Honours Degree Project

Rain weather demo (With elements of gameplay)

The aim of this final year project was to show off the effect of how rain should be more realistically reproduced within videogames, including the effect of rainfall on surfaces such as road & grass, and the spray that would be created from vehicles driving through a rain sodden surface. Rain particles were created using a vertex buffer & billboarding was used to created the rain particles themselves. Other elements to this scene include thunder & lightning, model movement (I.e. driving the cars, both automatically & manually), and polish such as changing the vehicle models in-game, a sprite animation (On-screen weather report), switching between different camera angles, and changable radio stations (Altering the background music).

With further development, the scene would include more (Now common) methods of rain reproduction including the use of shaders, using the power of the GPU instead of slowing down the frame rate by also using the CPU, as well as changing the sprite model of the rain and adjusting the alpha channel appropriately so the rain looks slightly less square!

Netdisc.co.uk

Online entertainment shop

This website has been built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Classic ASP and ASP.NET (C# & VB.NET) and contains stock both from the shop itself (Based on a handmade update process being run within the shop) and available to the shop (Based on handmade updates being run manually that scan through Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets (.xls/.csv) and Text files (.txt)) that gets edited (With prices calculated on formulae & product details updated when necessary) held in a database (Connected via. ASP).

The online shop contains a basket & basket management facility, order placement system (Which uses PayPal as a payment operator), and an order retrieval system for customers wishing to check the state of their order online after placing it.

It also contains an administrator system so staff are able to update almost any aspect of the website, without the need to know any HTML or web language, including image changing, unique voucher code generating, e-mail sending, stock updating, script altering and order updating & shipping systems.

The website also uses JavaScript processes such as AJAX & JQuery to produce items such as the 'Search Suggestions' when a user tries to search for products. To date the website generates hundreds of unique hits from search engine results & has had orders placed not just from inside the U.K., but also from countries such as Mexico & Brazil!

SauntonSandsSurfLifeSavingClub.co.uk

Surf-Life Saving Club website

This website has been built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Classic ASP and ASP.NET (C# & VB.NET) and contains image galleries, a 'Message Box' (A way for website users to write messages for others to view - A feature which self updates, akin to Facebook) and a News Ticker using AJAX.

The updated website uses animated tables (Built in JavaScript) & banners to create a modern design and show users the latest club news, competition/training dates and downloadable files amongst other information.

Alike the Netdisc website, this website has also been built with a MySQL database (Using ASP), which stores news stories, event dates & information, e-mail addresses for subscribers, etc. The database is used to dynamically build every webpage everytime someone requests to view it. For example, when someone goes to the homepage of the site, the top ten latest news articles are downloaded from the database and then recreated in alignment with the CSS StyleSheet (To keep everything themed correctly). When someone requests the 'Masters' page, the top ten latest news articles related to 'Masters' are downloaded from the database, and aligned in accordance with the rules of the CSS StyleSheet in the same manner.

Also alike the Netdisc website, 'systems' have been built so that people who are not literate with HTML & other web languages can add new news stories to the website, new event dates to the calendar, new photo's to the gallery (Which are also automatically watermarked using the website logo), etc. By logging into a secure administrator control panel, the user can simply add new news articles by going into the appropriate system and typing out a news story as if they were using a simplified version of Microsoft Word or otherwise.

The website also has a 'Mobile' counterpart. Built using HTML, CSS & Classic ASP (No JavaScript to ensure it is compitable with all mobile devices), the mobile site uses the same information presented on the main website without the need to update each section everytime that section is updated on the main site.

Instead, the same information is retrieved from a MySQL database the information is stored on using ASP and presented in larger fonts but in a similiar style using a separate StyleSheet (CSS file). The mobile site also presents some similiar features such as the same 'Message Box' feature so people can chat with users viewing the main desktop website at the same time. The main menu on the mobile site instead has a simple navigation menu (Which is customised automatically by the mobile device the website is being viewed on) so that users find it easier to navigate through a touch screen instead of using a mouse/joystick, as is standard with modern mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, other tablets PC's, and Google Android & Windows 7 phones.

Kimpton & Dhody Dentistry

Dentistry clinic website

The website here has been built using HTML, CSS & JavaScript (As well as PHP to a limited degree). The site displays information concerning the clinic for patients, and general NHS/private dentistry information.

Techniques used on this website include image fading, and a very simplistic & easy-to-use and navigate design.

The website is currently awaiting further imagery and details for the dental practice.

'Sherlock'

HTML5 media demonstration with Facebook, Google Maps & Google Places integration

Built using XHTML5, CSS3, PHP & JavaScript (Utilising JSON with PHP), the website is intended to be run on browsers with HTML5 support. The site runs from an initial form, to an introduction video, and then a mock frontpage of a newspaper, containing 2 fictional stories which are created using the users data from their Facebook profile (Such as their name, 'likes', 'check-ins', and friends names), and their location from Google Maps & local businesses data from Google Places.

The audio & video files are coded in using the new 'audio' & 'video' HTML5 tags respectively, allowing events to occur as the files reach a certain stage in the webpage. For example, as the video is ready to play without the need for buffering, the audio file and loading div is hidden and the video appears and plays. Then, once the video has ended, the page loads onto the newspaper webpage. The video file in the background of the newspaper webpage also does not play until it is ready to play without buffering, and until it is ready to play, the video's poster is displayed.

As the page loads, if the user signed into Facebook on the opening page, the Facebook PHP SDK loads the user's public data (Such as their name, gender and hometown), otherwise the page uses their name & gender obtained from a cookie saved after being input into the initial form. The page then loads either their 'likes', 'check-ins', photo albums and friends details (Decoding through Facebook obtained JSON files), or preset data variables depending on whether or not the user agreed to having such data accessed by Lee-yoshi.co.uk.

Again, depending on whether the user allowed their browser to share their location with Lee-yoshi.co.uk or not on the opening page, data is either obtained and decoded from Google JSON files using the HTML5 JavaScript navigator object, or preset data variables are saved for use. If the user has opted to allow their location to be shared, their position (I.e. Longitude & Latitude) is saved in a temporary cookie, and then sent to both Google's Maps API (To obtain an image from Google Maps of their position in a grayscale image & local information including town/city name from a JSON file) and Google's Places API (To retrieve local business information such as supermarkets & Post Office branches around their position, again from JSON files).

All of this data is then inserted appropiately into the newspaper articles, alongside PHP functions such as the sunrise & sunset function to work out the local sun times from their position (If shared). The newspaper is then rotated using CSS3 transforms and is made translucent. The opening pages div tables also use CSS3 rounded edges and the two fonts 'Team MT' and 'Parchment' are CSS3 created fonts used throughout.

I have a 2:1 (Upper Second) honours degree in BSc(Hons) Computer Games Development from the University of Central Lancashire, developing skills in C, C++ & C# using Microsoft Visual Studio, as well as - to a lesser degree - Python, OpenGL, Maya & 3dsStudioMax.

Gaining this degree has taught me in-game aspects such as lighting, sounds, cameras & viewpoints, sprites, animations, vertex buffers, physics, shaders & post-processing techniques, amongst many other aspects of games development.

During my time at university, we also collaborated with game designers on certain projects and have been assessed on games concepts & designs.

I am also knowedgable in the following web languages:

...all through self-tuition.

I also have some experience with Facebook, twitter, and Google (Including Google Maps, Google Places & Google+) integration.

For my C.V. please get in touch! xiang_lee_yoshi AT hotmail DOT com

Background image taken from: http://www.wallpaper4me.com/images/wallpapers/borealisfront-62427.jpeg