Interzone Football Closed Beta
by Andy Hawkins · 03/29/2009 (8:40 am) · 7 comments
Intro
As of 26th March 2009 Interzone has launched it's closed beta. I think you might be able to play overseas, but the server cluster is here so Aussies will get the lowest ping. We have regular playtests at 4pm and 7pm WST (GMT + 8) where the devs are in-town and ready to rumble!!!! You can of course make your own matches, as long as you have a minimum 5 a side. Oh and make sure not everyone is in the same club otherwise you wont be able to make teams.
Dev Diary - My experience with the studio.
I started in March 2007 as a 'Tools Programmer' which meant I was supposed to go in and write exporters for the Max to Bigworld pipeline. What I actually started on was tweaking the environment for the source to run in so we could just compile the game :) The source code was less than desirable for what we had in mind and we had so many demands on it that we had to change the Python bindings to allow us to extend the functionality of the game. One of the examples was to compile Scaleform into the C++ engine, so via Python I could start loading, playing and accessing the content provided by the Flash artists.
From there I worked on ball physics and did some motion capture analysis to enable us to have a ball mixing board so we could tweak the final physics in the game. After that I worked on web technology to convert an existing open source product Trac to suit our Agile project management requirements. Finally I put my hand up for Flash work and started the GUI team. We experimented with GUI and Flash for a number of months until the Art team provided the look and feel you will see in the game today.
I spent over a year on the GUI team. As we came close to Beta launch it was all hands on deck to reduce the bug count to zero. During that time I was learning the Art Tech pipeline to assist artists to get their assets in the game. Recently I have just been doing bug fixes on
the lead up to Beta launch, and now I spend most of my time assisting in playtests and taking onboard the requests from our customers to make Interzone Futebol (pronounced Foo-che-bol) the best football game around.
GamePlay
Giving you a quick run down of the action, you go to the web page sign up, get your login, download the client and run the game. From there you use our awesome character creator then jump into the Social Space, buy a ball, explore all the vendors, learn ball tricks, emotes, buy clothes and get pro gear to buff your performance on the field.
Then find a match vendor, join the queue and jump into a soccer game like no other - every player is a real player somewhere in the world.
Come one, come all - This is the best persistent multi-player football game out.
www.interzonefutebol.com.au
As of 26th March 2009 Interzone has launched it's closed beta. I think you might be able to play overseas, but the server cluster is here so Aussies will get the lowest ping. We have regular playtests at 4pm and 7pm WST (GMT + 8) where the devs are in-town and ready to rumble!!!! You can of course make your own matches, as long as you have a minimum 5 a side. Oh and make sure not everyone is in the same club otherwise you wont be able to make teams.
Dev Diary - My experience with the studio.
I started in March 2007 as a 'Tools Programmer' which meant I was supposed to go in and write exporters for the Max to Bigworld pipeline. What I actually started on was tweaking the environment for the source to run in so we could just compile the game :) The source code was less than desirable for what we had in mind and we had so many demands on it that we had to change the Python bindings to allow us to extend the functionality of the game. One of the examples was to compile Scaleform into the C++ engine, so via Python I could start loading, playing and accessing the content provided by the Flash artists.
From there I worked on ball physics and did some motion capture analysis to enable us to have a ball mixing board so we could tweak the final physics in the game. After that I worked on web technology to convert an existing open source product Trac to suit our Agile project management requirements. Finally I put my hand up for Flash work and started the GUI team. We experimented with GUI and Flash for a number of months until the Art team provided the look and feel you will see in the game today.
I spent over a year on the GUI team. As we came close to Beta launch it was all hands on deck to reduce the bug count to zero. During that time I was learning the Art Tech pipeline to assist artists to get their assets in the game. Recently I have just been doing bug fixes on
the lead up to Beta launch, and now I spend most of my time assisting in playtests and taking onboard the requests from our customers to make Interzone Futebol (pronounced Foo-che-bol) the best football game around.
GamePlay
Giving you a quick run down of the action, you go to the web page sign up, get your login, download the client and run the game. From there you use our awesome character creator then jump into the Social Space, buy a ball, explore all the vendors, learn ball tricks, emotes, buy clothes and get pro gear to buff your performance on the field.
Then find a match vendor, join the queue and jump into a soccer game like no other - every player is a real player somewhere in the world.
Come one, come all - This is the best persistent multi-player football game out.
www.interzonefutebol.com.au
#2
03/29/2009 (2:46 pm)
No its Bigworld. Should I take it down? Maybe I should blog off my site and link to it from here? 
#3
03/29/2009 (4:38 pm)
Posting about non-Torque stuff is fine, but you might want to provide some context about why you're sharing this game. Because you worked on it? If so, maybe share some of that experience. 
#4
03/29/2009 (6:20 pm)
Seconded. While this space is Torque dominated, that does not exclude other titles made by our community users. Tell us a little about your involvement in the project, time it took, etc etc =)
#5
03/30/2009 (3:28 am)
I agree - and thanks for letting me keep it here. I am writing a developer diary now and will post it shortly. Should make an interesting read for people to see how we did it.
#6
03/31/2009 (8:12 am)
I've updated my blog with a dev diary above. 
#7
I haven't tried a match yet. I'd like to be able to hit more targets first. ;)
03/31/2009 (4:03 pm)
I've signed up for it and got in to run around the city-- very cool idea! I like that there are some things to do other than the matches.I haven't tried a match yet. I'd like to be able to hit more targets first. ;)
Employee Brett Seyler