Combat Starter Kit goes to GarageGames QA!

Shattered Glass
Many a shot has rung out from the weary speakers of our CSK development team since we released the Combat Starter Kit. Many a shard o' broken glass still litter neighbors' driveways and lawns as exploding jeeps, helis, tanks and HGT's fill our ears and eyes with the evidences of combat.


Courage
It takes a strong soldier to stand up against our own Ashtara's sniping skills on the demo server, honed by years of working with Milkshape and Elite Ninja training. Only a ground covered in C4 explosives has proven effective in catching her unawares.

Original Release Announcement

Announcement of 1.01 Patch

Combat Starter Kit has finally gone to the GarageGames QA team for testing prior to release in the GG store.

It's been out for about 4 months now, and the team will be looking to add another few features, like per-weapon stat tracking and improved Vista support. The TGEA port is underway as well but will be a ways longer still. The stability of the product has been solid and we've seen some pretty sweet projects underway with teams who are using CSK as a development base.

Other features, like team and class selection and base capture, have been used in other projects to make fantasy style CTF games, and some amazing integrations with ArcaneFX have taken place on other projects using CSK. If you need a starter kit to save you months of time on your next FPS style project, or just want it just for the vehicles and models, it's a tremendous deal.

Until the Combat Starter Kit is rereleased through GarageGames, we are continuing to offer it for purchase on our website:
Combat Starter Kit

You must be a registered owner of TGE to purchase the kit.

In this blog I wanted to also make some mention of how the kit was developed, as some folks had questions about where certain features came from or what went into the process of making fully integrated kit like this one.

When going about making a kit, and trying to make it as complete as possible, it's only natural that you will do some due diligence and see what's out there. It took the team who worked on this project almost a year to square it away to the point of being releasable, and the codebase was overhauled a few times during those times. It began on a TGE 1.5 codebase, got the CG overhaul at one point in time, went to TGE 1.5.2, had various things tried and removed and modified, etc. During this time with some of the many coders on the project, someone would plug in part or whole of a resource to see how it worked overall. Sometimes the resource was reverted, and our general rule of thumb is to not use a resource blindly when making a sellable product. That being said, sometimes one slips into a codebase without going through the proper channels, and things that were meant to be experimental or temporary make it through the end of the development cycle and into a release product. Some of the trickiest things to get in and feeling right were commander map and helicopter control for example. Those began as amalgamations of resources or forum code and very heavily modified/started from scratch until the functionality was what was needed. No less than 4 separate coders had a go at getting the commander map working right, and I'm sure looked at everything from all available commander maps here, to stuff in the RTS kit, to completely custom solutions. When a feature is needed, of course the first course of action is to see what's available as resources, what functionality it offers, what kind of forum discussion for a feature is around, etc. Then some files are pulled, experimented with, integrated, made to work in a larger system

One developers implementation is also not everyone's ideal implementation, so though someone's resource may have inspired or resemble a feature present in the CSK, it isn't a matter of fact that the person's resource was simply grabbed and inserted into a codebase or is present in any way. I personally have contributed several resources on GG, as have Duncan Grey and Erik Madison, who were some of the lead coders on this project. We each delight when our resources are helpful to someone, and all resource contributors sign the same agreement when they submit a resource, which releases all rights to the resource. That being said however, it is always courteous to give credit where credit is due. So we've gone through the codebase and made sure that if there was a resource used in part or even used in the research process, that indirect contribution will be noted on the CSK credits screen in our next build.

Gameplay video here

Try the demo
We have released a demo of the CSK so you can see the kit in action, and are also running a game server for you to blow something up.
Get it here.

Some eye candy:

















Here is a master feature list of specific changes and additions.
Vehicles
All vehicles created from scratch
Helicopter (New Object Class)
Tank Vehicle (New Object Class)
Transport Helicopter with source art
Heavy Ground Transport with source art
Attack helicopter with source art
HumVee with source art
Tank with source art
Vehicle Repair Pads,
Vehicle Refit Pads
Vehicle Lockon and Lockon Warning System
Helicopters with multiple mountpoints and turrets
Gauge Controls (Velocimeter, Altimeter, Compass)
Customized GUI swapping depending on vehicle, weapon
Vehicle Location-based damage system
Steering Decay
Upright Camera
Weapon Camera (Barrel Cam)
Vehicle Throttle
Multiple Gear Transmission, Configurable RPMs, Engine Pitch
Tread/Track Thickness (Position Offset)
Rigid Body forces on vehicle
EngineOn/Off
Engine sounds for flying vehicles
Sample Classes
Engineer (Repair Tool)
Medic (Medikit)
Sniper (Sniper Rifle)
Support (Ammopacks)
Heavy Assault (Rocket launcher, C4, Detonator, grenades)
Assault
Commander Map
Supply drop
Vehicle and Place Icons
Target Area Set
Spawn Points
Custom IconType set on Shape Level
Optional spawn sweep cam (camera slowly moves in and focuses on player)
Other Additions
Turrets
Parachuting
Teams
Group Targets
Team Targets
Custom Player Positions (Swimming, Prone, Kneeling, Parachute)
Update Bounds Box, and optional Bounds Box Update to include weapon extent
Climbing: Buildings and Objects
Sliding Doors
Encrypted Zip support
Equipment Mounting and Reskinning
Mounted Object Fine Tuning (pass in a transform)
Individual Gravity
Flag capture mechanics
Team scoring
Base command console destruction
Radar destruction
New Art
Icons
22 New Interiors
2 New Player Models
Assault Rifle
M60
Shotgun
Sniper Rifle
Submachine Gun
Grenades
Knife
Weapons
Multiple Weapon Recoils
Exclude Built-in Hands Rendering of models
Sticky Bombs (C4): note: these do not follow when vehicles move
Bullet Line Tracers
Autoload when empty
Weapon swapping
Multiple firing modes
Switch to alternate weapon on noAmmo
Rocket launchers with lock-on
Head shot notification
Chainguns with spin-up
Configurable Directional Weapon Recoil
Ammo and Clip GUI
Custom Crosshair based on weapon
General
Allow multiple copies to run on same machine
SQLite Database Integration
New Gui Controls
CommanderMap
Generic Progress Bar
Vehicle Gauges
Vehicle HUDs
Drawing
dglDrawBitmapRotated
Animated UV support for mesh materials (variable speed directional animation)
Turrets
Allow multiplayer client control of vehicle mounted turret
Added max Pitch and Yaw to turrets for a configurable field of fire
Added configurable max pitch and yaw speed, to allow variable turret speed
Crosshair Hud
Per weapon crosshair
Weapon Range
Render Object Range
Optional Frame
Configurable Offset
Fill Colors, Frame Color
Lock-on Cabability
Change Name color based on team
Mapmaking/Level Editing
Object builder additions: add preconfigured clusters of objects (landing pad with lights)
Custom light objects

The price for all of this is only $99. Documentation and support included.
Combat Starter Kit