Zworldo.com Blog 1 - An Introduction

PROLOGUE

Starting in 2007 I began work on my Big Game Idea. It was a space combat game where you actually walk around your ship and fly it from its bridge. It was the next logical step for something I started here back in 2005. Egads! That was a long time ago.


Orcs in space! Running under TGE and TNL. Circa 2005

I made some significant progress on my game. I had the server infrastructure in place using Stackless Python. A player could join a ship and walk around its two decks. You could walk up to a computer screen and actually fly your ship. The client and ship portion of the game was built on TGEA.

There was still a heck of a lot of work to do. Space combat with various weapons, ship flight characteristics, detailing the ship interior, character models and animation, etc. By this time 2009 was approaching and I knew if I ever wanted to get this game even into a playable beta state, I would have to spend some money on help. Lacking any funds to put into this game, it didn't look good. So, in 2009, I decided to change course and shelve my space game.

ZWORLDO

Starting in the Spring of 2009, I began work on a free-to-play web site featuring games/worlds built with Torque 3D. I call this site Zworldo.com. My test bed is Greenwood Faire, a medieval-themed world where you can chat, explore, play a few games, and make some music, all during a summer faire.


Two players making music together

My original test game was to be located on Mars, but it required a lot of custom art work. For this first project, building the world (which always takes longer then you'd imagine) and crafting the custom code was enough without having to worry too much about custom art. There are a number of high quality medieval-themed content packs out there to draw from, so a change in venue was in order. I'll come back to Mars once (if) I've made some money off my current setting.


The Town of Greenwood's front gate at night

To support all this, I've heavily modified the Torque 3D web plug-in. It now allows for different games to be started based on passed in parameters, and for all game files to be patched from an online file server (right now my web server). The user downloads and installs a 1.5MB plug-in, and it automatically downloads the needed files for the current game (based on the web page displayed). This process is similar to a number of web games out there, such as Free Realms.


Patching the Greenwood Faire game

The alpha version of the game is currently open to all Associates and IA employees to test out my web plug-in and patching. The game's backend has been running on Amazon's EC2 service under Windows Server 2008 since January 2010 without any issues.

There is still a lot to do to make this more of a game. But I'm hoping to open it up to Torque 3D owners in a matter of weeks to get more people testing it out. Then on to a public beta. It'll be nice to see people clicking on the GoogleAds and starting to bring in some money. Breaking even on the server hosting costs sounds like a good first financial goal. :)

My plan is to continue with this series of blogs to discuss the various aspects of my technology and the games of Zworldo. Let the documentation of my journey begin!

All blogs in this series:
Zworldo.com Blog 1
Zworldo.com Blog 2
Zworldo.com Blog 3
Zworldo.com Blog 4

- Dave