My game development life started long ago on calculators but at my first full time gig, I was working on World Cup PSP soccer game and I finished up my task to update some audio and basic front end revamp. Another developer was working on creating a 3D globe in the menu system but they could not get the shader code to illuminate properly with directional lighting, texture UV maps and alpha transparency. This developer went on vacation and the feature was going to be cut, but I really thought the feature was a great visual idea if it could work. So for the sake of making the game better, I investigated HLSL shader code on my own, and found some other parameters to fix the lighting, transparency and texture map for selecting each country. I even did some artistic touches by adjusting the lighting range with some simple algebra. In the end, the final product had a very unique fresh look. I wrote the spinning code too which was a bit weird when you cycle countries too quickly. I heart matrix math, but it gets very difficult very quickly.

Someone else recorded video

Why did he choose Burundi? I never knew where it is until it shows up on the globe! Geography!

I didn’t work on gameplay, and I dont really recommend this game over any other PSP soccer game, but hey! the menu is cool!