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Project reaches alpha!

Name:	Jesse (Midhir) Liles
Date Posted:	Jan 19, 2006
Rating:	Not Rated
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Blog post

I know that reaching alpha doesn't sound like very much, but let me explain; I've been working on various ideas using TGE for quite a long time now, buying content packs when I can afford to and generally teaching myself how this all works together. I have been working primarily on one game, called simply: Shadows. The game now has about 75% of the features I have planned for it, minus the magic system which is going to be the last major milestone before beta. Beta is going to be spent polishing and balancing everything, adding maps, effects, and other content, and trying to squash as many bugs as possible before release. I am only one person, so this might be a long time as I have other things going on in life that need attention.

Let me get to the point...

I have succeeded in bringing my game to a point where I think it is playable (even in online multiplayer AFAIK) and I would like to take the opportunity to give back to the community for all the awesome content packs and other resources that have even made the game possible in the first place. I also have the selfish goal of getting some useful feedback from everybody regarding ideas, bugs, compliments, and any other criticism or flaming that is felt appropriate.

My website is at: http://crossbones.us

Feel free to go and download the Shadows alpha and try it out. I do ask one thing, and that is that if you like the game please register on my forums and post your thoughts about it.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	07/28/06 - I like art 06/18/06 - I've got hands. And I've got pinball. 05/19/06 - Score! Back to work! 01/30/06 - Moving out. 01/19/06 - Project reaches alpha! 12/02/05 - Plan for Midhir 11/15/05 - Plan for Midhir 11/08/05 - Plan for Midhir

Submit your own resources!

Toby W. Allen (Jan 19, 2006 at 11:09 GMT)

i checked out your site and it fine stuff, I would strongly recommend you lose the frames, and you need to make the screenshot section better. You can't load full images at a scaled down level, since you're still loading the full image. Make smaller images, load them and link them to the larger image.

Toby.

Jesse (Midhir) Liles (Jan 19, 2006 at 11:48 GMT)

Ah, thank you for the advice I'll see what I can do about the screenshots, and the frames are gone, I was actually debating on that before you posted.

Alan H (Jan 19, 2006 at 14:07 GMT)

I'm curious, how long it's taken you to get to this point? Did you have any experience before working with Torque?

Sean H. (Jan 19, 2006 at 15:15 GMT)

MIdhir the game looks nice. You do realize that the guy on the main page is holding the gun backwards right??

Jason Swearingen (Jan 19, 2006 at 20:45 GMT)

did you create any of the art yourself? or use preexisting stuff?

i noticed the recient girl model, but i dont know about the other art you are using.

Jesse (Midhir) Liles (Jan 19, 2006 at 23:50 GMT)

I'm using mostly art I've purchased. I created the interiors (the ones you can walk inside of, the shops, apartment building, strip mall, etc.) myself as well as the shell casings (not shown). It's taken me a good long time to get to this point, although I suppose I've only been working on Shadows in it's current form for about six months. I've tried several other (larger in scope) games since I purchased Torque, but out of the necessity of being a one-man-team I've had to scale down quite a bit. The only experience I've had previously is coding with LPC (An interpreted text-centric scripting language) on LP-muds using the MudOS driver. I'm a self-taught programmer with no math background after my freshman year of high school so most of the actual mathematics of vectors and other things are... elusive concepts to me =).

The art I've done so far consists of shell casings (7.62mm, 5.56mm, 9mm and 50AE), blood splat particles, a few shop interiors, one apartment building interior, and a couple large commercial building exteriors.

I'm using the female pack from Cubix, the girl pack from Bravetree, the soldier pack from Tridinaut and the Torque orc as selectable character types right now. I've implemented most of the weapons from Tridinaut's recent modern weapon pack, as well as a glock, desert eagle, and MSG-90 sniper rifle that were freely distributed on Turbosquid, and I plan on adding many more before beta. The apartment building exteriors, streets (I did modify them quite a bit for the Seattle map), the brightly lit red-bordered building, and most of the textures used on the shop interiors that I made are from 3d-diggers.de

Sean: Yes, I know he's holding the gun backwards. It's actually a 'blooper' that I thought was just too hilarious to not take a screenshot of. The small version ended up on the web page because it's funny. =)
Edited on Jan 20, 2006 00:07 GMT

John McArthur (Jan 20, 2006 at 01:06 GMT)

Is it me or is the quality of the screenshots really really poor?

Jesse (Midhir) Liles (Jan 20, 2006 at 02:44 GMT)

I don't know...the 'static' in many of the shots is the rain. It looks better in-game =)

Jason Swearingen (Jan 20, 2006 at 03:03 GMT)

@John: I was thinking about that too, and i think the real issue here lies with the textures Midhir is using.

The building textures are too repeditive and 'fake' (the glowing windows repeating)

and the ground texture is too repetitive

and the obvious non-texture state of the building midhir made.

but those are all easy fixes... otherwise the 'overall' looks pretty good i think

Jesse (Midhir) Liles (Jan 20, 2006 at 10:37 GMT)

I'll be the first to admit that I am in desperate need of a good artist =-)

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