In the Summer of 2011, I did a directed studies under the supervision of Dr. Yvonne Coady, to explore topics in object-oriented design, physics, and C++ programming. Over the summer, I created a small video game called “Angry Martlets” which is a clone of Angry Birds. What is a martlet? It is a mythical bird that does not have feet and it is a symbol of the University of Victoria.
For this project I used OpenGL, Box2D, GLUT, and GLUI. While GLUI is quite old, it was very easy to use and did the job at providing a simple user interface.
Using this work, I gave a lecture to a Fundamentals of Programming: II (CSC 115) class entitled “How to Make Yourself Look more Impressive Using the Hard Work of Other People.” In it, we explored how to use and combine various technologies to create a project that would be much more difficult to do from scratch. I challenged the class to take my code and extend it further. Afterwards, three students contacted me for some one-on-one tutoring on how to expand on the project.