The Land of Xundar

The Land of Xundar was a project developed in 2003 for a 10 week course in Foundations of 3D Programming at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) by a team of students there and sound and music from Jay Semerad not at RIT.

There is no download on this page, but source code and binary (from 2003) are available on request.

The Team

• Jason Winnebeck (Gillius): Terrain graphics engine, Land generation, Skeletal animation, Sound engine, Software design
• Jon Hilliker: Monster AI
• Peter Mowry: Other miscellaneous code( Towers, doors, shrooms, terrain object placement, etc)
• Barry Nardone: Model Art
• Jay Semerad: Original sound effects and music

Screenshots

Game Description

The player starts in a location outdoors. The warrior meets with a sage to get advice on how to defeat the game’s main villian. The sage advises the warrior that he must collect artifacts from a set of dungeons, each dungeon contains only one artifact.

The lands around the dungeons are dangerous, indeed. Tales from the folk tell of monsters seemingly appearing from where monsters were just slain. Inside the dungeon even more dangerous monsters lerk. No one who has ventured to the areas near the dungeons to slay the monsters have returned.

The sage confirms the rumors the warrior has heard. He also tells the warrior that the one responsible for the appearance of the monsters is a powerful mage who is spawning these monsters near the artifacts to protect them, as the mage knows these artifacts can be used against him and his plans to dominate the local area.

Inside the maze-like dungeons are the mysterious artifact items that, when brought together, the sage can use to open up a way through the villian’s defenses so the warrior can confront him directly. The sage tells the warrior that neither one of them are powerful enough to face the mage directly. The sage needs the artifacts to strengthen his magic so he can open up a teleport to enable the warrior to fight the mage. The warrior gains experience by fighting monsters – the sage points out the farther away the warrior is from the mage’s domain the weaker the monsters he is able to spawn, so the sage suggests that the warrior starts his journey with the farthest dungeons.

Before the warrior leaves, the sage tells him that the warrior can return any time for healing.

Technical Features

• Indoor dungeon areas
• Randomly-generated outdoor terrain
• 1st and 3rd person cameras, switchable by the player
• Collision detection – melee attacks and spell attacks between the player and monsters, detection on the terrain and inside the dungeons
• 2D user interface showing health / experience / etc
• Static models and skeletal-animated models loaded from DirectX 8.0 “X” files
• Outdoor areas have day / night cycles
• Terrain “widgets” like trees and mushrooms
• Distance “fog” to shorten view distance
• Player experience and levels
• Music and sound system
  • Sound effects
  • Music soundtrack, with smooth fading between tracks as the environment changes or as the player enters/exists a dungeon