| Name | Function | Experience |
| [ No longer with us? ]Kris Arend | Lead Artist | A computer artist at heart, Kris strives to bolster his already excellent modeling skills by putting his talent to work and creating the characters for the game. |
| Daniel Baker | Programmer | Dan programmed for the Army for two years, and he KNOWS communications and is a true coder by definition. CONTRIBUTION SO FAR: The timer routines, music a nd sound; soon: particle effects. |
| Jef Considine | Programmer | Jef is a youngest member of the Considine programmer clan. He is an efficient programmer who conveniently stays in Boston over the summer to work in the computer labs
and write crazy code with us. CONTRIBUTION SO FAR: The new real-time shadows using color lookup tables. |
| [ No longer with us? ]Christopher Cummins | Lead Artist | The awesomeness of his skill could be easily seen in his early sketches of the game characters. He has a vivid imagination as well as a good deal of taste. CONTRIBUTION SO FAR: Character sketches, game design ideas, soon: Kirin, the futuristic swordsman. |
| John Isidoro | Lead Programmer. Officer of BUGG. | This guy here really knows his stuff, especially Assembler optimizations. Just
to the awesomeness of his skill, why don't you check out his 4K (that's FOUR Kilobytes long) 3D game which you can download here (© John Isidoro 1994). When I first saw it, I seriously considered switch
ing to physics (yeah, right ). John Isidoro is known in the computer demo scene as Grimace and is the main programmer for a demo group called Miracle. Look for his demos "Never Assume" and "Esperflow"! CONTRIBUTION SO FAR: (Maybe I forgot so mething, as he did a lot). Sprite blitter, parallax background routines, input routines, input config screen, game design ideas, he filmed Al; soon: cool transitions, backgrounds and maybe his own character! |
| [ No longer with us? ]Tyler Kohn | Programmer | This hardcore programmer is heavily into Win NT and was given a task of writing the FLI/FLC loader for the game. His reaction? "No sweat, man." CONTRIBUTION SO F AR: None. |
| Stanislav Krasilovskiy | Lead Programmer / Artist / Sound FX / VP of BUGG | Raised with Borland, matured with Watcom. Areas of expertise: computer viruses, databases, graphics and game programmi
ng. Wrote my first program at 6, won International Science and Engineering Fair (Computer Science Category) in Spring 1996. Questions? CONTRIBUTION SO FAR: Plot of the game, one (1) background, animation/frame structures, sprite ripper/anima tor, power bars, minor project coordination, the game engine w/logic and action functions, character sketches, some MOD music, game design ideas,the fighting judge function; soon: Ghost Soldier, the rest of the engine and the eye candy effects. |
| [ No longer with us? ]Manet Mau | Artist (a programmer at heart) | Found out about BUGG after meeting Dan Baker at the honors house. Manet is currently working on a character for a game (working name Guardian, has kil ler pecs), and I'll have a preview image soon. He is a good artist and is quick at learning new software. I am yet to check out his programming skills, but he is cool for using the word "regulate." |
| Russell Newquist | Outsider Artist. | Highly acclaimed by Dan Baker. We are yet to see if his skill and determination is as good as Dan says they are . |
| Alex Vlachos | Ex-Project leader / Programmer. Ex-Officer of BUGG. | He's quite a programmer and was THE backbone of this project. Now that Alex has g
raduated, he works at SpaceTek (that's right, the SpaceOrb guys). His presence and his ideas still float in the BUGGspace, though. CONTRIBUTION SO FAR: The sprite blitter, project coordination, game design ideas, was filmed to pose as the te st fighting character; soon: the fonts for the game. |
| Pete Wickis | Programmer |
Not much is known about this mysterious coder, but I do know for a fact that he prefers C++ to C, that he is acing to Introduction to Computer Graphics right now and that he writes Quake scripts like nobody's business. In fact, he is currently undertakin
g a creation of the ULTIMATE Quake weapons patch based on a couple of my ideas, as well as few of his own. CONTRIBUTION SO FAR: None, but he wants to do AI. |
| Torleif Lunde Markussen ("Pearl Hunter" of Union) | A composer | "Toffi" is a composer from Norway, who normally writes ambient music for his demogroup, Union. He wrote a few tunes for us to chec k out; we'll definitely use at least one of the tunes as he is quite a good composer, though being new to techno. His percussion tracks are among the best ones. |
| ??? | Music Composer | We need more music !!! Do you think you're good enough to write a techno mod that is going to blow our socks off ? (You don't have to be a BU student!) E-m ail us with your submissions. After all, we're only a 'graphics' group. |
| ??? | Artist | Are you a Boston University student who knows how to use 3D packages to model and animate in 3D? Can you use Photoshop-like software to create beautiful images and stunning effects? We NEED you!!! |
o what is this game about? Well, during the very first meeting of the game crew, we unanimously agreed on a fighting game genre. Sure, there might be a lot of fighting games out there, but that's
exactly why it would take real talent to create a distinct, beautiful and original game in this genre. We are still working on the nuances of the plot, but be assured: it will be futuristic and near-apocalyptic. The game will have sideways scrolling,
large
character sprites, a lot of eye candy and effects, neat gameplay and tough Artificial Intelligence. We might
have a physics based particle animation system, and a whole bunch of effects which alone would make a darn good demo. The characters will be 3D rendered and will have bad attitude problems (just like they should). The final boss will be bad and extremel
y unusual. Let me just put it this way: it's gonna be gewd.
 | An early rendering of the Ghost Soldier, a semi-real phantom which was used by the humans for purposes of assasinations and espionage in the Final War (whoops! I am giving away the plot!). Mode led by Stanislav Krasilovskiy. This guy uses a New Reality Engine (by SGI!) for its reality processor and an intricate DNA-based Artificial Intelligence system. |
 | This is a quick rendering of one of our characters, whose working name is Omega X. Modeled and animated by Kris Arend, this baby packs a class IV desintegrator in its head-piece. Inside this robot, a complex biological circuitry is implemented in a viscous medium of li quid plasma. Note the intricacy of the design and the robot's coils behind his back. |
 |
This is a screen shot of our little background scrolling and power bars demo. |
| Date | Silly comments | Current Progress | What needs to be done | |
| 10/06/97 | As you can see from the participants raster, we have lost many people on the project. Nevertheless, the new generation of BUGGs looks forward to joining with those who remain on the battlefield to finish up the game. | See below | Did jumping code, scanned the special moves in, and did the graphics front-end for the particle system (to work with Dan's physics back-end). | |
| 05/01/97 |  This is what my, John's, Dan's and Jeff's summer will look like. Stack up the programmer's food (pizza, Chinese food, Jolt Cola), put some "death defying , mesmerizing techno" on and code until your keyboard starts smoking (they just don't make them like they used to, do they?). I know Chris is staying in town, so he'll be working on the his characters (including his well-developed :) character of an ener gy-generating mindless killer female). Russell Newquist, Dan's friend from Alabama, will be working on his character. One thing for sure: expect some animation goodness from our artists, as we have a talented bunch. |
News: a professional has joined our team, Dan's friend Russell Newquist is now working on some characters for us in exchange for us putting a small advertisement for his company into the game. We agreed that it is all right to put outsi de artists on the game project as long as BUGGers do the code for the game. The artists, however, will have to be qualified and proven to be trustworthy. Finally, the frames of Al jumping and hurting, as well as him doing special moves were processed, a nd now I can program all of these actions into the engine. Dan is working on dialog boxes, Jef wrote the real-time shadows routine and John, as usual, has to do the input stuff once he has time. Give us a little time to get our Finals over with. | I will have to do MAJOR work on the engine, including the new actions, combos, the "round" notion etc. Animation of the particles is also my concern, as well as a help system. Dan will be doing dialog boxes, complete with check boxes, l ists and text fields; John has to juggle his research, the butt-kickin' new demo "Kittania" that he is working on and the game programming. Chris needs to show us some intermediate results on his characters sometime soon. Jef will be working on a FLI/FLC player. | 04/04/97 | Things are going well...Dan and me churned out quite a lot of code, while John is finishing up his demo for some demo party in California. Once he is done, he'll finish up that input code and finalize the background routines. Our precio us artists, Kris Arend and Chris Cummins are working hard on the characters, even though they appear to be quite busy with other work. Al is currently frazzled by his homework, but still he promises to create some fonts for us and work on the frames that contain his own animations with him doing special moves. The last Quake Deathmatch that we had just yesterday was quite satisfying, especially the part in which all of us switched our weapons to axes and ran one after another hacking away. Our wish is to make our game as much if not more fun. | Stuff is getting done!!! Dan has finished the sound library and now finalizes the particle effects, and I had added a stereo pan to the sound effects so that the sound originates from different places depending on the position of the sou rce of the sound on screen. I have done the shadows, the collision detection (although I still have to work on that) and the words ENGAGE now float in before each match and explode, and that looks pretty darn good if you ask me. I also adapted Dan's cus tom shell for the sound library for the use specifically in our game. Now the music works and sound effects are fully usable. | I will have to change my collision detection algorithm, Dan is going to have to finalize his particle effects and John will work on the parallax and the input functions as well as the inputs setup screen. Al will need to make a font for us and process those animation frames of himself doing special moves. Then, I will need to implement jumping, hurting and special moves, as well as the super special and incorporate animation in the particle effects. | 03/24/97 | The worm is finally turning, and now he is packing a GUN! A lot have been done...a lot more is to be done, but believe it or not, we have our barebones fighting cycle going, and now you can make Al fight Al (see below). Our programming party was a success, me and John went without any food or drink for 5 hours arguing and coding (that was during the spring break). We have agreed on the NAME of the GAME, and yes, it is official, it's going to be called "Millenium's End" which ties in wi th the plot very nicely. Each game crew meeting is more and more fun, since now we actually can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And, man, it feels good. | A lot has been done! I have the main fighting loop going, and John had amazed me with his parallax routine which is a) fast: requires only 4 fps more than the regular background b) provides for an easy way for the artists to draw the ba ckgrounds c) saves memory and disk space. We have decided on who will do what, and Dan, being our system programmer, was given the task of customizing the sound library. We have declared our conventions for particles and characters, and are still lookin g for a COMPOSER. Tyler will do the FLI/FLC playback routines. Al had a lot of rest in Jamaica, and now he is more fit to coordinate us than ever. Me and John thought of a cool transition effect which will be quite eye-opening. More later... Download the priliminary plot of our game HERE , already Copyright © 1997 by Stanislav Krasilovskiy. | Right up next: Al - more animations filmed, John - finalize parallax, polish controls and go on to the particle effects, Dan - music and sound, and me - the engine, jumping and special moves. |
| 03/02/97 | We got a few offers from prospective composers for our game. If you are a good MOD/XM/S3M composer, jump right into the race! Animations of Al doing martial arts moves are going right into production, as we starting to write the animation portion of the game, as well as the main game loop. We are yet to discuss the aforementioned programming party...We had a VERY HEATED discussion about whether to have a parallax scrolling in our game...The answer is yes, if we will have enough processor resources to implement it after the crucial parts are done. | Well, here goes: Daniel has finished the timer routines, John has finished the clipping on the sprite blitters and the input routines, and I worked with the music/sound player and fixed the animation Ripper so that it would read reversed PCX files made on Photoshop on the Silicon Graphics machines in Da Lab. I believe that we are all set to write our first main loop...Our 3D artists have done a lot of amazing work...Check out Kris Arend's Omega X in the preview section above. Chris Cummings has shown me a first sketch of his futuristic swordsman, and trust me--this swordsman has more attitude than you can handle, and has thi s Akirish/Chuji-Wuish twist to him. | See BELOW. | |
| 02/14/96 | John and Alex took the liberty of digitizing a bunch of animations of Alex doing fighting moves for the engine testing. I don't know what his special moves were, but if you have seen his home page you'll guess that they must be pretty revolting. John had an idea of having a 'wild' (in a nerdy way) coding party where all the project's coders would meet and brainstorm the engine ideas and whip out some wild Watcom code. | John's brand new Pentium 200 motherboard died (sigh). I guess every coder needs some rest once in a while. John, Daniel and me are adapting music, sound and keyboard code for the purposes of our game. John is work ing on the RLE sprite clipping, and I am still carefully pondering about the player structures and timer routines and struggling with midterms at hand. Our artists, Kris Arend and Christopher Cummins insist that they finished the 3D game characters over the winter break; I must say, I am anxious to see them. As soon as we can, we'll have some preview pictures for you to check out !!! | A lot of things, but what needs to be done next would be the player structures and Finite State Mac hine, and the animation engine with keyboard control. | |
| 01/30/94 | The video card on my computer is so generic, that I honestly don't know its manufacturer or where it was made. It works, though. And it packs a pretty mean MPEG2 accelerator. But RAM-to-video memory c opies are still SOOO slow...on my machine, that is. | Finished the background scrolling demo, which basically has the power bars, the background and the scrolling working. The frame rates range from 34 to 80 on differe nt machines (36 on my P133 w/aforementioned video card). Not bad for 640x480, eh...plus it's not optimized yet. Check out the screen snapshot at the top of this page. How do you like the background image that I made? John is kinda busy at the moment do ing his research, since he is a graduate student and he has no choice. | Here's the wish list: animation and controls, game mechanics, sound, AI, particle effects, transitions, menu, setup utility...the list goes on and on. | 1/??/97 | Captain's log, supplemental. We're baack!!! The winter break was nice and long, but now that we have come back to Boston University, the everyday human pleasures will be sacrificed for higher goals on a da ily basis...Right. BUGG is back in business, and you better believe me if I say that we improve every semester...Join us and be creative!!! | My saying 'I did this' and 'I did that' might sound a little egotistical, but hey, I try to b e fair to myself as much as I am fair to others. This winter break was good to me; I had some quality coding done and quite a lot of time spent on conceptual and graphic design for the game. Anyway, the I finished the custom Sprite Ripper Utility and t he Animation Manager, which will enable our artists to proceed with creating animations for the game. They are both quite handy and I am very happy with the way they turned out. The sprite blitter function which John and Alex wrote is designed to be use d with large sprites, which one is expected to use in a fighting game. And that is why we use a custom RLE sprites--to conserve memory and increase blitting speed. So my Ripper takes care of the sprite conversion and the Animation Manager allows you to manipulate sequences of sprites and define the bounding boxes and other little fighting game specific things. Neat, huh? | The next thing on my agenda would be designing the power bars and writing the background scrolling code, since I have already started on both. The power bars should be simple yet efficient and good-looking...Hmm, let's see... |