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Long Time Coming...
Long Time Coming...
| Name: | Paul Dana |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Mar 09, 2008 | |
| Rating: |  3.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
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| Profile Page: | View profile page for Paul Dana |
Blog post
OK, clearly my resolution to blog more in 2007 was a bust.
I looked back and I blogged exactly once: Mar 12 2007...almost a year ago. Whoops.
The year of 2007 flew by like a movie about someone else's life. When I think back to summarize what the boys from Plastic Games and I have been up to it seems all exciting and fun, and I suppose it was. At the time it seemed like a lot of work.
At the beginning of last year we were just installing our first attraction at a major theme park in Orlando, FLA and we have now installed our second. Both projects went very well. The client was very happy with the results (we made their "preferred vendor" list). Nothing could have been more satisfying that playing those very games with my children during February vacation and watching hundreds of people flow through the room and play our games and just have a great time with their families too. Both projects also show the incredible power of the Torque game engine and technologies from Garage Games in particular. I am continually amazed at what a skilled team can do with Torque.
In between those two game contracts we also worked quite a bit with Eric Preisz of C2C Simulations and have done some other game contract work as well to keep busy and keep bread on the table.
I attended IGC 2007 which was awesome and got to hear a lot about Instant Action from Garage Games before they announced it to the wider world. That was a great trip. I should have stayed longer and I should have blogged. I did not talk much business with anyone because I am quite frankly a dunder head, but I did catch up with a bunch of people and got to check out what GG was up to, and got to play some amateur rock and roll bass at the Indie-Jam. Booya! :-)
When we have downtime from contracts we have been prototyping game ideas. If the prototype seems to have promise we "finish" it enough that we can get some feedback on it from anyone we can encourage to help us play test. We are calling the result a "proof of concept" as it lets us see if a wider audience views the prototype the same way we do and to just collect more opinions on it.
Anthony Rosenbaum and I are the programmers for Plastic Games. He recently blogged on the first proof of concept we have ready for people to give opinions on. It is a kids games prototype called "Bixby and the Isle of Charms". It is about a kid named Bixby who finds treasures and adventure digging in the sand at the beach. If you want to check that out you can follow this link here: www.plasticgames.com/~anthony/bixbyioc_poc_01.zip
We are working on another proof of concept for a Coop Zombie Killling game. While the final game would have more rewarding gameplay objectives, this first version is simply "Kill this many zombies in 20 minutes". The reason is that, at heart, it's a game about killing zombies and so our focus for a while will be just making killing zombies with your friends more fun. We are not quite ready with it yet so I can't give a link, instead you will have to be satisfied with just another image.
Look here for the link to the Zombie Killing Game in a week or so.
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 05/09/08 - Next we make it look good... 03/09/08 - Long Time Coming... 03/12/07 - Giving Presentation to Middle School Math Club 10/26/06 - Bit Shifter 10/26/06 - What The... 09/24/05 - Plan for Paul Dana 08/18/05 - Plan for Paul Dana 08/05/05 - Plan for Paul Dana |
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Submit your own resources!| Tank Dork (Mar 09, 2008 at 02:39 GMT) |
Downloading Bixby right now!
| John E. Nelson (Mar 09, 2008 at 07:19 GMT) Resource Rating: 3 |
| fireVein (Mar 09, 2008 at 20:28 GMT) |
-Jase
| Cyberkada (Mar 10, 2008 at 00:53 GMT) |
| Wiley (Mar 10, 2008 at 01:18 GMT) |
| Nauris Krauze (Mar 11, 2008 at 11:41 GMT) |
Cool idea about the zombie-killah-coop. Just looking at the screenshots, a random semi-idea- have you guys thought about adjusting level design so that spaces are much much narrower? The idea is- narrow corridors (or simply crowded places stacked with stuff) give kinda isolated feeling and that creepy paranoia. If places are wide open and coop players can dance around the zombies, it diminishes that creepiness quite a lot.
Perhaps even make places where, to act effectively, players have to split up (always great idea in horror flicks:) otherwise they are messing with each others aim.
just my 2 cents.
| Kirk Alberts (Apr 10, 2008 at 22:44 GMT) |
The environment at the moment will make an artists stomach churn since it's mostly comprised of grey blocks and...ugly grey other things but it's been key in our testing to not get distracted by other aspects of the game.
One thing about the co-op experience is we've found that it's ultimately, hands down more fun. It truly is where the gameplay shines. We're trying to tweak the experience in a way to cause players to realize that staying together allows them to stay alive longer...tough to do but it's coming along well...
We're hoping to start working on the art soon and are sure it will begin to push the game along farther. We're all really excited to see what's going to happen to the moods and settings. Of course one of the main requirements of the art is to create a creepy, unnerving experience which is a challenge we're ready for. We've been trying to research everything Zombie that we can get our hands on and have a few people trolling forums dedicated to zombie lore trying to pick up what people want and don't want. We'd like to reach those people as well as the average gamer.
The development of the game started with a 3rd person perspective like you see in the screenshots but after testing in first person we're about 95% certain that the experience in 1st person is more rewarding. The zombies tend to get right up in your face and it's a pretty great feeling. The other thing we realized really quickly is that there could be no team damage. The way the zombies swarm around you most of the time you don't really know where you're shooting or swinging.... One would be gunning down their teammates right and left.
It's been a blast and we're feeling very confident about the gameplay thus far.
We know there are a lot of zombie games out there...but one more could never hurt...
| Hans Cremers (May 10, 2008 at 20:15 GMT) |
Keep it up!
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