Switching Gears is in Great Shape
by Affectworks · 07/19/2006 (6:25 pm) · 6 comments
This is blog 3 of the development of Switching Gears, yet this is my first blog here so be gentle. My name is Ryan and I am the game's programmer, coder, text jockey....
As the title suggests, our game Switching Gears is in fantastic shape and we are looking forward to having a pretty robust demo at IGC.
I guess I will talk about what I've been doing so far.
In Switching Gears you play the role of a resistance fighter uploaded into a delivery robots body, your mission should you choose to accept is to infiltrate, spy, and destroy anything that will help the resistance take back the city that has been taken from them by a largely over-powering foreign force.
This first area you enter is the main city, it is able to be freely roamed as long as you have the proper clearance to enter particular areas (which luckly your delivery credentials gives you). The questing system works a lot like the GTA system works with side quests and primary quests. In this area you will be able to see how this foreign force has just set their civilizations technology over top of the native inhabitants' city.
Not to give away too much (because the story is very deep and immersive and just plain fun) I want to talk about some of the things you will get to do.
First off Switching Gears is named so because of the modularity of the main character.
Your goal is to build up your munitions and your abilities so that you may become increasingly more helpful to the resistant cause.
Through some very quirky friends that you meet, you have the opportunity to purchase upgrades for both your robot body and your weaponry.
For this you need money. One quick way to earn money is to snap pictures with your spy camera of objects that are marked with a photo bounty. Smashing boxes can also give you some quick cash as well as some upgrade components. When you are strong enough you may challenge the guards that are posted in and patrolling the city, they have more money but are very dangerous because if they hit the alarm then that whole sector could be flooded with guards at a moments notice.
Having said that a few features that I think are kick a$$ include; ledge shimmying, zip line riding, and everybody's fav hijacking.
Ledge Climbing and Shimmying will allow the user to find ways around guards and into areas that civilians aren't allowed. It is also really cool looking.
Zip-lining is another fun way to go places and it is a interesting layer of game play.
Hijacking is probably not what you think... If you elect to you can upgrade to an ability to hijack other robots (mostly the guards) what happens is you run up behind them and climb up their back and go along for the ride. w00t! You stand on his shoulders and pull out a bunch of wires until you gain control of the bot and then you sit down and use the little antenna on top of the guards head as an atari style joystick... pretty funny really.
On the development side of the coin we have been aided by our producer a senior project planner at Intel, Mike. He has made life extremely easy and even though this is officially his first game, he has so many planning ideas and methods that I have to say, if you don't have a real Producer, you need to try it sometime.
Our producer has created graphs and charts and all kinds of helpful things for our benefit as we follow his schedule that he made after some very simple meetings with him. I'm serious; his methods made it so that all we have to worry about is getting simple steps done and allows us to still be creative and feature creep a bit :)
Well this is getting way to long to keep everyone's attention so I will end this blog here. I have much more to say and will have more blogs in the near future. I hope to post a video soon as well.
Ryan Christy
Affectworks
As the title suggests, our game Switching Gears is in fantastic shape and we are looking forward to having a pretty robust demo at IGC.
I guess I will talk about what I've been doing so far.
In Switching Gears you play the role of a resistance fighter uploaded into a delivery robots body, your mission should you choose to accept is to infiltrate, spy, and destroy anything that will help the resistance take back the city that has been taken from them by a largely over-powering foreign force.
This first area you enter is the main city, it is able to be freely roamed as long as you have the proper clearance to enter particular areas (which luckly your delivery credentials gives you). The questing system works a lot like the GTA system works with side quests and primary quests. In this area you will be able to see how this foreign force has just set their civilizations technology over top of the native inhabitants' city.
Not to give away too much (because the story is very deep and immersive and just plain fun) I want to talk about some of the things you will get to do.
First off Switching Gears is named so because of the modularity of the main character.
Your goal is to build up your munitions and your abilities so that you may become increasingly more helpful to the resistant cause.
Through some very quirky friends that you meet, you have the opportunity to purchase upgrades for both your robot body and your weaponry.
For this you need money. One quick way to earn money is to snap pictures with your spy camera of objects that are marked with a photo bounty. Smashing boxes can also give you some quick cash as well as some upgrade components. When you are strong enough you may challenge the guards that are posted in and patrolling the city, they have more money but are very dangerous because if they hit the alarm then that whole sector could be flooded with guards at a moments notice.
Having said that a few features that I think are kick a$$ include; ledge shimmying, zip line riding, and everybody's fav hijacking.
Ledge Climbing and Shimmying will allow the user to find ways around guards and into areas that civilians aren't allowed. It is also really cool looking.
Zip-lining is another fun way to go places and it is a interesting layer of game play.
Hijacking is probably not what you think... If you elect to you can upgrade to an ability to hijack other robots (mostly the guards) what happens is you run up behind them and climb up their back and go along for the ride. w00t! You stand on his shoulders and pull out a bunch of wires until you gain control of the bot and then you sit down and use the little antenna on top of the guards head as an atari style joystick... pretty funny really.
On the development side of the coin we have been aided by our producer a senior project planner at Intel, Mike. He has made life extremely easy and even though this is officially his first game, he has so many planning ideas and methods that I have to say, if you don't have a real Producer, you need to try it sometime.
Our producer has created graphs and charts and all kinds of helpful things for our benefit as we follow his schedule that he made after some very simple meetings with him. I'm serious; his methods made it so that all we have to worry about is getting simple steps done and allows us to still be creative and feature creep a bit :)
Well this is getting way to long to keep everyone's attention so I will end this blog here. I have much more to say and will have more blogs in the near future. I hope to post a video soon as well.
Ryan Christy
Affectworks
About the author
Recent Blogs
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#2
07/19/2006 (9:23 pm)
I second Tim's post. LOL
#5
very similar to metal arms, especially the first bot. the hijacking of other robots sounds similar to the control tether in metal arms as well. however, an expansive free-roaming environment with choices and side quests is definitely different from the linear level-based design of metal arms. sounds interesting.
07/19/2006 (10:59 pm)
"Looks good, a lot like metal arms. Good luck with it!"very similar to metal arms, especially the first bot. the hijacking of other robots sounds similar to the control tether in metal arms as well. however, an expansive free-roaming environment with choices and side quests is definitely different from the linear level-based design of metal arms. sounds interesting.
#6
07/20/2006 (6:01 am)
love the style!
Torque 3D Owner Timothy Aste