Plan for J Lesko

UPDATE:


View the .plan (and download link) for the finished game


Up until now, my only exposure to 3D work were some maps I made for Raven Shield using UnrealEd. Nearly all of my game ideas are 2D-based, so I haven't really been motivated to take the plunge. Well, Friday night I was perusing some Blitz boards and saw a code snippet for a fun little 3D game that piqued my interest enough to find out how it worked. Soon after that, I saw Tom's announcement for the GID and figured it'd be a good excuse to give it a try.

I decided to make an FPS using only graphics I could create in the code and whatever 2D assets I could make myself. No models or any newfangled stuff like that.

Saturday morning

I started out with some code for a basic first person demo I found online, and rewriting it gradually to be the basis of the game. I never use code I don't understand, so it took me a while to look everything up and modify it to fit my coding conventions.

Once I could walk and look around, the next thing to add was shooting. I figured I would use some kind of projectile so I added a reticle and some spheres you can shoot. I got a bit mixed up with thinking in the 3D coordinate system at this point, resulting in little balls shooting up out of my head (in the game, too).

Here's what it looked like to start with. (Yaw)

Saturday Afternoon:


The next step was to add some baddies and make some kind of environment. I figured an indoor maze was the typical choice, which I could do by arranging cubes in a grid to form the hallway. A ceiling would just be another plane. The monsters would be sprites, since I had no models and I couldn't think of an interesting way to use the basic shapes as enemies without it being real boring (watch out for those cylinders!!!)

So here is a shot at that point, with just a couple of blocks to get the scaling right and the ultra-frightening alien.



Saturday Night:



The next thing to do was get the collisions between the bullets and the aliens going. I used a textured sphere intersecting the ground to become a mound of melted alien guts. The shooting was (and still is) a bit wonky because I think some of the spheres were colliding with the walls adjacent to the player. I had to remove the collisions and make the bullets timeout quickly so you can't just shoot through walls and kill everyone.

My favorite bit of work was with the alien eggs, which are just textured spheres, but I made them pulsate by scaling them on a timer. The mini-map is still a little off, but it was also a fun first for me. And the death animation was one of those things that just looked cool the first time I tried it out.

The main suckage point is the AI -- the enemies only come toward you if they are in your camera range. Of course, this means if you turn away from them, they won't kill you! =)

The last thing I considered was gameplay, which should probably have some first, but this was more of a learning project. I added some checkpoints on each level that you have to reach and then return to the start point. A bonus timer is the incentive to get a move on. The mini-map goes staticky when you hit the last checkpoint, so you have to return based on memory. The eggs are usually tucked away in the corners but are worth quite a lot if you take the risk. Most of this was done, with a few remaining bugs on Sunday night.

Today (Monday) I took some time to polish the main program flow and create the levels. The gameplay isn't too compelling yet, but I think it's a good start.

Otherwise, I had a lot of fun working on this one and I hope it shows.


Final Screenshot




My Other GIDs

GID9 - Grand Thrift Auto

GID7 - Lord of the Gems



Thanks for reading,
Joe