My name is Paul Turner. I am a programmer who graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with distinction in MSc Games Software Development. I have been developing games since I was 13 years old, mostly as a hobby but occasionally for a small profit. This page is intended to give an overview of my skills and experience.
Please click here to see an electronic version of my CV and contact information.
This is a game my university group developed for our integrated project, called Magic Flowers. It was developed as a collaboration between artists and programmers, over the course of 9 weeks. There were three artists and three programmers in total. The game is a 2.5D platformer written using C++ and Direct3D. Multiple third party libraries were also employed to avoid reinventing the wheel, in order to ensure the prototype was finished on time. The gameplay involving the manipulation of the world by planting different types of seeds.
I contributed significantly to the code, including writing large parts of the renderer, the outline shader, and the collision detection routines. Also, almost all of the game logic (enemies, flowers, seed planting and the relevant interactions) was programmed by myself. I also contributed a small amount of concept art.
Click here to download the prototype - it's about 90MB. Alternatively go to our team's main page for more information.
Having been through several incarnations, this is the latest version of my iPhone platformer, developed as a hobby and approaching completion.
The game code is as platform neutral as possible, using C++ and OpenGL. The initialisation code (creating a window, getting a graphics context, initialising input, etc.) is fairly minimal and is kept separate from the game logic. A precompiler directive then allows for easy switching between iOS and Windows.
Some optimisation has been done based on performance testing on the device itself. For example, transparent areas of textures are isolated as far as possible by chopping up the level geometry. While this increases the number of vertices being dealt with, it reduces the number of pixels being alpha tested which is a very intensive operation. The results of shifting the processing burden in this way are very positive and help achieve the smooth, stable framerate required for such a game.
This test level was created with a level editor which runs under Windows. The editor is an extension of the game code, written in such a way that classes (such as the enemies) can expose properties such as their position, boundaries, path points, etc. to the editor. The editor then enumerates these properties when an entity is created or selected, making the placement and customisation of level elements quick and easy.
The artwork was created by myself. Some of the textures in this demo are only placeholders and more lavish designs are planned.
Screenshots:
This small interactive physics demo was developed for my final university project. It was developed to gain insight into "soft body physics." It demonstrates the use of multiple phases of matter as a potential game mechanic. Users manipulate a small, self-contained blob which can turn into a solid, a liquid and a gas. The blob demo uses a "spring" based system for the outer membrane and a pressure heuristic (based on current volume) to inflate / deflate it to the correct volume, to prevent it collapsing or exploding. Inflation and deflation happens by moving the membrane's points either outward or inward along their normal vector. It was developed using C++ and OpenGL.
Click here to download the demo. Instructions are onscreen.
Screenshots:
Super Skull is a game I developed in my spare time as a hobby project. It is a browser based game written in Java, with all code and graphics done by myself. It is available to play at funpowered.com/superskull, my hobby website.
The objective of the game is to run and jump through the world as fast as possible, collecting bones and stomping creatures in order to wind back the clock. It has attracted a rather large number of hits, and some players have achieved very impressive times on the scoreboard.
As part of my MSc course I was awarded a prize from Sony for being the highest-scoring student. I was invited to SCEE in London where I was presented with a certificate and a bundle of games. My team also presented our game, Magic Flowers, to an assortment of SCEE staff.