Need help guys! please help

[chaoticjelly]

Hey guys,

As some of you may/may not be aware, I am in my last year at university, and as part of the final year of the course I have to make a final year project.

Its a very important part of the final year and worth the same as 3 modules.

The only problem is, I only had two ideas so far and got told that they were not suitable, and I was supposed to hand in a proposal form with my idea, to get it signed (last week!)

I was wondering if any of you guys have any ideas, anything will help, basically I am supposed to make a project, think of a problem in computing and solve it (probably best if it is game related) and then I have to program some software they said, I am a really terrible programmer and I can hardly program anything, but so far the only two ideas I had were:

Make USB Master System or other retro controller, using a PIC chip and make code - I was told this was more suited to an electrical engineering degree (im studying games tech)

Make a project about a particular genre of game and program a GBA game (difficult for me.. because im bad at programming but I thought I could try it) - I was told that this, on its own would not be sufficient enough.

So basically at the moment I am feeling like im up $hit creek without a paddle. I got assaulted last week which didnt help, and my nose was broken, still in some pain, getting headaches, dizzy spells etc, and have hospital appointment this week.

Anyway if anyone has any ideas please feel free to post them here. I have to find a problem to solve, that I can do research and write a project about, and then I have to program some software, or something like that..

[SaDistic]

Old games always have a crappy sound.

Design a new 'sound card' for it and modify an existing game to play better music. This could be done for the sms.

Oh and maybe check you thread 'would it be possible..'

[Stan]

Yeah, make an FM thing so we can have that thing like for the Mark III. How about the problem of Woody Pop and making a paddle controller so I don't have to get a new system to play it. Seriously though, I don't have a clue, I'd need to think about this and see if I can come up with something. I'm not too sure though, can you give us an example of something someone did before that shows what you need to do? Like a prior student's project.

[Sinistral]

Dissertation subjects are research pieces. There's not really any point in looking to the past. There is loads of good stuff you could do with games.

How about:

- Relationships formed with video game characters. (example - has the use of skeletal animation in games resulted in more expressive characters? If so has the use of this technique cause players to become more emotionally attached to game characters?)

This would be more suitable for a case study style research piece.

You could also do "Does the level of AI in game characters result in an improved game experience for player"

Again, this is a research based topic. You could also pick a technique that's being used in games a lot nowadays (there's a lot of discussion about the merits of using HDR lighting in games) - you could do a simple experiment to find out if the player thinks this method or another method is better looking, etc. It's all in your background research around the topic, your hypotheses and your testing methods that will give you the marks.

Develop and test projects are more difficult to do, because you get no actual marks for the actual finished project. Only the research you did around it. I would really advise against doing tackling a subject where the complete success depends on something you have to make/build as if you fail, so does your research!

[rupert]

okay, I thought of a problem which you could solve, i hate using a control pad for games like shanghai (theres probly others). Can you make a PC mouse work on a sms for thease types of games. I dont have much knowledge in thease types of things (I quit after my 1st year of an electronic and electrical engineering btec)

[rupert]

okay I just read your thread properly this time and I think my idea was along the lines of the ones you got rejected

I have no clue at all about programming, I wish I did though, many times ive thoguth about learning basic, I'm might look for a night school course.

[krooper13]

How about something madly advanced like cars that use snesors and gps to drive, thus stopping caused human accidents, or is that totaly the wrong lines?

[chaoticjelly]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, think ive got something sorted, its going to be hard but ill just have to swot at it.

Uni said that you have to do research, and then create some sort of product i.e. code, program, game etc

So I am going to do research into raycasting, with a view to implementing a raycasting engine / game which uses raycasting on the GBA.

Erk.. got to get started soon

[playgeneration]

So your not going with Kroopers suggestion of building the car from Knight Rider then?

[krooper13]

Says the man with an 80s car as his picture! (Appologies if its not, what I know about cars could be put in a ladybird book)

[playgeneration]

My car is older than you!

[krooper13]

Excellent, my motorbike is 3 years older than me, then again it doesnt work, so that may be linked!