Overview

Little Johnny Has Cirrhosis is a 3D online multiplayer game developed for an invitation-only project course at UCSD. It was designed and coded entirely from scratch in ten weeks, delivered on time for a demonstration before a live audience and television crew. Here is a video of that demo.

Gameplay

Little Johnny Has Cirrhosis is a top-down shooter in which the user pilots a small ship through the body of an irresponsible young college student named Johnny. Because Johnny has been diagnosed with terminal cirrhosis, he has charged you, his best friend, with the task of making your way through his body in an effort to force the evil virus to release his liver. It's essentially the 1966 movie The Fantastic Voyage with a college twist.

The game features both single and multiplayer modes in which players battle their way through viruses, bacteria, and even Johnny's own immune system on the way to his liver. The gameplay spans four separate arenas that are interconnected via Johnny's blood vessels; once one arena is completed a brief cutscene whisks the player's ship through a vessel and into the next.

Although the play field lies on a 2D plane similar to the classic game "asteroids," it is rendered in full 3D using OpenGL. The environment itself resembles a large "egg" that surrounds the ship, the camera, and all of numerous animated background layers. This full 3D environment allows the camera to rotate and reposition itself during brief cutscenes, which combines with 3D surround sound to create a truly captivating gaming experience.

Features

• Single-Player Story Mode
• Five-Player Deathmatch Mode
• Seven Unique Types of Enemy AI
• Four Arenas
• Four Upgradable Weapons
• Shields and Health Power-ups
• Keyboard or Gamepad control (with bindable keys)
• Fully Integrated Networking (via the game's menu system)
• A HUD Display with Radar and First-Person "Targeting Computer"
• Particle Effects, Explosions, Death Animations, and Level-Change Animations
• 3D Environmental Sound
• A Complex Scoring/Ranking System
• Fully Customizable Physics, AI, Damage, and Graphics (via easily editable .ini files)

Developers

Additional Information

For more information, please visit the following links:

• Particle System Implementation
• 3D Model Animation Implementation
• The Little Johnny Has Cirrhosis project website
• The UCSD Course Website

Screenshots

Please roll your mouse over each image for a larger view and a short description.

The pre-rendered title screen.

The pre-rendered loading screen.

An in-game shot of our ship with its energy shields up. This was taken during a relatively early stage of the development process, before I added the HUD or animated backgrounds.

Still without animated backgrounds, the ship hovers near a vein leading into the next level. The radar on the upper left is a temporary placeholder for testing purposes.

The ship's view as it travels through a vein into the lungs. At last we can see the ship's overhead display in all its glory.

Inside the lungs, the ship fires its lightning gun to ward off some nearby white blood cells. In the lower left you can see the ship's targeting computer: a first-person view of what you would be seeing from inside the ship. In this case, it's displaying the vein that we just used to access this level.

Gameplay in our dark room. Notice how the ship's headlamp creates realistic lighting effects on the enemies.

Your ship has fallen prey to Johnny's very own white blood cells.

The ship's A-Bomb can be used to dispense of enemies en masse.

Fighting the final boss, an angry cirrhosis that just does not want to let go of that poor boy's liver.
(Yes, we are aware that cirrhosis is not actually a virus...)

Videos