the true dangers of wildfires. Many people fight then and it’s important that we can help shed light on the bravery of those who fight them every day.

Future Outlook / Next Steps

I have a positive outlook on the future of this project. Our group communicates well by exchanging ideas freely and understanding “No one way is the right way”. We believe our project will truly make an impact on the understanding behind wildfires and help promote a positive community supporting those who fight them. Our next steps are to begin developing our game based on the plan we have developed.

Introduction:

Hello, my name is Jackson Van Dyke and welcome to my blog. Here I will be documenting my journey through the last year of my education at Oregon State University (OSU).

Before I get into my journey, I would like to talk a bit about myself, and what I do for fun.

Where I live (How I got here):

I currently live in Cypress, Texas which is a city a little outside of Houston. I moved down here from Jewell, Oregon back in June of 2022. The reason I moved is actually a fun story with a start that some may call odd.

I used to play an online game call Wizard 101 where the idea was to level your character and unlock new cards for your wizard by completing quests. Long story short, I met an amazing woman on the game who I ended up playing with a little while.

I decided to ask where she lived, and things took off from there. I won’t go into too many details but the in the end I moved down here to stay with her and her family.

What I enjoy:

I like playing video games and is actually one of the main reasons I started going into Computer Science. Ever since I was 12 years old all I can remember is how badly I wanted a gaming PC. I may be exaggerating a little because there are other things I remember as well, but it was definitely a highlight.’

I’m not sure if my header image gave it away but I enjoy reading and playing games revolving around the medieval period. Although there was a lot of darkness during the time, the idea of knights in shining armor has always been so cool to me. One day I would like to try larping that revolves around the medieval period and maybe even join a medieval tournament club.

I love going to the gym which may sound a little odd. I realize some people see it as a chore, but it genuinely brings me joy. Something about driving to the gym and pumping iron give me a huge adrenaline rush.

I enjoy working, yes, I know it sounds crazy, but I do. I currently work as a Software Developer for a company known as Reynolds & Reynolds and handle many programs within the billing department. Not the most exciting headline when talking about my job but what we do is extremely important. Afterall, how are we supposed to get paid without billing the customers?

Now you know a bit about me:

With all that being said, and I know not very much, I hope it gives enough to get an idea of who I am and how I started my journey. I hope that as I continue to add to this blog throughout the next couple semesters that it gives you an even better picture.