End of year update...
by Toby W. Allen · 12/23/2005 (6:52 am) · 2 comments
So what's been going on for the last few weeks...
Society Stuff
Society wise, we've been having difficulties getting things going towards our current projects, this is mainly due to the fact that we're all end of year finalist and are all extremely busy with actual university work!
This has been quite an annoying thing for the society, but we can't do much about it either. We're starting to look for the new committee to take over the society, as we will be ending out term in March '06, which means I will join in ther ranks as member only and work on my own projects and the community game.
Community Games
The community game stuff has been moving slowly, due to people's university work. Urban Jungle needs some more attention as it can be a really fun game, but needs to be developed in flash and needs more work on it. The concept art is wicked and should be given some life through the gameplay!
Spyworld, a name which is starting to sound like bad cider, is making some progress, althought more needs to be defined in terms of concept art and location. We're using the university building, Parkinson, as a major focus point for our first episode, but this requires some serious mapping which isn't easy to do. In addition to this, the people working on Spyworld are using the source engine, which is not an easy engine to get started with if you have no experience with it. The benefit it does have over Torque currently, is the ease to setup things such as AI and game interaction through Hammer, which isn't provided currently with Torque, but could be seen with Constructor on the horizon. The design doc for Spyworld can be seen here
Other than that we've spent a bit of time playing games with our LAN party in Hudderfield with the CreativeNorth guys. We've also been working on a new shop for GDS -
Which you can see here
Torque Stuff
On the torque related stuff, I've been working heavily on TDN. I don't know if my contributions have been liked or not, or if things are good, but I've been working on providing some clear and good content to the documentation in addition to the content that I think should be there. Which is why I've created pages that aren't yet completed, not because I personally plan on completing them, but because these are articles which are needed and need precise information which I don't know yet - So feel free to edit and get working! It might be a good incentive for people to contribute through TDN through a reward system, ie you could get discounts or free stuff if you get X amount of good resources posted or something. I'm mentioning this because a lot fo stuff is still being posted in the forums that could be solved through the TDN, thismight be a good way of getting things moved over.
I'd really like to see the main TGE page more filled out, there's loads of placeholders that could be replaced with the final links that have been created and allow stronger access to the information. I really think that writting documentation teachs you so much about the engine, because it means you can truely understand what you're putting up. I did this for the Cipher engine a while back and it helped me get through the art pipeline. I'm not too sure why, but I still can't upload files yet, but I can do without for the moment.
On the education side of things, there's a nice new forum about this topic, which is good to see. I wrote a long bit on the topic of 'Is Torque right for my school' which is a good thread.
I'm actually slowly moving onwards with an old project of mine, this was setup for Cipher a while back and now will be moved to torque. Most of the content is there, but I need to make some bases and stuff, which I haven't come upwith designs yet due to being busy.
I probably had something else to say, but I forget now...
Society Stuff
Society wise, we've been having difficulties getting things going towards our current projects, this is mainly due to the fact that we're all end of year finalist and are all extremely busy with actual university work!
This has been quite an annoying thing for the society, but we can't do much about it either. We're starting to look for the new committee to take over the society, as we will be ending out term in March '06, which means I will join in ther ranks as member only and work on my own projects and the community game.
Community Games
The community game stuff has been moving slowly, due to people's university work. Urban Jungle needs some more attention as it can be a really fun game, but needs to be developed in flash and needs more work on it. The concept art is wicked and should be given some life through the gameplay!
Spyworld, a name which is starting to sound like bad cider, is making some progress, althought more needs to be defined in terms of concept art and location. We're using the university building, Parkinson, as a major focus point for our first episode, but this requires some serious mapping which isn't easy to do. In addition to this, the people working on Spyworld are using the source engine, which is not an easy engine to get started with if you have no experience with it. The benefit it does have over Torque currently, is the ease to setup things such as AI and game interaction through Hammer, which isn't provided currently with Torque, but could be seen with Constructor on the horizon. The design doc for Spyworld can be seen here
Other than that we've spent a bit of time playing games with our LAN party in Hudderfield with the CreativeNorth guys. We've also been working on a new shop for GDS -
Torque Stuff
On the torque related stuff, I've been working heavily on TDN. I don't know if my contributions have been liked or not, or if things are good, but I've been working on providing some clear and good content to the documentation in addition to the content that I think should be there. Which is why I've created pages that aren't yet completed, not because I personally plan on completing them, but because these are articles which are needed and need precise information which I don't know yet - So feel free to edit and get working! It might be a good incentive for people to contribute through TDN through a reward system, ie you could get discounts or free stuff if you get X amount of good resources posted or something. I'm mentioning this because a lot fo stuff is still being posted in the forums that could be solved through the TDN, thismight be a good way of getting things moved over.
I'd really like to see the main TGE page more filled out, there's loads of placeholders that could be replaced with the final links that have been created and allow stronger access to the information. I really think that writting documentation teachs you so much about the engine, because it means you can truely understand what you're putting up. I did this for the Cipher engine a while back and it helped me get through the art pipeline. I'm not too sure why, but I still can't upload files yet, but I can do without for the moment.
On the education side of things, there's a nice new forum about this topic, which is good to see. I wrote a long bit on the topic of 'Is Torque right for my school' which is a good thread.
I'm actually slowly moving onwards with an old project of mine, this was setup for Cipher a while back and now will be moved to torque. Most of the content is there, but I need to make some bases and stuff, which I haven't come upwith designs yet due to being busy.
I probably had something else to say, but I forget now...
About the author
Torque Owner Jason Swearingen
good luck with spyworld... though fyi the design doc isnt available at the link you posted.