Plan for John Kabus (BobTheCBuilder)
by John Kabus (BobTheCBuilder) · 05/17/2005 (5:20 pm) · 6 comments
Wow it's been a while! Apparently I haven't posted a plan in months, and not with out reason there are a ton of amazing project going on at Synapse Gaming, but unfortunately it seems the more you have to talk about the less you can disclose - until the projects are ready for release that is. :)
I'm making a conscious effort to post a new plan every few weeks or at least once a month, so instead of packing this plan with tons of info I'll break it up into multiple plans.
Todays Topic: Extreme Game Prototyping
My brothers and I have always been interested in game development, modding, and modeling. There are a number of game ideas that we've been tossing around ranging from puzzle games, to platformers, to team based multi-player fps. It's difficult to decide which ideas are the best and how the game-play will ultimately turn out for each of them, so this weekend we decided to get together and prototype several ideas.
The loose set of rules for our prototyping were:
1 have fun
2 use existing assets and source code (we used the Lighting Pack's 'example' mod)
3 complete the prototype level(s) in a few hours
Originally we were all going to work on a separate level, however we eventually fell into set roles I worked on mission design and placement, Alex worked on interior design and creation (technically against the rules, seeing as we were supposed to use existing assets, but rule #1 overrides all others :), and Ross worked on modding the scripts and overall polish, like textures and sounds.
Overall we only prototyped two levels (mainly because Alex's level was awesome and kept distracting us), but the work we did complete helped us better understand which of our ideas did and did not work. Equally as important we have test levels for tweaking and retesting future game-play ideas.
Day One
In the first few hours of prototyping I decided to tryout a few platformer style game ideas I had. I used only the assets provided in the Lighting Pack demo, which also includes the assets from the TGE demo.
As I mentioned before; the point of prototyping was to test game-play, so making the level look good was not a high priority. :)
This level was definitely a blast to play, but it pointed out some serious game-play issues related to handling 3rd and 1st person views while platform jumping and shooting. These problems made the level rather difficult to play and need to be resolved before any work on the actual game begins.
Btw: the cool light beam is a health regeneration point.
About the same time I finish work on my level Alex completed his interior, which Ross dropped into a mission he had created earlier (with a really cool killer sludge pit :). Then I added mission lights, weapons, and other items and this is what we had:
Not bad for a few hours of work and a single texture on the interior. As you can see this was inspired by Q3 style multi-player fps levels.
At this point the level looked and played great so much so it distracted us from continuing our prototyping... :)
Day Two
At this point we were totally absorbed in tweaking and tuning Alex's level. First we collected a lot of other Torque assets from places like Games Extract and the GX Bio-Hazard site (check the GG site's Freebies forum for other cool stuff). Then we updated the level with multiple textures, sounds, and such.
By mid-afternoon we had a very cool looking level, with decent game-play, and a few different characters and weapons (nice!).
Eventually I set up Torque's camera system to move around the level and during one of the games captured this video:
Video (8.5M)
Not bad for a day and a half. :)
That's about it for the prototyping, the whole process was a blast and it helped identify areas of our game-play to work on I definitely recommend prototyping game-play before putting any effort into the game itself. Just remember to keep it simple and make sure to have fun. :)
-John Kabus
Synapse Gaming
I'm making a conscious effort to post a new plan every few weeks or at least once a month, so instead of packing this plan with tons of info I'll break it up into multiple plans.
Todays Topic: Extreme Game Prototyping
My brothers and I have always been interested in game development, modding, and modeling. There are a number of game ideas that we've been tossing around ranging from puzzle games, to platformers, to team based multi-player fps. It's difficult to decide which ideas are the best and how the game-play will ultimately turn out for each of them, so this weekend we decided to get together and prototype several ideas.
The loose set of rules for our prototyping were:
1 have fun
2 use existing assets and source code (we used the Lighting Pack's 'example' mod)
3 complete the prototype level(s) in a few hours
Originally we were all going to work on a separate level, however we eventually fell into set roles I worked on mission design and placement, Alex worked on interior design and creation (technically against the rules, seeing as we were supposed to use existing assets, but rule #1 overrides all others :), and Ross worked on modding the scripts and overall polish, like textures and sounds.
Overall we only prototyped two levels (mainly because Alex's level was awesome and kept distracting us), but the work we did complete helped us better understand which of our ideas did and did not work. Equally as important we have test levels for tweaking and retesting future game-play ideas.
Day One
In the first few hours of prototyping I decided to tryout a few platformer style game ideas I had. I used only the assets provided in the Lighting Pack demo, which also includes the assets from the TGE demo.
As I mentioned before; the point of prototyping was to test game-play, so making the level look good was not a high priority. :)
This level was definitely a blast to play, but it pointed out some serious game-play issues related to handling 3rd and 1st person views while platform jumping and shooting. These problems made the level rather difficult to play and need to be resolved before any work on the actual game begins.
Btw: the cool light beam is a health regeneration point.
About the same time I finish work on my level Alex completed his interior, which Ross dropped into a mission he had created earlier (with a really cool killer sludge pit :). Then I added mission lights, weapons, and other items and this is what we had:
Not bad for a few hours of work and a single texture on the interior. As you can see this was inspired by Q3 style multi-player fps levels.
At this point the level looked and played great so much so it distracted us from continuing our prototyping... :)
Day Two
At this point we were totally absorbed in tweaking and tuning Alex's level. First we collected a lot of other Torque assets from places like Games Extract and the GX Bio-Hazard site (check the GG site's Freebies forum for other cool stuff). Then we updated the level with multiple textures, sounds, and such.
By mid-afternoon we had a very cool looking level, with decent game-play, and a few different characters and weapons (nice!).
Eventually I set up Torque's camera system to move around the level and during one of the games captured this video:
Video (8.5M)
Not bad for a day and a half. :)
That's about it for the prototyping, the whole process was a blast and it helped identify areas of our game-play to work on I definitely recommend prototyping game-play before putting any effort into the game itself. Just remember to keep it simple and make sure to have fun. :)
-John Kabus
Synapse Gaming
#2
What's the theme?
05/17/2005 (6:32 pm)
Alright you got me - and this time I'll join in instead of just watching. :)What's the theme?
#3
05/17/2005 (9:35 pm)
Awesome, john is coming to the gid :D 
#4
05/17/2005 (11:55 pm)
Wow. This looks great, John. It looks a heck of a lot better than any prototype I've done :) 
#5
05/18/2005 (3:43 am)
Great job as always John.
#6
Mmmm... GID... so the theme is Fusion, this could be interesting. :)
05/18/2005 (11:14 am)
Thanks guys!Mmmm... GID... so the theme is Fusion, this could be interesting. :)
Torque 3D Owner Tom Bampton
T.