DayOfWar Update
by Bill Vee · 09/02/2010 (5:13 pm) · 8 comments
The road behind.
I can't believe it has been almost 11 months since I last posted.
Well I guess I should explain some things.
I have been for the most part by my self in developing this game.
Early on I added some people who wanted to "help" me with this game and that didn't end well.
About a year ago I determined I needed 2 things to really put an effort into this game.
1. Free time.
Anyone who has tried to create a game knows you can never have enough free time to devote to making it. My current "real" job affords me very little free time. I put in about 10-11 hours a day then when I am off work I work on this game or other projects, more on this later, till I need to go to sleep and get about 6 hours of sleep before going back to my real job. I also devoted 100% of my weekends and and holidays to this game or other projects. So I basically I have no social life. The last movie I went to see in the theaters was 300, in 2007.
2. Funding.
The engine that drives any project. I have tried various methods to fund this project with varying results. For the last year I have devoted all of my free time to 4 projects, as a programmer, 3 were game projects and 1 was a database interface . Only the database project produced any kind of money to make it worth the effort. One of the game projects ,after I produced a working proof of concept demo, I lost all contact with the guy for 8 months now. All in all I would have to say that trying to fund my game this way has only put it on hold for a year and produced little to help fund it.
Free time and Funding come as no surprise to most people hear at GG.
I am still one person working on this game.
Now Some recapping.
The first thing I should do is define more clearly what the game is.
DayOfWar is a first person shooter with emphasis on vehicle combat , but not in the way you may think.
Vehicle combat in this game is not like most other games were you "mount" a vehicle and basically become that vehicle to fight with or mount to a seat and fire from that position.
These 2 videos illustrate some of this concept.
Both the large boxy vehicle and the jeep and buggy are all controllable vehicles.
The buggy and the jeep are the wheeledvehicle class and the large boxy "ship" is a custom class derived from the flyingvehicle class.
Another concept for this game is size and gravity.
By size I mean this game is big.
The game takes place in space and on small asteroids and moons.
There is seamless transition from space to ground level combat.
And each asteroid / moon has it's own gravity. There is no hard coded down direction in this game.
There are some vehicles in this game that have there own gravity.
There are right now 2 types of vehicle that have there own gravity.
The capital and frigate class vehicles can have there own gravity.
This video shows game play moving from Player controlled movement to wheeled vehicle based movement to flying/space vehicle movement. It also shows the size of the game play area covering a couple hundred square miles on small asteroid. It also demonstrates the terrain system in this game. The terrain in this game is spherical.
The spherical terrain system is the biggest part of this game and has been the key concept for this game.
I spent 3 years on just this aspect alone.
In my next blog I will detail some of The road ahead.
I can't believe it has been almost 11 months since I last posted.
Well I guess I should explain some things.
I have been for the most part by my self in developing this game.
Early on I added some people who wanted to "help" me with this game and that didn't end well.
About a year ago I determined I needed 2 things to really put an effort into this game.
1. Free time.
Anyone who has tried to create a game knows you can never have enough free time to devote to making it. My current "real" job affords me very little free time. I put in about 10-11 hours a day then when I am off work I work on this game or other projects, more on this later, till I need to go to sleep and get about 6 hours of sleep before going back to my real job. I also devoted 100% of my weekends and and holidays to this game or other projects. So I basically I have no social life. The last movie I went to see in the theaters was 300, in 2007.
2. Funding.
The engine that drives any project. I have tried various methods to fund this project with varying results. For the last year I have devoted all of my free time to 4 projects, as a programmer, 3 were game projects and 1 was a database interface . Only the database project produced any kind of money to make it worth the effort. One of the game projects ,after I produced a working proof of concept demo, I lost all contact with the guy for 8 months now. All in all I would have to say that trying to fund my game this way has only put it on hold for a year and produced little to help fund it.
Free time and Funding come as no surprise to most people hear at GG.
I am still one person working on this game.
Now Some recapping.
The first thing I should do is define more clearly what the game is.
DayOfWar is a first person shooter with emphasis on vehicle combat , but not in the way you may think.
Vehicle combat in this game is not like most other games were you "mount" a vehicle and basically become that vehicle to fight with or mount to a seat and fire from that position.
These 2 videos illustrate some of this concept.
Both the large boxy vehicle and the jeep and buggy are all controllable vehicles.
The buggy and the jeep are the wheeledvehicle class and the large boxy "ship" is a custom class derived from the flyingvehicle class.
Another concept for this game is size and gravity.
By size I mean this game is big.
The game takes place in space and on small asteroids and moons.
There is seamless transition from space to ground level combat.
And each asteroid / moon has it's own gravity. There is no hard coded down direction in this game.
There are some vehicles in this game that have there own gravity.
There are right now 2 types of vehicle that have there own gravity.
The capital and frigate class vehicles can have there own gravity.
This video shows game play moving from Player controlled movement to wheeled vehicle based movement to flying/space vehicle movement. It also shows the size of the game play area covering a couple hundred square miles on small asteroid. It also demonstrates the terrain system in this game. The terrain in this game is spherical.
The spherical terrain system is the biggest part of this game and has been the key concept for this game.
I spent 3 years on just this aspect alone.
In my next blog I will detail some of The road ahead.
About the author
#2
Great vid of the scout. That planetoid is fantastic.
09/03/2010 (1:00 am)
11 months, wow. Time sure flies.Great vid of the scout. That planetoid is fantastic.
#3
is it just 8 regular terrain height-maps?
09/03/2010 (2:35 am)
wondering what ever happened to this project. Shows a lot a promise. Just needs funding, story, and lots of artwork. Love the idea though. What is the Largest Size world you can create? I would imagine populating all of it is going to be a challenge. some sort of standardized base layouts and procedural stuff I would imagine. is it just 8 regular terrain height-maps?
#4
Spherical terrains are awesome!
09/03/2010 (4:52 am)
It was just a few weeks ago I was wondering about this project and went back and downloaded the tech demo -- glad to see you're still in action!Spherical terrains are awesome!
#5
Just imagine doing something like the old Starflight or Starcontrol games, where you explore the galaxy in your spaceship but need to get down in some planets to explore ruins, pick some living specimen (a dragon fighting a spaceship anyone?), search for fuel, mine... the possibilities are endless...
About the time, I programmed Warscale basically on my free time on the train, 2 hours every day. I don't know if you drive to your work but consider using a public transport, you will save money, and in your free time just open your laptop (even a netbook is quite powerful this days) and hack all your way to work and back.
Luck!
Guimo
09/03/2010 (8:02 am)
I get my head so full of ideas on this tech. Have you considered packing everything, add a manual explaining any technical details and sell the technology. Like in ArcaneFX. I mean, sell the tech, get some money, continue... like a true indie.Just imagine doing something like the old Starflight or Starcontrol games, where you explore the galaxy in your spaceship but need to get down in some planets to explore ruins, pick some living specimen (a dragon fighting a spaceship anyone?), search for fuel, mine... the possibilities are endless...
About the time, I programmed Warscale basically on my free time on the train, 2 hours every day. I don't know if you drive to your work but consider using a public transport, you will save money, and in your free time just open your laptop (even a netbook is quite powerful this days) and hack all your way to work and back.
Luck!
Guimo
#6
09/03/2010 (8:08 am)
Awesome work, some really exciting ideas in there. Keep pressing on with it.
#7
I posted a blog explaining the technique I use for spherical terrains.
DayOfWar SixSidedSpheres 2nd try
@Guimo
I did offer the spherical terrain tech to GG and they were interested.
But they wanted it for Torque3D. The way I implement spherical terrains is based off of TGEA's atlas tech and since Torque3D doesn't have atlas in it I couldn't offer a Torque3D version.
I have been told by many users here that atlas could be added back into Torque3D but I could not afford to buy Torque3D then take even more time to add atlas back to it so spherical terrain could work again.
09/03/2010 (1:44 pm)
@JamesI posted a blog explaining the technique I use for spherical terrains.
DayOfWar SixSidedSpheres 2nd try
@Guimo
I did offer the spherical terrain tech to GG and they were interested.
But they wanted it for Torque3D. The way I implement spherical terrains is based off of TGEA's atlas tech and since Torque3D doesn't have atlas in it I couldn't offer a Torque3D version.
I have been told by many users here that atlas could be added back into Torque3D but I could not afford to buy Torque3D then take even more time to add atlas back to it so spherical terrain could work again.
#8
Here's an idea. I realize this probably doesn't fit into the mostly-FPS-style you've got going, but I always thought it would be so cool to try to fight with ballistic missiles on spherical terrain. You know, be firing rockets or whatever, but the player would have try to adapt the firing angle to the changing direction of gravity. It'd be so cool to fight that way on a very small planetoid. Hitting targets beyond the horizon.
Sort of like Scorched Earth or Shelled!, but with spherical terrain+gravity.
09/03/2010 (9:51 pm)
echoing what's already been said: spherical terrains are cool!Here's an idea. I realize this probably doesn't fit into the mostly-FPS-style you've got going, but I always thought it would be so cool to try to fight with ballistic missiles on spherical terrain. You know, be firing rockets or whatever, but the player would have try to adapt the firing angle to the changing direction of gravity. It'd be so cool to fight that way on a very small planetoid. Hitting targets beyond the horizon.
Sort of like Scorched Earth or Shelled!, but with spherical terrain+gravity.
Torque Owner Daniel Buckmaster
T3D Steering Committee
EDIT: Now I'm having daydreams of Tribes-style base-to-base combat combined with the giant flying fortresses from BF2142 AND high-speed aerial dogfights... someone pinch me...